When we fully understand that each day of our life is yet another step towards our final destiny is when we truly start living rather than merely existing.

You could describe my adolescence and early adult years as about as far removed from preparation of being a leader in health and fitness as imaginable. I did not grow up in a family who consciously valued fitness or nutrition. I ate my way through my childhood on McDonald’s and frozen pizzas. I was however, loved beyond measure and I always knew that I mattered. Not because of what others told me, but because of the fire I had inside ever since I can remember. I knew I would make a big impact on the world, I just had no idea how.

Death became a driving force in my life at age 10 when my father committed suicide. He never knew how worthy he was and never truly knew how to love. This was also something I could always grasp, even from an early age. It was through his death that I gained my first real lesson in living. While death had intimately touched my life as a child, it was with the death of my infant daughter, at age 27, that my entire existence was transformed.

Prior to this, I would consider myself as merely “going through the motions” in life. I was creating a demanding career in the financial industry for the sole purpose of having money. I had a marriage I conveniently put on auto-pilot, I surrounded myself with convenient “friends” and was blind to the deeper purpose of my life. I always had this feeling there was so much more to why I was on the earth but I couldn’t seem to find the purpose. Through the death of my daughter, I gained a profound awareness of how fleeting life is and made a decision I would no longer waste a day of my life going through the motions without purpose. I left my job, put work back into my marriage and began creating the family and life I now knew I was meant to create.

The mental anguish I was going through during this time was lessened when I pushed my body to new physical challenges. The better my body felt, the better my mind and spirit. Through fitness, I was creating a deeper existence and I found a need to share this with others.

My journey as a leader in health and fitness has been long and winding. All of the so-called mistakes I’ve made in over 40 years of life are really just necessary chapters in my story of finding what it is I was meant to do. I see people in the world around me going through the motions; existing from day to day and not LIVING!

We are also living in a time when too many people are spewing “noise” in the nutrition and fitness industry. I will change this! I will bring wide spread knowledge back into fitness and nutrition. The starting place to creating fulfillment in life has to start with the body we live in. It has to start with the acknowledgement that you matter! I believe firmly that the body houses the mind and spirit. Helping people take care of their bodies allows me to help them see how much they matter.