What began as a gathering for a community that often felt isolated has grown into something I never could have fully envisioned when we started in 2017.

My own health journey didn’t begin with Hack Your Health.

It started more than 40 years ago, when I began trying to understand how to improve my own health. Over the years, that journey introduced me to different approaches to nutrition and wellness, and eventually to a way of eating that, at the time, was still considered pretty far outside the mainstream: the ketogenic diet.

By 2017, keto was beginning to get more attention, but it was nowhere near the cultural phenomenon it would eventually become.

For many people following a ketogenic or low-carbohydrate lifestyle, it could actually feel pretty isolating.

You might be the only person at the dinner table eating that way. Your friends and family didn’t necessarily understand it. Your doctor may not have supported it. And there weren’t nearly as many places to find information—or other people who were asking the same questions you were.

 

That’s why I started this event.

The original goal wasn’t simply to put speakers on a stage and create another health conference.

I wanted to bring people together.

I wanted to create a place where people who had felt like the odd one out could walk through the doors and suddenly find themselves surrounded and embraced by hundreds—and eventually thousands—of people who understood why they were there.

The event began as “KetoCon – The Science and Stories of Keto” and the name made perfect sense for the community we were serving at the time.

But something interesting happened as the years went by.

The community evolved. And so did I.

    

 

The Conversation Needed to Grow

Low-carb nutrition, keto, and fasting played an important role in my own health journey. I found healing through those approaches, and they opened the door for me to start looking at health very differently.

But the more I learned, the more I realized that nutrition was only one part of a much bigger picture.

I became interested in sleep. Stress. Movement and strength. Metabolic health. Hormones. Recovery. Environmental health. Mental and emotional well-being. New technologies and therapies. And, increasingly, the role that connection and community play in our overall health.

My curiosity kept expanding, and I wanted the conversations we were having at the event to expand with it.

For years, KetoCon had been centered primarily around nutrition, weight loss and ketogenic research. That was an important conversation, and it helped a lot of people—including me. But I didn’t want someone to look at our event and think they had to follow a ketogenic diet, or that they had to be trying to lose weight, to belong there.

Health is so much bigger than weight loss.

That realization was really what instigated the decision to rebrand KetoCon as Hack Your Health.

I didn’t want to walk away from where we started. Low-carb and ketogenic nutrition will always be an important part of our history, and those communities helped build this event.

I simply wanted to make the table bigger.

I wanted us to be able to have conversations about all of the things that influence how we feel, function, and age.

And I wanted people to feel comfortable exploring those ideas without believing there was one specific path they had to follow.

 

The Community Was Always the Point

One thing hasn’t changed since 2017: the feeling you get when those doors open.

I’ve described the energy at Hack Your Health as electric, and I still think that’s the best word for it.

There’s something powerful about walking into a space filled with people who care about their health and are genuinely curious about how they can improve it. 

People begin talking to strangers. Someone recognizes a person they’ve followed online for years. An attendee meets a practitioner who introduces them to an idea they’d never considered. Friendships form between people who may live on opposite sides of the country. When you are surrounded by positivity, you are elevated.

For someone who once felt isolated because of the choices they were making about their health, finding that kind of community can be incredibly meaningful.

That was the vision in 2017.

And even though the conversations have expanded considerably since then, community is still at the center of everything we do.

 

Health Is More Than Your Weight On The Scale

As Hack Your Health has evolved, so has the way I think about the word health itself.

For a long time, so much of the health and fitness conversation was centered around appearance.

Weight. Body fat. Clothing size. Before-and-after photos.

Those things can certainly matter to someone on a wellness journey. But they aren’t the whole story.

Health is having the energy to live your life.

It’s being strong enough to continue doing the things you love as you get older.

It’s sleeping well.

It’s thinking clearly.

It’s being resilient when life gets difficult.

It’s having meaningful relationships.

It’s having purpose.

It’s having people around you who support the life you’re trying to create.

 

Health is more than how you look. It’s how you live.

