From Struggles to Strength
"Muscle is medicine. No matter where you are in your journey."
Age 6
Quarantine
Age 7
Diagnosis
Age 9
Loss
20s to 40s
Everest & Marathon
2024
Injury & FORZET™
TODAY
Muscle is medicine
As a young child, my delicate body earned me the nickname "Skinny." I wore it lightly back then, the way children do, without yet understanding what the body is quietly carrying.
A Diagnosis at seven
And somewhere in that ritual, I started looking after my own body, years too soon.
At 7 years old I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, and my life completely changed. Before my diagnosis, health problems had already been building. Hospitalisation, quarantine as a 6-year-old, a body fighting something nobody could name. At the time, everybody thought I had food poisoning from the school lunches. No one, including the doctors, realised my autoimmune system was failing.
When the diagnosis finally came, it was not a relief. It was a shock. I remember my mother’s distress in the hospital, her fear visible in a way parents rarely let their children see. For me, it was confusion more than anything. I was 7. I did not yet have the language for what was happening.
What I do remember is sitting in bed with my parents the next morning, drinking tea (I cannot believe I was drinking tea at 7), the three of us quiet in that particular way families go quiet when something has shifted permanently.
For some time afterwards, my mother would say I would get cured; it was because I broke a mirror; she was hopeful. Bless her, she still says it today. Over the last fifteen to twenty years, she has taken me to naturopathic resorts overseas that she believes would cure me, if only I would stay long enough.
Sugar became sweetener. Sweet became something to be managed, measured, respected.
Losing my father, finding shame
A year and a half after my diagnosis, my father passed away. He had never gone to the doctors for himself, but instead always accompanied me to my medical appointments. This added to my struggles, but I didn’t give up.
I also started to grow out of my “Skinny” label. Well, thank you, insulin.
I went from skinny to plump. Not obese, but I knew I was bigger. Having never given my weight a second thought, it became a permanent fixture, and started to cause me shame.
I hid in the school toilets, waiting for the bell, sure that nobody wanted to play with me.
My self-esteem was plummeting.
At 14, I started hitting the gym and exercise classes, attempting different diets at every turn. Usually some unhealthy practices. The Madal Bal Lemon Syrup diet. Eating only three tangerines in a day. Joining slimming clubs, reaching target, then watching the weight come back.
We all know this: unless a profound lifestyle change occurs, weight loss nearly always results in weight regain. I knew firsthand what it felt like to be bigger. Back then, I thought if I could just get to my ideal weight, I would feel acceptable, normal, like everybody else. I didn’t understand the implications of insulin or muscle health at the time.
Marathons, mountains, medical food
Through my late teens, twenties and thirties the yo-yo never really stopped. My weight went up, and it came down. I was never obese. I was just bigger than I wanted to be, more often than not, and it never quite felt right in there.
I loved swimming and exercise classes, and when I started working while at university, I joined a new gym in Piccadilly with an altitude chamber. Movement was what kept me 'slimish', and somewhere in there, I had the idea to trek Everest. Guess what: in 1999, at 26, I did. Two years later, in 2001, I ran the London Marathon.
Of course, I wasn’t really ready for the marathon. Past Tower Bridge, past halfway, the injury hit. I limped the final twelve miles. There was no profound moment in any of that. I just wanted to get to the end and never do it again.
The lesson came much later, in the months and years of looking back: the thing that had carried me hadn’t been willpower. It had been muscle. And muscle was something I had spent years quietly losing.
I didn’t run again for a long time. But I stayed active. I’ve never been even close to a pro athlete; I’m just someone who has kept moving, consistently, for most of my life. That’s the bit my endocrinologist credits when telling me I could be in a much worse situation. I believe movement has kept me younger.
Even now, training is a love-hate relationship. I go to The Bear, my gym at Merchant Square, three or four times a week minimum. What I love is how it makes me feel, and I don’t just mean physically. I mean mentally. If I go a week without training, the whole week feels rubbish.
And honestly, this isn’t about being an athlete. I don’t feel like one, even now, even with all the training I love. It’s so much simpler than that. The movement and the mental buzz I get now, it is how we protect muscle. And muscle, as I had to learn the hard way, is medicine. Without it, we get injured more easily, we recover more slowly, and we lose our independence. With it, we keep our lives.
I limped the final 12 miles past Tower Bridge. That was the first step in understanding how muscle health needs to be prioritised.
Bringing FORZET™ home
This is what motivated me to help others who find healthy eating and becoming active challenging. And it’s why I jumped at the chance to bring FORZET™ to the UK. A medical food offering an extra tool to help maintain muscle (supplementing the effects of any exercise or diet) and manage weight.
I learned that it’s not weight loss that matters, but losing adiposity (fatty tissue) that’s needed. We don’t want to lose weight that includes muscle. It makes the situation worse.
Then, in 2024, I sustained a serious injury to my arm. That’s when I started taking FORZET™ religiously. Although exercise was limited during recovery, FORZET™ made a significant difference.
Six weeks after surgery, my Consultant Surgeon told me my healing rate was excellent. Despite my Type 1 diabetes.
I credit this to FORZET™ and my passion for movement. Bone density and muscle are inextricably linked, and people who lose muscle due to exercise limitations face a difficult battle. My surgeon and physio both told me: if you’re physically active and you stop due to injury, muscle loss starts in 2 weeks. I was shocked. As they pointed out, there was a visible difference between my arms. My injured side was noticeably slimmer.
I’m not overweight anymore. My weight has remained stable for years. As I like to remind everyone: no matter where you are in your journey, muscle is medicine.
FORZET™ has helped me considerably. I take it daily now, even on days I don’t exercise.
I wish I’d had access to this and understood the importance of muscle thirty years ago.