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Welcome! This is Katie, also known as the Wellness Mama, and you're listening to the first episode of the Wellness Mama podcast, where I provide simple answers for healthier families.

My goal is to help you sift through and simplify all of the health and wellness information out there, and turn it into actionable steps to improve the health of your family.

I'm a wife and Mama 5 with a background in journalism and nutrition. These passions fused to create my love for blogging, and I blog at wellnessmama.com to share health and wellness information, real food recipes, natural living tips and more.

The reason I started this podcast is because of a personal passion that I have myself. When I old a son was just six weeks old, I was sitting in the doctor's office for my follow-up appointment reading a magazine, and I came across a blinding that magazine that hit me like his hunt of bricks.

It said, for the first time in two centuries, the current generation of children in America may have shorter life expectancies than their parents.

The article continued to talk about the coming lives of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and autoimmune disease, and all these other problems.

As I was reading this, I looked down at my little tiny, perfect infant, and every single cell in my body rebelled against that idea that he would have to suffer these problems.

I decided then and there that a 50-50 chance of diabetes was not going to cut it for our children, that a 1-3 chance of getting cancer was not good enough.

In addition, statistics like 95% of the U.S. population will be obese in the next two decades needed to change.

That day, the mission of wellnessmama.com was born and I realized what an uphill battle we must fight to protect future generations.

It also started a personal journey for me to find ways to improve my own health and the health of my husband and my children. It ignited a fire in me to change these statistics for our future.

I also realized that I was a victim of these statistics myself. I was a classic type A first child. In high school, I was senior class president.

I graduated with honors and I was in 23 different extracurricular activities and several sports. I made the grades, but I was up late studying and up early for meetings at school, so I didn't sleep very much.

Like most students, I figured I could eat whatever I wanted as long as I didn't gain weight, so I subsisted on fried food, cafeteria pizza, and lots of caffeine.

College was pretty much more of the same, plus writing assignments for regionalism degree that added extra hours, even at night, and occasional travel.

One summer, I walked across the country, literally, which was definitely one of the best experiences of my life, but also one of the most difficult until I had children.

I was with a group of other students, and we walked probably 15 to 20 miles a day each person, and sometimes we would walk all night long.

So combine that and the stress of being up all night, with bad food, and just the physical stress of walking that much, and you pretty much have the breeding ground for health problems.

Fast forward a few more years, and I left my journalism dream to become a life in a mom, which is definitely the best choice I've ever made, but five kids pretty close together also met not much sleep for about the last eight years.

Turns out that stress, bad food, and lack of sleep are great ways to create problems like autoimmune disease, trouble losing weight, and health problems.

Ever since that moment, when I first read that statistic in the doctor's office, I've been on a search to create a better future for my children and yours, and to find answers for my own health struggles.

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