Clare McKenna is having a moment. There have been many moments in her 25-year-long broadcasting career which started back on 98fm, took her via Spin 1038, onto Ireland AM, with a few stops along the way on the Ray D’Arcy and Anton Savage shows. But where she is now – and has been for the last number of years – hosting Newstalk’s Alive & Kicking health and wellness show, Clare seems truly at home.
We’re discussing her career amplification and how she’s achieved it. Because everywhere we turn lately, we see or hear her – hosting another podcast, launching her new wellness business, writing her book – more of which later. She’s really busy and she’s really happy and she’s always smiling, because this mum-of-two (Flynn is 13, Lois is 11) is always bright side up, always resolutely optimistic. “I’m not sure about career amplification” she laughs, “but what I am doing differently is I stopped trying to control everything. I’m trying to go with the flow.”
That flow has brought us, on Clare’s recommendations, on this dull but springy day, to an eco lodge called The Deerstone near Roundstone, in Co. Wicklow. Clare visited previously for a yoga day and is now considering coming back to this eco hideaway, to hide herself away, as she writes her first wellness book, which will be published early next year. It’s an exciting time and we couldn’t be happier for her.
Her career journey has us contemplating lots, mostly though whether art imitates life or life art. In Clare’s case, her lifestyle definitely preceded her professional path into wellness. Because as long as we have known her, and we have known her a long time – both professionally and personally – Clare has always walked the walk and talked the talk. Her groundwork was done long before this wellness path was trod on. We talk about finding her feet, finding her tribe and finding her joy…
Clare, people will know you from radio and television down through the years, but over the last while you’ve done a massive shift into health and wellness, why?
I kind of fell into it, to be honest. I called Newstalk to see if they had any cover work and I was asked to try out for the health and wellness programme that had lain dormant since Ciara Kelly moved to Lunchtime Live. Alive and Kicking was the show I had been waiting for!
It really was. Because you have always been into health and wellness.
I always was into the latest trends, personal development, drinking water, trying this retreat, that class. So, I was chuffed to get the show. But it brought me on a much bigger journey too. It became more than just a job; it became my lifestyle.
And it really is a lifestyle now. In 2023, the global wellness world was estimated at a value of 6.32 trillion. It is just massive.
And that’s a double-edged sword. It’s great on the one hand, because a lot more people are a lot more aware of how to look after their own health and wellness. But on the other hand, it has become big business. Obviously, I’m making a living out of it so I’m not saying that’s not possible and that it should all be money free. But I like to really boil it down to simplicity because it can get so overwhelming. There are so many different fads and trends, and it’s so noisy with the internet and social media. But still, at the centre of it all, it’s the simple things that make the biggest difference. So that is something I’m passionate about, trying to wade through that massive trillion-dollar empire.
How do you wade through all the noise? How do you find what’s a right fit for you, for your own health and wellness?
Well, that was the journey my Newstalk show brought me on. So even though I was renowned for being into health and wellness, once I started presenting the show, I suppose I had a couple of hours every week to really reflect on my own health and wellbeing. And I remember at one stage, really questioning how healthy I was, because in truth, I had overwhelmed myself with all the fads and trends that I’d followed. The internet and social media had ramped up the noise beyond diet and exercise, I didn’t know who to be listening to. Really, I should have been listening to myself and so I did. About a year into the show, I decided to embark on a challenge that I would speak about on the radio and write about in one of the newspapers to really discover what health and wellness is. And even when I started out, I was still quite focused on how I looked, and I thought to look a certain way, to have a certain body, that’s what health looked like. But over that period, I changed my entire mindset, and I moved away from all of that diet culture, and I looked at things like my emotions with food, my relationship with my food and body, I looked at the psychology of motivation. I started to include joy and really focused on what worked for me.
So that’s why you say you’ve gone on a journey from punishing to nourishing, which also lends itself to your new business venture, Nourish Yourself.
Yes! With Nourish Yourself (nourishyourself.ie) I hope to provide people with the space, information and encouragement to take that time to find what health and wellness means to them. We get so caught up in punishing ourselves with restrictive diets and demanding regimes that we forget to nourish ourselves, mind, body and soul. My presenting career keeps me busy so I can’t work one-to-one for now but with retreats, workshops, online courses and events I hope to spread this message. It’s the journey I’ve been on and information I wish I’d been given sooner. I do really hope that it will grow and that I can build a bit more of a community where you can bring people together and share experiences.
The wellness world is all about fixing ourselves, we’re always being told that it’s an ‘inside job’. But the Dalai Lama says that our prime purpose in life is to be of service to others. Are we losing that side of it with all this internalisation?
