In 2024, you can eat at restaurants and bakeries inside laundromats, graveyards and abandoned tubes but this was the first time I’d found a food shack inside a gym.

It makes sense really, when you consider the name ‘Fuelled by Katie’ that it should be located inside the Strength Shack gym at the Willowholme Industrial Estate in Carlisle.

Just this week, the small food shop launched a new menu including gym-friendly snacks and meals such as protein pancakes, acai bowls, rice bowls and flatbread toasties, which can help to fuel your next workout, with brownies also available as a post-gym treat.

With absolutely no workout planned other than a walk home, I sat down to enjoy some protein pancakes, which I’m reliably informed are the same as normal pancakes, with protein powder added.

I selected toppings of banana, to make me feel a little healthier in front of the muscle-laden gym members, and milk chocolate, for a balanced diet.

If you haven’t already guessed, this was my first experience with protein pancakes but they went down a treat and left me feeling very full, arguably to the extent that a weightlifting workout seemed even less appealing than usual.

Fuelled by Katie only launched in October 2023, and has built an impressive customer base amongst gym-goers in Carlisle in the six months since, evidenced by much of the new menu being sold out by the time I arrived shortly after 12.

For less than £10 I sampled two lots of pancakes, another with peanut butter, which perhaps proved a better combination with the banana than the milk chocolate option.

I was hoping to try the acai bowls but will have to return earlier in the day given their obvious popularity with those looking for a healthy breakfast before a morning workout.

As it continues to grow its presence online, it will surely soon prove popular with anyone in the area looking for a healthy breakfast or lunch to keep you going throughout the day.

Fuelled by Katie is open from 7am until 1pm on weekdays, and  8am until 12pm on weekends.