And I’ve also learned that improving our health doesn’t necessarily have to mean doing everything.

I love learning about new technologies. I love seeing innovation. I love discovering products and services that may help people improve their health. It’s one of the things that makes producing Hack Your Health so interesting to me.

But I also believe strongly in the foundations.

Eating real food. Moving our bodies. Building and maintaining muscle. Getting outside. Sleeping. Managing stress. Spending time with people we care about.

There is room for both.

And that’s the kind of conversation I want Hack Your Health to continue having.

 

Information Is Everywhere. Connection Isn’t.

Today, we have access to more health information than at any other point in my lifetime.

You can listen to a podcast, watch a YouTube video, read a research paper, follow a physician online, or ask a question and have an answer in seconds.

That’s an incredible thing.

But it has also made me think differently about the role of an in-person event.

If information is available everywhere, then simply putting someone on a stage to deliver more information isn’t enough.

The experience has to offer something you can’t get from your phone.

It’s the conversation with a speaker after a presentation.

It’s meeting the founder of a company and being able to ask questions about something they’ve created.

It’s trying something you’ve only read about.

It’s sitting next to a stranger who ends up becoming a friend.

It’s being surrounded by people who are curious, engaged, and interested in many of the same things you are.

Information is everywhere. Connection isn’t.

And I think connection is going to become even more important.

 

I Don’t Want Hack Your Health to Simply Get Bigger

As I think about the future of Hack Your Health, I’m thinking much less about how big we can make the event and much more about how meaningful we can make the experience.

I want more opportunities for real conversations.

More interactive experiences.

More opportunities to meet the people doing interesting work in health and wellness.

More ways for attendees to learn from each other.

And I want Hack Your Health to remain a place where someone who is just beginning to take ownership of their health feels every bit as welcome as someone who has been studying these subjects for 20 years.

You don’t have to know all the terminology.

You don’t have to follow the latest protocol.

You don’t have to eat a particular way.

And you certainly don’t have to agree with everyone in the room.

You just need to be curious enough to keep learning.

That’s the future I see for Hack Your Health.

Why I Still Do This

Producing an event of this size is a tremendous amount of work.

There are thousands of details people will never see. There are long days, difficult decisions, things that go wrong, and plenty of moments when I wonder why I decided to do this in the first place.

And then the doors open.

I see the room fill up.

I hear the conversations.

I watch people connect.

And I remember.

This November, we’ll do it again.

Join Us at Hack Your Health 2026

From November 13–15, 2026, we’ll come together at the Tampa Convention Center in Tampa, Florida for three days of education, conversation, experiences, and community.

This year’s Hack Your Health brings together physicians, researchers, health educators, practitioners, entrepreneurs, and brands exploring a wide range of topics—from metabolic and cardiovascular health to strength, longevity, hormones, brain health, sleep, recovery, environmental health, nutrition, and human performance.

But I don’t want you to come simply to sit in a chair and listen.

Come curious.

Come ready to ask questions.

Come meet people.

Come experience something new. Attend a movement class. Participate in a breathwork session.

Come with an open mind about what your own health could look like.

Some people will arrive looking for answers. Some will come specifically to hear someone they’ve followed for years. Some will want to discover what’s new. Others will come to reconnect with friends they’ve made through this community.

And some may not even know exactly what they’re looking for yet.

My hope is that everyone leaves with something.

An idea they hadn’t considered.

A question they hadn’t thought to ask.

A connection they didn’t expect to make.

A renewed motivation to take better care of themselves.

Or maybe simply the realization that there are a lot of other people out there who care deeply about becoming healthier, too.

That’s why I started this event in 2017.

Nearly ten years later, it’s still why I do it.

I hope you’ll join us in Tampa.

 

Hack Your Health 2026

November 13–15, 2026
Tampa Convention Center | Tampa, Florida

🎟️ Tickets are available now at HackYourHealth.com

🎫 Use code HYH2026 to save $100 on your ticket until 11/12/26.

Until then, be well. 

Robin