I want clients to know that I can relate to them. Yes I’m fit and eat well but not much came easy to me.

I was a sedentary kid and a picky eater. So I know a bit about change and transformation. Life’s been up and down and that’s helped me relate to my clients.

Born in 1976 I grew up in Brantford and wasn’t put into sports. I watched a lot of TV and rode my bike sometimes.

But I had the high school dream of being a jock. I sucked at sports but was about to find out how gritty I was.

At 135 lbs I went to football try outs. The tackling drills with 200 lb guys were physically traumatic and shocking. Every practice for three months was more punishment. But I hung in there.

My diet was cereal and milk, peanut butter sandwiches, apple juice, KD, burgers, chicken fingers, bananas, carrots, and sometimes broccoli. And plenty of candy. Not exactly performance nutrition. A few times I awoke a night with splitting headaches, not understanding that I was extremely dehydrated.  

I grew to six feet tall. That helped. Eventually was a two-time MVP in football, and also captain of the rugby team. I went on to play rugby at university and in some men’s leagues.

Training science was in the dark ages. We knew enough to hurt ourselves badly and I did plenty of that in the weight room, trying to get bigger. I’ve had back problems since I was 20 thanks to all that. So when I write a program for someone, I do so with tremendous caution. Trying to save my clients from what happened to me.

Being the gritty small guy got old fast. Concussions piled up. So at age 28 that was about it for rugby.

In the meantime, I lived in England and bartended, trying to figure out what to do with my life. Then I went back to school for Nutrition.

I was 30 with a new career. Personally I was struggling with my mental health and relationships. I got into psychotherapy way before it was cool - 2002 (26). As difficult as all that was, I grew tremendously as a coach from this insight into behaviour change and developing mindfulness.

I got into Jiu-Jitsu. I always went too hard and didn’t learn much. Made some life-long friends. Weight cutting was interesting. I fought as light as 176 lbs and as heavy as 198 lbs. For a while I was the go-to nutrition coach for fighters in Toronto.

In my late 30s I was into group classes and powerlifting. That was all great. Then my knees gave out. Right on schedule as well. They gave me about 30 years of hardcore athletics. Thank you knees!

And all this time my nutrition kept getting better. I did diet and body composition experiments. I had elite personal trainers. My life was coming together nicely. Got married and have two girls.

Professionally I’ve helped about 3000 people and conducted about 17,000 nutrition sessions and about 2000 training sessions.

Now I exercise for functionality: being able to play with my kids, energy, pain management, and stress and mental health management. And ya, I’ll be honest, I like to look fit. But I certainly don’t care as much as I used to.

And I love eating healthy 80% of the time. It feels good to eat healthy.

What I want you to know is that nothing came easy to me, and it’s made me a patient and knowledgeable coach.