Category: Weddings

How many times have you lost the same kilos?

19/10/2014

One of ‘The Year of More’ goals I’ve struggled with the most, involves food.

In my Very First Blog Post I boldly declared that ‘food items are obviously approved Items of Need but only when my fridge/pantry is without these items.’

Hmmm, that hasn’t really happened.

I declared I wouldn’t buy chocolate if there was some already in the house.

Nope, that hasn’t happened either.

It appears New Chocolate is a frequent visitor to The Tree House.

I don’t even know what I was thinking putting that in writing.

I’m just not good with deprivation.

The more I deprive myself, the more I want the Item of Deprivation.

Thankfully this hasn’t applied to Everything to do with The Year of More (although, yes, there have been a few confessions along the way and no doubt there will be a few more to come) but limiting myself when it comes to chocolate and sweets, has definitely proven near impossible.

I was once publicly shamed at a Weight Watchers meeting for admitting that I’d eaten two squares of Lindt chocolate. Apparently - at two WW points per square - that’s A Very Bad Use of Points and quite a few people felt absolutely fine judging me for my choice.

I seriously think they were considering burning me at the stake.

I thought spending four little points on a couple of Incredibly Yummy pieces of chocolate was well worth it, but apparently I was in the minority. Some of those ladies were hard-core. It reminded me of when I sold Tupperware in my twenties and how I felt like I’d entered a cult made entirely out of plastic. It was fascinating to watch but I have a rather addictive personality and being anywhere near anything cult-like probably isn’t going to end so well, so I extracted myself fairly quickly.

Pardon my French.

I remember most of the WW ladies gasping at one meeting as The Leader told us there was a dessert at Hog’s Breath Café which was worth 40-something WW points (or using my Calculator of Choice, 20 squares of Lindt chocolate) - which was about two days worth of points for me at the time. It sounded like one kick ass dessert to me.

And as soon as she mentioned it, all I wanted to do was eat it!

That’s so naughty isn’t it? It’s little wonder I didn’t attend too many more WW meetings after that. Everything they warned us about, I desperately wanted to try.

I resisted the urge to go straight from that WW meeting to Hog’s Breath Café to throw myself head first into This Devilish Dessert but I still think about it whenever I walk past a Hog’s Breath and I have a quiet little giggle to myself.

Speaking of giggling, in 2005 the Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee conducted a study about how many calories we burn off by laughing. Apparently it would take about an hour of pretty intense laughter (I’m thinking some snorting would definitely need to be involved) to burn off just one chocolate bar but seriously, eat a chocolate bar then laugh for an hour.

I was a yo-yo dieter for most of my 20’s and 30’s – I would lose 20kgs and then slowly (and sometimes, not so slowly) I would put them all back on again. Sometimes they would bring friends with them and I would end up heavier than when I started.

I’ve had a very turbulent love-hate relationship with food.

So about nine years ago I decided to get off the diet merry-go-round because let’s face it, there isn’t much merry to be had on it.

I simply don’t believe that diets work long term.

If they did, people would only ever need to go on one.

And the diet industry wouldn’t be as massive as it is.

Because People Would Only Ever Need To Go On One.

Some diets may be effective for initial weight loss but they’re just not sustainable and most people struggle to maintain their new figure long term.

A Google search informs me that ‘During 2014/15, Australians are expected to spend $603 million on weight-loss counselling services and related low-calorie foods and dietary supplements’.

That’s an astounding amount of money. Although it’s minor compared to the $16 billion which will apparently be spent on fast food during the same period! Wow, that’s just incredible.

[Nerdy stats from www.ibisworld.com.au]

So nine years ago when I decided to get off the merry-go-round, I did a workshop about emotional eating and it was fascinating.

Who knew I was an emotional eater?!

I ate when I was sad to stuff down the emotions I may not have wanted to completely feel but I also ate when I was happy, as food is such a wonderful celebratory friend.

The workshop also focused on mindful eating, which was an entirely new concept for me.

We were all given a small Easter egg and had to sit with it for a little while before we were allowed to remove it from it’s spectacularly shiny and enticing wrapper. We then held it in our hands for a few minutes (excruciating minutes I might add) and finally, finally we were given permission to take a bite.

Just one bite.

It was seriously the best piece of chocolate I had eaten in my life up to that point.

We were then told we could either finish the egg or throw the rest of it in the rubbish bin. I can barely believe I’m admitting to this, but I actually threw mine in the bin because I felt completely satisfied with That One Bite.

