Is it possible to be healthy when you live with unhealthy people? Sure. Is it harder that way? Yes.

Speaking from experience, it’s much easier to live a healthy life when the people around you are committed to the same kind of lifestyle you are.

With that in mind, here is a link to an article that examines which States are the healthiest to live in and which are the least healthy. I thought Colorado would make the Top 5, but it must be somewhere below the Top 10 because it’s not mentioned as one of the healthiest States. You can read about the rankings here:

Minnesota deemed healthiest state, Louisiana worst

If you haven’t noticed, I have been AWOL the last few months. I asked if I should write an explanation. One loyal reader, Ken Dix, said:

Yes, Ryan, we loyal readers demand an explanation on why you disappeared this summer. I started eating junk food while waiting for the next Health Blog post!

So here is my story.

Starting in May, Stephanie and I began regular chiropractic care. Three visits a week. At first, we handled the visits just fine, in the sense that they weren’t cutting into our schedule too much. But after a couple weeks, we found the pace too grueling for us.

We loved the chiropractic care. The tension in my back went away and hasn’t come back. The back pain Stephanie was experiencing went away as well. But the amount of time it took (we were driving 25 minutes one way) was simply too onerous.

So after nearly two months, we quit. That was near the end of June.

At the same time, I had really picked up the pace on writing posts for my copywriting and marketing blog. I write advertising copy for a living, so keeping a copywriting blog helps to establish my credibility in the field. There is a direct and measurable impact on my business.

As you can imagine, writing two blogs, plus writing hundreds of pages of sales copy in addition to that, is difficult. Naturally, I began to post less on The Health Blog as my business grew.

Starting June 26, I took a full-time paid position. A client of mine who was happy with my work asked me to work full-time for him. I agreed to a 30-day trial. This further prevented me from posting on The Health Blog.

After the 30 days was up, I had clear confirmation that being employed isn’t for me. After more than a year of freelance work from home, I could not give up my flexibility and the extra time I have to spend with my family.

While I was working in July, I maintained my client workload. Some nights I’d come home from eight or nine hours in the office, then put in an extra five or six hours at home, climbing into bed at midnight or later. Talk about exhausting!

When I quit my full-time gig, I had to play catch-up. So August became a time for me to transition back into my freelance work and catch up on things I had neglected.

Now it’s September and I’m feeling like I have a better handle on things. Plus, the holidays are approaching fast, which provides a natural opportunity to write about health. (Here comes the attack of the Halloween candy!)

So that’s my story.

It was a combination of things that kept me from writing about health. Not that I wasn’t thinking about it. Stephanie and I both did a no-sugar diet in early summer, which was good. I’ve done one twice now, and I’m beginning to think of them as no-sugar fasts rather than a way of life. It seems easier and more realistic to give up sugar for a time than to give it up for good.

I’ll share one last thing. Early this summer, my brother Jared mentioned a verse that says, “It is not what enters into the mouth that defiles the man, but what proceeds out of the mouth, this defiles the man.” (Matt. 15:11)

And so for a few months now, I’ve been thinking about what I say more than what I eat. It is a good thing to meditate on.

Anyway, thank you for reading. And thanks to Sarah Parker and Kelly Stuart who “kept things going” in my absence. If it hadn’t been for their posts this summer, The Health Blog would have been a real ghost town.

Greetings and salutations. My name is Kelly Stuart. For months and months, I’ve been planning to write some stuff for The Health Blog. And Ryan has been as patient as a saint. (Thanks, RH!) Before I post anything useful or interesting, here’s a little background info about me:

I met my husband in 1989 when I was 19 years old, and we have been together ever since. We are both self-taught computer programmers. We live in southern Illinois with our three dogs, two cats, and about five hundred ants. (We’re hoping that last group is just temporary.) In our spare time, we like to travel abroad, taking photos and sampling local cuisine—the spicier, the better. When traveling far away is not possible, we can be found camping and canoeing and hugging trees with a group of our friends, attending a jazz concert, or standing in line to ride the latest greatest rollercoaster. It’s also great to just curl up together on the couch with a good book or an old Bogart or Hepburn movie. (Audrey or Kate, you ask? Oh c’mon. They’re both great!)

Most of our time, though, is spent in front of our computers, working into the wee hours. Here’s what I’ve been working on:

I started compiling a database of nutrition facts when my father was diagnosed with diabetes in 1995. I began with just a handful of his favorite foods and restaurants. Over time, the collection grew as more information became available. My friends and family saved oodles of their food labels for me. In 2002, I began using that information to create a website called DietFacts.com. My little hobby soon became a big project; eventually, my career. The site is presently visited by 5 million people every month, and I still get childishly giddy each time DietFacts is mentioned in the newspaper or on the web. The best perk, though, is getting email. Whenever I receive a message from someone who likes the site, it absolutely makes my day!

