It’s hard to believe it has been almost a year since I’ve written a newsletter article or a blog post. The other day I checked our website and realized my last post was in August, right before the birth of our son. I had no idea how much the birth of a child would change my life.

Our son, Cole, is truly a blessing for my wife and me. If you are a parent, you know what I mean when I say my perspective on just about everything has changed. But several other recent experiences have also changed my perspective on life and strengthened my commitment to teaching people the importance of a healthy lifestyle.

In the last year, much of my time and attention has been taken away from Exercise Inc. I’m generally a private person and, I keep most of my personal issues to myself. Even those who know me well may not know about the following events. But they have been learning experiences for me, so I think they are worth sharing.

In January 2011 my dad, who was only 65 years old, had two strokes. He didn’t really suffer any apparent physical complications from the strokes; he could walk and talk fine. The strokes did make him very depressed. They affected his ability to eat. Everything tasted like gasoline so he pretty much stopped eating, and did nothing but lie in bed all day.

He lost a lot of weight and became even more depressed. That May he tried to end his life by putting a gun to his head. I won’t share those details, but that was the most stressful event I’ve ever dealt with in my life. My wife and I spent most of last summer traveling to Evansville to be with him and the rest of my family at the hospital.

During that time, my wife was in the third trimester of her pregnancy. We were both a tangled mess of emotions, trying to be happy about our baby who was on the way, dealing with the grief of my dad who was barely hanging on, and acting as a support system for my mom. And let’s not forget those pregnancy hormones.

By the end of the summer, my dad returned home from the hospital, and my wife gave birth to a beautiful baby boy. I thought life might get back to normal, but it didn’t. Dad physically recovered from the gunshot wound to his head, but he was still depressed, and he still couldn’t eat. He kept losing weight, and he continued to stay in bed all day.

Right before Christmas my mom called and told me she had just been to the doctor, who found a lump in her breast. Doctors planned to remove it and follow up with 6 weeks of radiation. This meant my mom, who was working full-time and taking care of my sick dad, would need help and more support.

Three days later my sister called to tell me she had a very aggressive type of cancer, and she would need surgery and chemotherapy right after the first of the year. She is 41 and lives in Westfield with her husband and her 8 year old and 2 year old sons.

I’m actually getting very stressed just writing about this. During surgery, the doctor removed cancer from 8 places in my sister’s body. She just completed her eighth and hopefully her last round of chemo last week.

Needless to say in the last year, my wife and I have spent most of our emotional energy helping family members, driving back and forth from Brownsburg to Evansville and to Westfield, and in the meantime trying to figure out how to be parents and to our first child.

My mom recovered from her breast cancer surgery and radiation treatments. But for the last year, she has spent most of her time taking care of my dad. Then in May of this year my dad suddenly died from a heart attack. He was only 66.

This has definitely been the most stressful year of my life, and I’ve had to share all that stress with my wife and new baby.

Things are not supposed to be this way. They don’t have to be this way.

I got into the fitness business many years ago to help people live better lives through exercise and proper nutrition. Since I started, I’ve seen the health and fitness of Americans decline rapidly. That’s because I think most of what we are being told–Conventional Wisdom–is wrong.

The changes that have occurred in our diet as a result of the agricultural revolution that occurred 7,000 years ago and the more recent industrial revolution have happened too fast for our genes to adapt. As a result we have fallen victim to diseases that were rare and virtually non-existent in our hunter-gatherer ancestors and are still rare in modern non-westernized populations.

Heart disease, cancer and diabetes hardly existed until we rapidly changed our diet. Our ancestors for more than 2 million years ate meat, fish, vegetables, fruit and nuts. Grains like wheat and corn and legumes like soybeans were not part of their diet, neither was sugar.

The processed foods we consume today contain nutrients and food-like substances that our bodies don’t really recognize as food. In fact, much of what we eat today—

including sugar—is toxic to our bodies. If you don’t believe me, just go to any public place (such as Walmart) and see for yourself how unhealthy the average person looks. In fact, count how many healthy-looking people you find over 30. My guess would be 1 out of 10.

I’ve witness people I love suffer in the last year. I’ve seen how bad and inefficient our health care system is. As you can imagine, I’ve spent many hours in hospitals during this time. With the exception of the birth of my son, not much of what I saw looked very healthy. It doesn’t have to be this way. I’m convinced that your genes want you to be healthy, lean and strong. My goal is to do as much as I can in the next year to educate our clients at Exercise Inc about what it means to be truly healthy.

This is the first edition of my “almost weekly” email. About once a week, maybe even twice, I plan to send helpful information to our clients and anyone who wants to subscribe to this email list about how to exercise and eat to avoid disease, be strong and become lean. I honesty believe the right nutrition is the best medicine for avoiding most of the diseases that destroy our bodies. I’m not saying proper nutrition can cure every disease, but I honesty think proper nutrition and exercise can prevent many of them. Proper nutrition and exercise can also help us live happier and healthier lives.