I know, it sounds absurd to be satisfied with Just One Bite of Chocolate but that’s how mindful eating works. You listen to your body so you’re aware of when you feel full and when you feel satisfied. Often when we crave something – chocolate for instance – we devour an entire block rather than checking in with our body to see when we’ve actually satisfied that craving. After that first bite, it really is more habit driven than anything else.

But it was a fascinating exercise. For me, mindful eating is the key to healthy weight management. At that workshop I bought a book called ‘If not dieting, then what?’ by Dr Rick Kausman. It has been The One Thing which has inspired me to create a more loving relationship with food and my weight.

As I said, I don’t respond well to deprivation, which is why attempting to completely eliminate anything from my diet or life, makes me crave it that much more.

So part of my plan was to build a better relationship with food. Which, like any relationship, takes time and energy and the desire to succeed.

I’ve always adored food and I’ve always had a particularly strong and close relationship with All Things Sweet. I get it from my Mum. She would tell me stories about spending all of her pocket money as a child on a Big Bag of Lollies, just as I would do. Until my pocket money was upped and I was able to save up to buy a book (and a small bag of lollies of course).

I realised early on in life that Lollies, Books and I were to be lifelong friends and I went from spending pocket money on them to spending large chunks of my salary on them. I am therefore extremely proud of not buying any books so far during The Year of More.

But I was to discover fairly quickly that wanting a better relationship with food wasn’t going to be easy after my enduring love affair with All Things Sweet. Relationships can be tough and this one was no different. Especially as I knew I would be the only one making any effort or changing. Lollies, chocolates, cakes, pastries and biscuits weren’t going to taste any less scrumdiddlyumptious were they? And my fat cells weren’t going to all of a sudden dislodge and float off into the atmosphere.

So I knew it was entirely up to me.

And I instinctively knew that willpower wasn’t going to play a part in this relationship.

Willpower can be incredibly fickle and Deprivation, well, she’s simply a Mean Girl.

So the first step in my goal to eat better was to eat worse. Yes, I know, that’s not what you were expecting to hear was it?

I gave myself permission to eat Anything and Everything I Wanted and let me tell you, I was very very good at it!

Within a couple of months, I had gained 7 kilos. I think I eventually upped that to 11 kilos which I thought was a pretty darn good effort!

I know this sounds rather ridiculous but I had a long-term goal to Farewell the Merry-Go-Round Forever, so I had to keep looking at My End Goal rather than getting bogged down by the fact that I was purposely putting on weight. I was at the point where I knew I had to do something different in order to break the cycle I’d been in my entire life.

Because during that time, I had truly believed that losing weight would bring me happiness.

I truly believed that fitting into smaller clothes would make me feel better about myself.

I truly believed that I would let go of my insecurities as I let go of the weight.

I truly believed that my self-esteem would rise, as the number on the scales got lower.

This image appears on numerous websites… thanks to whoever created it!

It seems ridiculous to me now that I actually believed all of that.

Because clearly none of that happened. To my utter shock and horror, each time I lost a large amount of weight, I remained The Same Person. Exactly the same! I couldn’t believe that was possible.

Surely Skinny Karen had a better personality?
Surely Skinny Karen was more attractive to men?
Surely Skinny Karen was funnier, wittier and more self-assured?
Surely Skinny Karen would live happily ever after without even having to try because she was more deserving?
Surely Skinny Karen no longer had a reason to beat herself up?

I had put so much faith in The Power of Weight Loss that I lost all faith in my own power to create A Most Wonderfully Fabulous Life.

And to love Me at any size.

That’s the power I set out to reclaim.

I wanted to break the cycle of ‘pigging out’ and then feeling guilty afterward. I wanted to get to the stage where I could eat whatever I liked without, (a) putting on weight; and (b) beating myself up about it afterward. Because although ‘beating yourself up’ sounds as though it might burn off a few calories, it really doesn’t. It’s all in our heads and it just perpetuates the cycle. We feel bad so we stuff those feelings down with food. And then we feel worse so we try even harder to stuff More Bad Feelings down with food, etc etc etc. And we never ever break the cycle and we continue to put on weight and feel bad about ourselves. And the longer it goes on, the worse we feel about ourselves.

I knew it probably wasn’t realistic for me to go straight from this cycle, to one of eating everything that’s good for me and feeling good about myself, but I figured a significant step in the right direction was to continue to eat whatever I wanted but to feel GOOD about myself instead of bad, despite how much weight I would put on.

