More Than a Pitmaster

For most of my adult life, nobody would have looked at me and thought, “health guy.”

I spent more than 20 years in the lumber business. I’m a husband, a dad, and a competitive BBQ cook. I love great food, good people, and standing around a smoker talking about life. Somewhere along the way, though, the decisions I was making began catching up with me.

In June of 2021, I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. My A1c was 12.2%. I was overweight, had high blood pressure and high cholesterol, and suddenly I was looking at a list of medications I believed would be part of my life forever.

The diagnosis scared me because I started thinking about my family.

I wondered who would give my daughters away at their weddings if I wasn't there. Who would finish raising my youngest son? Would my oldest son have to step into the role of the man of the family? Would my wife someday have to build a life with someone else because of decisions I had made about my health?

So I listened to my doctors. I took the medications because I genuinely believed they were what stood between me and dying. I even believed that missing a statin pill could mean a heart attack. I felt the same way about Trulicity. I wanted to become the healthy person I had once been, but I didn't believe that person was coming back.

At the same time, I had become increasingly frustrated with my professional life. After more than two decades in the lumber industry, I had changed jobs several times because I would eventually lose passion for what I was doing.

In 2021, I went to work for a personal friend.

On December 15, 2022, he let me go.

I was devastated. I remember thinking, “If he'd do this, then anyone will do this.”

That was the moment I decided I needed to become self-employed.

Around that same time, Trulicity went on national backorder. The medication I believed I needed to control my type 2 diabetes suddenly wasn't available.

Professionally, I needed a new way to support my family. With my health, I needed a new way forward too.

That intersection changed my life.

It was there that I was introduced to Unicity.

I wasn't trying to become a metabolic health educator or build The Healthy Pitmaster. I was trying to solve two very real problems in my own life. But becoming a business partner exposed me to information I had never been taught before, especially around insulin resistance and metabolic health.

For the first time, I began looking beyond blood sugar and asking what was causing the problem in the first place.

That changed everything.

I started changing how I ate, began fasting, and became fascinated with understanding what had happened inside my own body.

My body responded.

My numbers improved. The weight came off. And the person I thought I had lost started coming back.

At the same time, I found something professionally that I actually cared about. I wasn't talking about lumber anymore. I was talking to people who were scared, frustrated, and wondering whether they could ever feel healthy again.

Those conversations mattered to me.

That's where The Healthy Pitmaster came from.

I'm still a BBQ guy. I still cook. I still love brisket. I just understand my body a whole lot better than I used to.

This website is where I share what I've learned, dig into the science, tell real stories, and have the conversations about metabolic health that I wish someone had had with me years ago.

I didn't set out to become The Healthy Pitmaster.

I was a lumber guy and a BBQ cook who found himself backed into a corner in two important parts of his life at the same time.

It turns out that corner led me somewhere I never expected to go.

Welcome to The Healthy Pitmaster.

Let’s get healthy together.