"What you allow is what will continue"
The PEAKS Life
Journey to wellness
PEAKS comes from the wellness journey of its co-founders Lyn Fernie and Mike Warren who live, eat and sleep all things wellness.
We’ve spent most of our lives just like you, focussed on business and career success and that took its toll on our health, our bodies, our energy levels and our lives overall.
A few years ago we made the decision to change our lives and put wellness first where it belongs! It hasn’t been an easy journey to change the habits of two lifetimes!
Since that important day, we have achieved levels of wellness that we never thought were possible and we did it through the PEAKS life which is a powerful set of lifestyle guidelines including food, fasting, movement and sleep.
We believe everyone deserves to feel amazing and our vision is to inspire radical change and bring PEAKS to anyone who wants to improve their life.
We providecoaching, retreats and in-company support for the business and professional community because we know being an executive, entrepreneur, leader, professional brings a special set of challenges when it comes to prioritising your own health and wellness over the day-to-day demands of running a business or a team.
We still run our Safety & Management Consulting business, Zento Global Solutions that operates globally from our offices in Australia, the UK and Singapore and that keeps us connected to the business world!
We share our bite sized chunks of wellness wisdom on our podcast The PEAKS Audio Experience and our YouTube channel The PEAKS Life.
We love sharing our knowledge and experience, so hit us up anytime with questions, comments or feedback.
Read our individual stories below.
Lyn Fernie
Beat sugar addiction with keto
I could never understand how my path had taken me from elite athlete and corporate success to someone who was addicted to sugar, plagued by food intolerances and suffered from debilitating fatigue, autoimmune conditions and crazy mood swings, but that was my reality.
For 25 years I was trapped in a daily nightmare that almost cost me my life, keto saved me and I’ve never looked back.
It all started when I was 16 in the UK; competing in gymnastics and athletics. The pressure to perform was immense, add to that the stress of being the perfect A grade student, the challenge of coming from a working class family with very little money and the bullying and peer pressure at school because I just didn’t fit in. That’s when the body image problems and disordered eating made its first appearance. Initially it was anorexia nervosa, I simply didn’t eat, I lost weight and soon I was fading away. When people noticed, it turned into binge eating. I hid it well and managed to control it through high school and Uni years and into working life.
I got my act together in my early 20s andbecame a highly successful consultant and developed my career at break neck speed. As a woman in a man’s world I was under the spotlight at all times and felt I had something to prove. A Director by age 34, I travelled the world and built a reputation as a hard assed bitch who started multiple successful businesses and transformed struggling companies and projects. Find me on LinkedIn if you want to see more about my Executive background.
The stress of the job eventually took its toll and found its outlet in binge eating again. This time I had the disposable income to afford the cookies, cakes, muffins, chocolates and ice cream. At work I was known as an ultra-healthy eater and fitness junkie at the office, but having suppressed the urge to eat carbs and sugars all day, I would call at a store on the way home and buy bags of cheap pastries, cakes and ice creams. I gorged myself in the evenings, always purging so that I didn’t put on weight. .. and that was my life for 25 years. Yup .. you read that right .. 25 years!
During the day successful business woman and at night plagued by a secret eating disorder.
My health started to deteriorate; I had heart palpitations, I had extreme food intolerances, I lost the feeling in my fingertips, my teeth eroded from the purging and I had to get them capped, my skin was terrible and blood tests indicated pre-diabetes and multiple nutritional deficiencies. I started to go into an early menopause age 39. The hormonal swings were crippling; emotional outbursts that made me feel soft and weak, night sweats that kept me from sleeping and anxiety that plagued my waking hours. I struggled to handle the pressure of an Executive role, the fatigue affected my ability to exercise and the brain fog made it impossible to think clearly, make the right decisions and communicate to my workforce.
Things got really dire when I was rushed into hospital while travelling through Malaysia on my way home to Australia after a stressful holiday in Thailand. Emergency surgery to remove my Appendix brought it all home to me. By now in my early 40s I knew deep down that if I didn’t do something I would be dead before I hit 50, the secret life was killing me ..literally.
I made a promise to myself that I would get well, that I would solve my sugar addiction and eating challenges. That I would prioritise my wellness and sort out my workaholic lifestyle and that when I did that I would dedicate my life to helping others with similar challenges.
