iPhone Problem with Gmail (via Exchange server)

I have a gmail account running through an exchange server. I forward 4 of my (non-gmail) accounts to that one gmail/exchange email address. I've had a weird problem for a while now. When reading my email (on both the iphone 5 and the iPad), out of the clear blue, it will start redownloading all of my email.

Since i do a lousy job of cleaning out my email boxes, this means that every time this happens (several times a week), it pause and redownloads about 1,500 emails.

Any ideas?

 

A friend set this up for me, as follows:

My website is http://www.philipcardwell.com
He had me edit the zone files for the site, to change the Mx files to Google's mail.
Now my emails *@philipcardwell.com run through Gmail.
Rather than have my iPhone's battery take such a hit by pushing from 5 various email accounts (that are not gmail), I have each address forwarded to the gmail account.
When I setup my iOS for the mail, the server is m.google.com and the description states, "Exchange".

So I'm not really sure how to answer your questions, other than that. I'm not sure if it uses Activesync, etc. if I'm not mistaken though, he has the ability to read my emails. This may be because he is an authorized Google vendor and just manages my account.