My goal was to eat what I liked but to be a more mindful eater so I wouldn’t want to eat as much food. But of equal importance was my goal to be content no matter what weight I was at. That’s not easy for someone who has always strived to 'Lose A Few More Kilos'.

Clearly I found this more challenging than I'd expected, hence the weight gain, but I was pleased to discover that I honestly didn't feel bad about it. Something had definitely started to shift and this inspired me to keep going with the non-dieting approach to healthy weight management.

I have been a size 8 and a size 18, and obviously everywhere in between.

London, 1989

Brisbane, 2001

On the left we have my 21 year-old self after a year of joyful and unrestrained pastry and lager consumption whilst living in London (and a dodgy blonde hairdo) and on the right is my 32 year-old self a few months before I got divorced. Divorce isn’t a recommended weight loss plan but anyone who's been through it will know it's an effective one to say the least.

I kept that black velvet dress in my wardrobe for years after I could no longer fit into it, as I really thought it would make me happy to squeeze back into it again. It’s funny how we get so attached to things like that. Fitting back into a wedding dress or a pair of jeans. Part of me felt I had failed by starting to put on weight again as I moved into a happier chapter of my life. How sad that I wasn't simply celebrating My Happy New Chapter.

Perhaps marriage is book-ended by weight loss as many brides-to-be lose weight because of the stress they're under. Although, given my Low Bride DNA, there was little chance of that happening to me of course (refer to my Low Bride DNA post here http://www.theyearofmore.com/blog/do-women-really-need-dresses). All the High Bride DNA women I knew had me convinced I’d lose weight so I bought a size 16 wedding dress with The Brilliant Plan of 'losing all the pre-wedding stress weight' and having it adjusted to a lovely size 14.

Okay, so I was secretly hoping for a reduction to a size 12.

Just how stressful did I think organising a wedding was going to be??!!

What I discovered, is that, (a) apparently you need more than just a plan (ie. it seems some form of action must be involved), and (b) it turns out having a small wedding on a tropical island ain't so stressful! My size 16 dress fit perfectly on the day and I would take a healthy happy lifestyle over stress-induced weight loss any day.

So after joyfully gaining 11 or so kilos at the beginning of my plan to Kick the Merry-Go-Round To The Curb, over the following few years, I lost a few of the kilos I’d put on and my weight finally settled into where it was most comfortable – a size 14. In the years since then I’ve pretty much stayed within five kilos of the same weight. For the first time in my entire adult life.

And I no longer beat myself up about what I eat. Ever.

If I want to eat two bowls of ice cream for dinner (lovingly referred to as Main and Dessert) I enjoy every single spoonful. I wouldn’t do it every night but doing it occasionally and knowing I’m not going to feel bad about it, is so incredibly liberating. And I’m not opposed to sampling a Lindt ball or two while I’m cooking dinner.

Here I am in Guatemala eating a most delicious chocolate brownie before my main meal.

So Much Fun having dessert first.

Unfortunately, I don’t always eat as mindfully as I’d like so that’s constantly a Work in Progress, but Food and I are definitely having the best relationship we’ve ever had. I think we really will Live Happily Ever After.

I now weigh ten kilos more than when I first joined WW all those years ago – when I JOINED, so clearly I wanted to lose five or so kilos back then – which means I’m now 15 kilos more than what I had once considered my Goal Weight.

I can’t imagine what I was thinking. I’m tall, I’m big-boned (thanks Mum for constantly reminding me as an insecure teenager that I’d inherited the big boned DNA from Dad’s side of the family!) and I shouldn’t be trying to weigh something a Supermodel would be aiming for. Clearly, I’m not a Supermodel but after playing The Weight Game for more than 30 years, I now feel the most comfortable I have ever felt in my own skin.

Besides, Supermodels probably aren’t likely to eat ice cream for dinner so why on earth would I aim for that kind of sad existence?

And if one day, I just happen to fall into a calorie-ridden dessert at Hog’s Breath Café, I shall simply enjoy the excruciating sweetness of it all.

Wishing you the sweetness of life in whatever form that takes for you.

Joyful hugs,

Karen xo

‘Losing weight is not your life’s work, and counting calories is not the call of your soul. You surely are destined for something much greater, much bigger, than shedding 20 pounds or tallying calories. What would happen if, instead of worrying about what you had for breakfast, you focused instead on becoming exquisitely comfortable with who you are as a person? Instead of scrutinizing yourself in the mirror, looking for every bump and bulge, you turned your gaze inward?’ Lisa Turner, ‘Losing Weight: What’s the Point’

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Do women really need dresses?