It wasn’t easy and it wasn’t a smooth ride!
Over the years I had gradually eaten less and less meat and fat, my diet was low fat fruit and vegetable based with a bunch of grains thrown in. I had studied nutrition as a hobby for many years, but I started to challenge the popular advice and myths around diet. As my body healed from the surgery, I started to experiment with food and gradually built up a picture of what made me feel good. I started to re-introduce meat and fat which wasn’t easy, I had spent 25 years avoiding fat and I felt repulsed by eating animals. But I’d made a commitment and I stuck to it, I certainly wasn’t expecting the results I got. A diet of mainly animal products; good quality protein and fat killed my cravings for sugar and carbs!
It took a long time for my gut to heal and recover, for the nutrient deficiencies to disappear, for the true benefits to show themselves. Years later, as I approach my 50th birthday I can honestly say that I have never felt better in my whole life; my health is outstanding, my skin is clear, my hair doesn’t fall out anymore, I no longer have hormonal swings,my periods came back, my moods are balanced, I’m fit and strong, I’m naturally slim without dieting or restricting, my mind is sharp, my sleep is amazing and best of all I am happy and full of energy, all day, every single day.
And that’s when The PEAKS Life was born. My whole life I have loved helping people and I know this is my calling.
Mike Warren
High performing alcoholic to
competitive CrossFitter
I was in my late 40s and a regular guy. I had the fairly typical Dad bod; for my frame I was carrying a fair bit of extra weight and most of it around my middle.
Life was good, plenty of family dinners and meals out with friends. I loved carbs whether it was freshly baked bread, pizza, pasta and the highlight was burger and chips. I wasn’t much of a dessert person but I would always eat the profiteroles and cinnamon swirls when they were offered!
I had been very fit in my younger years, working in the fitness industry as a certified personal trainer, coach and gym owner for a lot of my early career, so I knew exactly what to do - I just didn’t do it! Any muscles I still had were covered in a fairly thick layer of fat that was getting bigger each birthday.
But most of all it would be rare to catch me without a beer in my hand and I would drink pretty much every day. Over the years my drinking had spiraled out of control, I started every day with a vodka shot, beer with breakfast and then just drank Corona and Vodka consistently until I went to bed. If I had to drive I would monitor my alcohol levels, staying just below the legal limit. I still ran my Executive Coaching business – see more of my background on LinkedIn, but I was a high performing alcoholic! I would post photos of me and a Corona from the weirdest places! I even had an Instagram page called Crazy Corona Travels with 29k followers!
The problem was as I approached my 50th birthday I knew deep down that things weren’t going in the right direction. It frustrated me that playing with my youngest kids was hard work and I was becoming one of those Dads who wasn’t fit enough to climb trees or play chase. Plus I was always tired, I had always suffered from narcolepsy but I was getting a reputation for falling asleep every time I sat down, whether it was at the dinner table, in front of the TV or even in meetings.
I knew I had to make some changes, I had to do this for myself and for my family and I knew I couldn’t put it off any longer, I couldn’t keep making excuses.
It wasn’t easy! I started with giving up alcohol for a week, that was all I was prepared to commit to. I couldn’t imagine going without a beer for more than that! Wow .. what a difference it made, each alcohol free day that passed saw me feeling better and better. After 7-days I felt so good that I decided to extend to a month and as the weeks past my mind became clearer and I started to realize just how much damage the booze had been doing to my body.
Next came the food, I decided to try the ketogenic way of eating and another amazing transformation happened; weight literally fell off. I lost 10kg within weeks,so fast that my mates were all worried that I was seriously ill. Quite the opposite - I felt like a different person, the keto foods made me feel great.
Over the next few months I lost another 4kgs and my energy levels increased every day. I stopped falling asleep during the day, I could sit down with friends and enjoy a meal and really feel present.
I now wanted to do something with all that energy, I’m known for being extreme and so in true character I took up an extreme sport – I started to CrossFit. My body wasn't used to the cardio exercise and my muscles had deserted me, but I was determined to get fit again. I wasn’t expecting to end up feeling fitter than I had been as a 20-year old!
The final step of the journey was when I discovered Wim Hof style breathing and ice baths. I now do a breathing routine every day and take an ice bath whenever I can, this boosts my energy, my focus and my immune system and I can honestly say I’ve never felt this good, not in my whole life.