I’m a husband & father, I have one son and a daughter and live on the beautiful Sunshine Coast (Australia). I am also Certified Holistic Health Coach / Registered Nutritionist, Gym Instructor & Group Fitness Trainer, 3rd Dan Black Belt (Yoshinkan Aikido) not to mention keen to get out in a kayak and have a breathwork session at the drop of a hat!

Raised on a council estate in the heart of Dublin (Ireland), I come from a long line of ‘Hard Living’ People. Here for a Good time, Not a Long time was the mantra we lived by. I have lost many close to me due to poor lifestyle choices combined with a lack of connection. I’ve always been invested in my own personal health and fitness but for many years in my 20’s, I too struggled –  for me it was shift work and the knock on effects of the hospitality lifestyle.  Thankfully,  I now have the skills to help others in a similar predicament!

My first venture inside a kitchen came out of necessity when I moved to Australia in 1998, I was awaiting visa clearance and couldn’t work for 3 months. Being a proud young Irishman it killed me to stay at home while my wife Julia went to work. I started cooking from an old cook book on the bookshelf. This was the start of what was to be a culinary journey. It wasn’t however without its learning curves – like the time I had no pouring cream and substituted with ‘Baileys Irish cream’. Yeah, I can still see the look on Julia’s face even now as I write this.

My personal journey on what makes us live a longer, healthier more fulfilled life, began in 2012 when we were living in the Torres Strait. I was eating conventional Health foods (or so I thought) cereal and juice at breakfast, canned tuna with a ton of rice for lunch,  plenty of grain fed meat, lots of bread and pasta. Even though I worked out 5 times a week, I still felt lethargic and bloated. It wasn’t until I read Dave Asprey (Bullet Proof Executive) Mark Sisson (The Primal Blueprint) & Dr. David Perlmutter (Grain Brain) that I began to understand inflammation in the body and it’s connected to the majority of chronic disease we suffer from in modern society. Many of us are digging our graves with a fork and are totally oblivious to it!

After years of tweaking my own personal health, I decided to bite the bullet and become a Certified Holistic Health Coach. It was then that The Primal Coach was born, Through my study it was very apparent to me that as a modern / busy society we are not living the way our genes intended. We are Hunter Gatherers and meant to move, eat seasonal food, sprint at will, jump and generally avoid being prey to another beast. Today, however we sleep in beds, eat food made by machines, endure long commutes in cars and sit for copious amounts of time in office chairs and couches. We eat highly processed food then wash it down with a few drinks till we do it all over again the following day.  I would like now to share a profound moment I had while listening to Mark Sisson being interviewed on a podcast. The presenter asked him why he did what he did for a living. This was his answer; Put simply and I’m paraphrasing here, he said that he wanted to live a long and healthy / active life and that most people grow old with little to no muscle tissue to cover their brittle bones and if they have a fall they will most likely break a hip. This results in hospitalisation and a subsequent operation. It’s quite common to have post-op complications resulting in sputum forming on the lungs. When you lift “Heavy things” your muscle tone and bone density are far better giving rise to increased stability and a reduced likelihood of a fall. If you do fall, with solid muscle tissue and good bone density you will be far less likely to suffer a breakage. Lungs are a muscle too and with good cardio again you are in far better shape to expel any residual sputum on the lungs and guess what? Your chances of survival are far higher, its all choices folks!