2/6/2014

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I own 46 dresses.

Forty-six.

That’s an awful lot of dresses for one woman to own.

I’m not even sure a woman actually ever ‘needs’ one dress – surely any article of clothing would suffice if the need were simply to cover one’s body? Even if the purpose extends to warming the body or celebrating a special occasion, we don’t actually need a dress in order to do that. Society has dictated (in my culture at least) - and we have willingly followed along for centuries - that women should be covered head to foot in a white dress as a requisite to entering into marriage.

But surely a pair of pants and a shirt would suffice? Or a bikini? Or a tastefully placed scarf? A rather large tastefully placed scarf perhaps.

I only have a very teeny tiny amount of Bride DNA so I’ve often been left flabbergasted during conversations about the cost of weddings and in particular, how much money women spend on wedding dresses. The rather large amount of Travel DNA I have happily residing in my body takes over and automatically calculates where in the world that amount would take me. A $1,000 dress has me washing elephants in Thailand, a $2,000 dress and I’m off to the theatre on Broadway, a $3,000 dress and I’m happily sipping margaritas in a Mexican hammock. And anything above that is an Around the World Ticket, which I am yet to experience purchasing.

Despite the fact we can (and some women do) get married wearing anything we please, most women wouldn’t dream of getting married in anything other than a dress. I certainly didn’t. It honestly didn’t even cross my mind not to wear a dress. And if that can happen to me, a woman of the Low Bride DNA variety, surely it can happen to anyone.

I was talking to a woman on the weekend about wedding dresses and how Outrageously Expensive They Are. Let’s call this woman Sally to protect her right to not have her level of Bride DNA shared across the internet without her prior knowledge or permission.

Sally, was telling me that she fell in love with a dress that cost $2,700 (which is almost the price I paid for my first car) and that at 47 years of age, she couldn’t see the value in spending That Much Money On a Dress, which let’s face it, you wear for about 10-12 hours if you’re lucky (unless you party in it until 4am like I did! But more about my wedding dress in a moment.) Anyway, she didn’t buy the dress when she first tried it on but after her niece had a rather disastrous experience with the dressmaker Sally was planning to use, she ended up back at the same bridal boutique. She told herself it was to look at cheaper dresses. Which is of course, like going to the bar your ex frequents after you’ve broken up. It’s never going to be a wise decision.

As retail fate would have it, Sally's dress was on sale.

For $1,500.

And any woman reading this, who has ever fallen in love with an item of clothing but didn’t initially buy it because she couldn’t justify the price, and has then seen that item on sale, will understand what happens next.

I’m not sure of the scientific term but our brain does something a little bit kooky and it completely forgets all about the Cost to Value argument it completely understood and believed in earlier. And we go ahead and justify spending the sale amount. Even if it’s still outrageously expensive and more than the budget we had originally set ourselves. (Kooky Brain Activity trivia: house buying also brings on a similar brain kookiness, which can be witnessed at auctions across the world on any given weekend.)

And this is exactly what Sally’s brain did. Her budget was $900 but she still bought the dress for $1,500.

Any woman in this situation leaves the store happily uttering these words…

I remember saying the exact same thing to Mum after I bought my wedding dress. It was on sale and cost me $500 (it was 1994 and this was on the cheapish side of wedding dresses even back then – the girls at work were spending in the thousands, and we were all secretaries who weren’t exactly earning a lot of money). That’s when I first suspected I Wasn’t Like Other Women when it came to weddings. Although you’d think I would have figured that out when I refused to spend more money on an engagement ring than we’d spent on a fridge.

After I got over the brief excitement of telling Mum I’d found My Dress, I then stood there in shock and said ‘I’ve just spent $500 on a dress I’m Only Going To Wear Once!’ It seemed absolutely absurd to me that even I was capable of being swept up into the Wedding Vortex. I made up for this perceived wedding madness by not having a bridal party and not seeing my flowers or cake until The Big Day. Which was actually quite easy as we were getting married on an island so I simply ordered everything by fax and blindly trusted that the people at the other end knew what they were doing.

I’d like to pause here to acknowledge that those of you with really high levels of Bride DNA may be finding this quite difficult to read right now. My apologies. It might help if you think about baby's breath and a string of matching satin gowns for a minute before you keep reading.