I’m happy to see that more and more restaurants are making their nutrition facts available to the public. These days restaurants often contact me, asking why their info is not included on DietFacts and then sending it to me. These people know that it is simply good business to give customers the information they want. On the flip side, [bring in the soapbox] some other companies remain secretive, making customers suspect that they’ve got something to hide, something hideous. The unknown is often exaggerated, imagined as the worst. Don’t these companies realize that? I feel that it is an essential part of my job to pester those secret-keepers and keep pestering them and rally other people together to pester them until that information is disclosed. As consumers, we the public have tremendous power—buying power—when we act as a group. We can remove our money from these companies, tell them why and demand change. If they want to stay in business, they must react. [exit soapbox]

My current job as professional pest and webmaster of DietFacts is the absolute best job I ever had. It beats the living tar out of my prior jobs. During my youth, I went through a phase where I wanted to be an artist but to pay the bills—and endure the suffering that all true artists must bear—I took some of the most low-paying and disgusting work on the planet. I slung the slop and mopped the floors in a nursing home cafeteria. “Excuse me, ma’am… You left your teeth behind… in your farina… on the floor.” I also took a job cleaning up after a veterinary surgeon. Let’s just say: that was enough to make any person turn vegetarian!

I lived a vegetarian lifestyle for over 10 years, but not a very healthy one. My husband and I didn’t own a stove back then. Our tiny microwave was used solely for making popcorn and finding out how long it takes stuff to melt and/or explode. Since we didn’t cook or even grocery shop, eating out was our way of life. Unfortunately, restaurants here in “The Heartland” rarely offer vegetarian fare. The green beans have bacon in them, as do the baked beans. The salads have bacon and chicken and eggs. Whatever doesn’t have bacon in it has chow on it. (I still don’t know what chow is; I just know I’m not going to put it anywhere near my face.) So for ten years I ate a lot of starch: white rice, pasta, cereal, corn, baked potatoes, dinner rolls. Eventually I got frustrated, not to mention malnourished, and I resumed a [slightly] meat-eating diet, mostly for the sake of convenience… Well, okay, it was laziness. I still don’t adore meat, but I no longer avoid it like poison.

Last year we invested in one of those new-fangled stove appliance thingies, with pots and pans and spatulas and all that jazz. I’m slowly learning to cook and—I’m proud to say it—we are finally eating healthy. There’s even a pot of black beans simmering on the stovetop right at this moment. Mmmmmm. We rarely eat out at all anymore and practically never at fast food joints. We wait until we have plenty of time and money to spend at one of our favorite sit-down restaurants—a place where they take pride in their food, in its taste, appearance and service. No fries. No soda straws or plastic sporks. We take care to order things that are too difficult to cook at home. Delicate Indian curries. Broiled salmon and white asparagus with a gourmet dill sauce. Coconut-crusted sea bass over couscous. Anything “new” with ingredients that sound exotic to us. Dining out is really special again and fun, like it was when we were kids. We even notice the garnish now: a radish rose here, a carrot bird there, a strawberry fan. How do they do it?

Well, to sum up: I don’t hold a degree in nutrition but do enjoy reading everything I can find on the subject. Ryan’s Health Blog is at the tip-top of my list! I also enjoy reading about science in general, medical news, and any history of scientific discoveries. My parents, who are both retired school teachers, instilled in me the desire to always be learning and to work hard. The physicist Richard Feynman once wrote how the brain causes a release of feel-good chemicals whenever a puzzle is solved or a fact is learned; he even wrote a book about the phenomenon: The Pleasure of Finding Things Out. I hope that as you read “The Health Blog” you will experience that same natural high, that pleasure of learning new and interesting things.

Wow, it feels like a ghost town around here. I suppose that’s a good thing. You should be spending time with your families… not reading blogs!

It’s good for me because I’ve got some time to catch up on email and miscellaneous details that I often intentionally ignore.

It’s only a few days until we’re beyond Christmas and New Years… which means it will be time to get back on track with regard to diet and exercise. (I’m hoping the gym doesn’t get too crazy. I really love how slow it is during November and December.)

I include myself in getting “back on track.” While I’m fairly disciplined during the rest of the year, I tend to eat quite a bit of chocolate between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

And… some good news… I think my wife may be supporting me in some of the diet changes I’d like to make. She said she wouldn’t start until after the holidays, but at least she’s now willing to give it a go!

When she was pregnant, I couldn’t get her to buy into what I wanted to do. Now she’s only got another 3 or 4 months of nursing… and she’s mentally and emotionally ready to make some changes. So, we’ll see…

More news and health posts after Christmas. :-)

Just a quick note to let you know that two more writers have joined The Health Blog. We now have 4 writers (including me).

One of the writers is Jacqleene Meyers.

Jacqleene is a 36-year-old mother of 5 children. She has been married to her husband Paul for 15 years and enjoys homeschooling her children in their 105-year-old farm house in central Illinois.

As if her children didn’t keep her busy enough, Jacqleene does a monthly radio spot to help citizens learn about health and wellness. And now she’s writing articles for The Health Blog. (She has posted her 1st article below.)

Jacqleene has been helping her family work toward a healthy lifestyle for the past 5-6 years now, and enjoys helping other families adopt healthier lifestyles too. Please welcome Jacqleene to the team.

PS – I’ll be introducing our 4th writer as soon as she sends me some more bio information about herself. All I can tell you right now is that she runs a HUGE nutrition web site…