Yeah, because connection is a huge part of our wellbeing. We need to feel part of a tribe. Even though the world has got so modern around us, at our core we are still the same human beings we were in caveman times. So, we crave that sense of belonging. But we don’t celebrate community in the same way these days. Most of the big wellness speakers, like Tony Robbins for example, he’s somebody who talks a lot about getting to the top of his game as a corporate leader and leading other corporates and making millions but just feeling that emptiness inside. It was only when he really started to give back that that’s when the fire began to be ignited in him. He comes from a very poor background and a lot of what he makes now goes back to feeding people in the parts of America where he grew up. I think sometimes we forget about that, we forget about giving back, not in a transactional way, but because that’s what we are designed to do.
You’ve interviewed so many wellness experts. Who has had a real impact on you?
Often, it’s the real-life stories that will have the biggest impact. People that have gone on a health journey, be it living with stage four cancer or facing grief. But from an expert point of view, there are some amazing speakers who always give me chills. So that whole shift I underwent really started with the performance nutritionist, Daniel Davey, he was talking about knowing what your lean muscle mass percentage was, not from an aesthetic point of view, but as a key indicator of your predisposition to disease and your long-term health. That was something that had never really entered my head. It was all sort of short-term things that I was looking at. And to start to
look at your health that way – living as long as you can, as well as you can and investing in that now became a very different perspective for me.
You had the opportunity recently to meet world renowned addiction expert Dr Gabor Maté too, that must have been quite something?
Yeah, that was very special. He speaks so well about the importance of self compassion and stress management. At 80 years of age, he commanded that stage, speaking without notes, purely from his heart and wealth of knowledge. He took some questions from the audience, and you could hear a pin drop, it’s a day I’ll never forget, and it was a real honour to MC.
We’re looking at Roxie Nafousi’s book Confidence sitting beside us here and thinking about you because whether you have it or not you certainly appear to be confident. Are you?
I think a lot of that comes from my dad. He loved a sing song, loved bit of craic; I was always quite like him. I always loved the stage and went to drama college after school but I moved out of home at the same time and realised that a career in that area wasn’t necessarily going to pay my rent so I started working a nine-to-five job where I was sent on lots of personal development courses, and I attribute so much of who I am, to that. Roxie Nafousi and others share this message so well now but back then without social media you didn’t hear much about mindset and goal setting. In these courses people were on stage saying, “If you can believe it, you can achieve it.” I think that put a real fire in me that we only get one wild and precious life. I think that’s where my confidence comes because I’m willing to give anything a go.
Did you manifest your current career amplification?!
I don’t know! I think I stopped trying to control everything. Because sometimes I was guilty of thinking that just because I wrote it down or just because I had dreamed it, that it would happen. And it doesn’t work like that. There have been gigs that I’ve gone for that I haven’t got, things that haven’t worked the way I thought I’d want them to. I think I got stuck in a disappointment loop for a while. So, I decided to let that go. Now I’m more open to possibility, to going with the flow, and I think that’s made all the difference.
There’s the possibility of a book on the horizon!
There is! I’m working on it at the moment. I gave a TedX Talk in Tralee, a fabulous experience last year documenting my journey with health and wellness. The publishers saw it and the book deal was born, so it’s a real pinch-me moment. The book is due for release in January 2026 and aims to cut through the overwhelm of the health and wellness world. Everything from my personal experience to my health coach qualification to the many people I’ve met along the way is all being poured into the pages. Rather than lecture people or bombard them with lots more information I hope it will at times poke fun at all the superiority and silliness that can exist in the wellness world and inspire people to stop punishing and start nourishing themselves.
Having a good foundation and a supportive family network has also allowed you to spread your wings and fly.
I always think that when we talk about success we really focus on career. But I put equal emphasis on my personal life and I’m so lucky with my husband Jonathan, my kids Flynn and Lois, my family, my friends. I wouldn’t be who I am without all those people and the incredible people I’ve worked with along the way. I have lots of love, laughter and fun in my life and I’m very grateful for it.
Finally Clare, if we had to ask you for one health and wellness tip, what would it be?
Check in with yourself. When we truly start to listen to ourselves more, we can work out what it is we need. Sometimes it’s small things: more rest, a good night out. Other times it’s something bigger like a job change or an uncomfortable conversation. Change isn’t something that happens overnight but taking small steps consistently builds over time to make the biggest difference. I have been making little tweaks for a long time now and while my life is not perfect all the time, nobody’s life is, I have curated a pretty good one that I’m very happy with.