Here’s a link if you need a bit of extra support… http://www.vogue.com.au/brides/

Those with an excessively high amount of Bride DNA, may need to venture here… http://www.buzzfeed.com/rachelzarrell/a-bride-actually-tied-her-newborn-baby-to-her-wedding-dress?bffbnews&s=mobile

This is a link to a story about a woman who tied her four-week old baby to her wedding train.

I kid you not. Seriously, I couldn’t possibly make up something like that!

I bought my wedding dress (Long, White and An Airfare to Perth) on Christmas Eve after my work Christmas lunch (first sign of a Bride DNA anomaly). So I was a little inebriated during said purchase (second sign…). I was also sans Mother of the Bride and any girlfriends (third sign…) as I was on my way to the train to go home. I bought the first dress I tried on (fourth sign…). I know many women buy the first dress they try on but they usually then try on others after that to make sure they’re making the right decision.

A High Bride DNA day indeedy

Not me. I tried it on, liked it, and put a deposit on it right away. Why try on others when I knew this dress was The One? Besides, I had a train to catch remember (Bridal Vogue… Bridal Vogue…). The lady in the store was fascinated by me; perhaps she’d only ever read about Low Bride DNA women in Scientific Bridal Journals and seeing one in real life was endlessly intriguing to her. She said I was the only person she’d ever known who had bought a wedding dress on Christmas Eve, as though I should take that particular piece of information on board for future reference. She also kept asking annoying High Bride DNA-related questions:

Are you sure you don’t want to try on 15 more dresses?

Are you absolutely positive you don’t want to wear a veil??

Are you sure you don’t want to bring your Mum and bridesmaids back in with you???

Don’t you want me to take a Polaroid of you in the dress so you can at least show them???? (I finally let her take a photo which had her giddy with tulle-flavoured excitement).

Are you sure you don’t want a dress with a train she asked eagerly after I’d succumbed to the photo-shoot????? (She didn’t laugh when I said I would be on one in a few minutes time).

Did I love wearing the dress? Yes.

Did I regret paying $500 for it? Absolutely not.

Do I know where the dress is right this very minute? Not a clue.

Would I pay the equivalent of that amount if I were to get married again? Not in a million years.

Surely, with inflation, that amount would at least get me a week in Hawaii??

So, like my wedding dress, these 46 delightfully colourful and textured items currently hanging in my wardrobe were all most definitely ‘wants’ rather than needs. At some point, I bought them, one lovely dress at a time, because I really liked them, and perhaps with a few, I genuinely thought it was love.

But I only actually remember buying a few of them: A black and green dress I had made in Thailand for a friend’s wedding, the beautiful flowered dress I bought to wear to Mum’s funeral and the Little Black Dress I bought in New York, which sadly is now better known as the Too Little To Be Worn Black Dress.

Mostly I have no recollection whatsoever of where I was when I bought most of these dresses. Some things just aren’t significant enough to remember. What I do remember however is where I’ve worn them.

I’ve celebrated and laughed in them at friend’s parties, I’ve cried and hugged in them at funerals, I’ve danced in them at weddings, I’ve excitedly sat down in them at the theatre, I’ve felt nervous and self-conscious in them on dates, I’ve tenderly folded them to take travelling, I’ve volunteered in them at events, I’ve worn them to the beach, to lunch, to the movies, to work.

What I’ve discovered is it’s not the dress that’s important. It’s what you do wearing the dress that brings you joy. I could have been wearing the same dress on all of these occasions – or I could have been wearing jeans and a t-shirt - and the delight, love and pleasure I experienced each and every time, would not have been lessened by what I was wearing or not wearing.

And I know that not buying Dress No. 47 for another year will not in any way diminish my happiness, joy or contentment.

And I know with Dress No. 47, it will most definitely be love.

Joyful hugs,

K xo

‘Joy is not in things, it is in us’. Richard Wagner

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This is me

Hi, I’m Karen Young and I live on the beautiful Sunshine Coast in Australia. I'm a passionate, nerdy, loud, quirky introvert who loves words, elephants, people, the beach, champagne, chocolate, sunsets, trees, travel, books, Joy of every kind but especially Letterbox Joy, Writing Joy and Theatre Joy. I adore being inspired to Live More, Love More and Be More. I love fiercely and hurt deeply. I make mistakes, lots and lots of lots of mistakes! And I learn from most of them although some lessons seem to take me a lifetime to learn so Life is most definitely a constant Work In Progress xo

How many times have you lost the same kilos?

Do women really need dresses?

This is me

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