Chrissie Webber works as a writer, business coach and motivation/ leadership trainer and is Managing Director of Life-Shapers Ltd, an online weight-loss motivation company. With over 20 years experience in the field of business and people development she has an expertise in the area of motivation for permanent weight loss.
Following a lifetime of weight issues - at her heaviest, over 21 stone and a massive size 30 – she has personal experience of diets and their devastating effect on size and psyche. With a background in nursing, psychology and business coaching, coupled with a lifetime of dieting, she developed and successfully used a series of models and tools that enhance weight loss motivation. Now over 5 dress sizes smaller and having sustained her weight loss for several years, Chrissie continues her passionate drive to change the mindsets of people away from a ‘Scarcity’ dieting mindset – where food is demonised as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ – to an ‘Abundance’ mindset where mind, body and spirit work hand in hand with food and nature.
At last the fashion industry is acknowledging that they are not catering to the real market of women, through the sizing policy they are using. Today on breakfast TV it was accepted that the average women’s size in the UK is a 16.
Not only that they admitted to the fact that sizes are not standardised throughout the industry. This means that at last we can rest easy in the knowledge that clothes in one store can be one to two sizes different whilst still showing the same size label. How crazy is that!
No wonder we women are so confused and not to say a little demotivated after a shopping trip! And the solution to this dilemma is that they are talking about labelling clothes to match body shape or going back to the old fashioned way of labeling with measurements. Well at least that works well for men’s clothes, which are standardised across the retail trade.
So why have women’s clothes sizes become so distorted? They say it is to aid their sales. I wonder if they calculate in all the wasted size 8-10 clothes that they over-produce and can’t sell, leaving the average size 16 and above with less choice?
What we need is a system that is not only consistent but also fits us in a way that makes us feel good about our body image. At the moment many of us shop at the same ‘faithful’ retail outlets where we know we can get something to fit and feel good in.
The interesting thing is that last year when I was in Australia there were hundreds of shops and stores that stocked a fabulous range of my size clothes (20/22). And this was in a country where their weight issue is not nearly as hefty as ours. So there was only one thing I could do whilst down under, I shopped till I dropped. Then I had to ship my old clothes home and buy a new suitcase for my great new-look outfits!
The motivation levels were at their highest, down under, because for the first time I did not feel different. I did not feel a failure because clothes would not fit and I did not feel embarrassed at trying the clothes on in a place where choice was abundant.
The fashion industry really does need a wake-up call because they are losing out on lots more sales if only they only served our needs fully. What we want is not just consistency but also a wider and bigger choice of average and larger sized clothes.
