Hi, I’m Zak, the founder of ZF Health Collective. The start of my journey towards starting ZFHC stretches back to my childhood and through my teen years and early 20s.

I was always an active child, playing football, cricket, squash and basically anything where I could run fast and be competitive. At 16 I was playing sport most days of the week until I found myself with appendicitis. After some difficult surgeries and some time in hospital, I found that both my physical and mental health had taken a huge down turn.

After some time, I decided I would go to the gym and although I went through many months of trial and error and a lot of time saying I wouldn’t return, I kept going and kept feeling better bit by bit. As I started going more and feeling and seeing the benefits, I became more interested in how I could improve and that lead to a lot of research and a conversation persuading my teacher at school to let me study A Level PE, even though I didn’t do GCSE PE.

After they agreed, I applied my learning to my A level and found that my nutrition, mindset and habits away from the gym were also having a huge impact on my physical and mental health.

Following completing my A Levels, I completed my degree in Sports and Exercise Sciences at Liverpool John Moores University where my technical knowledge widened and deepened. Upon completing this I took a job in an office which was a big change from my active university lifestyle and I started to feel very tired and my physical and mental health were both suffering as I was out of my exercise routine, struggling to eat correctly and hunched over my computer screen all day. It was another reminder of the impact that our habits and activity can have on our health and happiness.

I soon made the decision that I wanted to help spread this message and the teachings, and help people who felt like their health was not where they wanted it to be. So I left my job and created ZF Health Collective, a health and wellness company focused on providing individual support to improve the mental and physical health of clients through physical activity, habit formation, nutritional advice and mental modelling. Following my time in an office environment, I also wanted to create an educational and consultancy service which allows businesses and staff to get access to advice and help with their health and fitness in the workplace.