Two years ago I made the decision to find someone to help me with both diet and fitness.

At age 50 I was feeling quite physically unwell. At 5 ft 6 I weighed in at a slim 55kg. But I had chronic anaemia, terrible headaches, multiple vitamin deficiencies, high stress cortisol, constipation, bloating and gas.

I had battled with much of this for a number of years alongside a demanding professional lifestyle. Talking to other women my age it seemed that this was the midlife norm and like many I just found ways to cope and carry on.

From an exercise perspective I was highly active. Walking for miles along the Scottish coast where I lived at the time and slogging myself to Joe Wicks HIIT routines through the pandemic.

My diet I thought was equally healthy, vegetarian, with some fish and low fat dairy. I now understand how inadequate my diet was for my body and how weak my body had become as a result of excessive exercise.

When I started working with Heather I had poor balance, poor flexibility and mobility. My body was literally aching all over whatever I asked it to do.

Two years on I can testify that working with Heather has been a life changing journey for me.

Looking back it really was not as hard as I expected it to be and the results have been truly remarkable.

Within a few months Heather had taught me how to transition towards a higher protein diet with lots of good fats. I resisted this at first, it is a big change to let go of your breakfast cereal for a savoury breakfast for example, but I found my taste buds quickly changed and I felt far less hungry, more full of energy.

I now understand that eating the correct amount of protein helps your body to grow in strength and importantly to keep many parts of your body healthy.

Heather also helped me to make some adjustments to my exercise routine. I had already heard that strength training is good for maintaining muscle and bone mass but I just had this deeply ingrained view that you need to do high energy exercise to get fit and avoid gaining weight.

Heather introduced me to a regularly changing strength building routine with weights, which was something completely new for me but Heather was patient, reassuring and importantly went at my pace so I never really felt I was out of my comfort zone. I never thought I would be able to lift a 20kg dumbbell as when I started, I was afraid to lift 2kg above my head!

Coupled with yoga and Pilates and daily gentle walking the gains I’ve made in mobility, flexibility and just general wellbeing are undeniable. I sleep well , I move with ease and I feel ten years younger.

The greatest lesson I’ve learned from Heather is that consistency is all you need, slow and steady really does win the race, not slogging yourself on the treadmill or depriving yourself of the food you like to eat.

You can’t argue with the data at the end of the day and recently I checked my body composition to find that I have gained 3.8kg of muscle mass in a year and my bone mass has started to improve too.

Heather is a great all round coach to help you learn the much needed basics of healthy eating and training to be at your best now and in the future. You can’t put a price on having this knowledge whatever age you are.