Welcome to 2012! Hope you all had an amazing Christmas, and hopefully you’re having an amazing start to the New Year! I can happily say that I’m still in holiday mode, however have still been quite a busy bee! You would’ve seen the gorgeous Kaftans we now have for sale that are being made right here!  Cut to flatter, and made from the most gorgeous and unique fabrics, it’s unbelievably exciting to have these in store. Only a few are being made of each design, to keep the uniqueness alive (after all, we can’t exactly have everyone wearing the same thing now can we!) however we are custom making them in a few styles so do keep an eye out for these new must haves!

So its been an interesting start to the year, with many telling me their New Year’s resolutions are to lose weight – surprise surprise! Oh if only I had a dollar for the number of times I’ve heard that each year, I’m sure I’d be a millionaire. Apparently losing weight and getting fit is the number one New Year’s resolution for all Australians.  Though apparently around 60% of people will also fail to keep their resolutions by the end of January.  Funny that! I came across a few interesting articles whilst doing a bit of reading today, and one of them was by Samantha Thomas. This is a part of what I read…

“Let’s face it. We are a bit overly fixated with fatness, getting fat, and losing weight. And you know where this has got us? Nowhere. It hasn’t made us healthier. It hasn’t made us happier. And it hasn’t made us skinnier. For some people, it has done exactly the opposite.

Not surprisingly, very few people actually keep their New Year’s Resolutions. One study conducted some 20 years or so ago, tracked 200 people who made resolutions over a two year period, to see how many actually kept their NYR’s. At 2 years, only 19% still had kept their promises. Some suggest that one of the reasons resolutions fail is because many resolutions are desires rather than intentions – i.e. they are things we want, rather than things we act upon.

However, in the case of weight loss, here is why I think our NYR’s fail. Because most people will look for that quick fix ‘fad diet’ that doesn’t work for the majority of people. And that is because….. DIETS DON’T WORK!  It is really that simple.”

Now I don’t know about you but I read that thinking yep, no surprises there.  Now don’t get me wrong, I am not saying don’t set New Year’s resolutions and don’t set goals because I think it’s great to have them, but I think it’s better to have realistic ones. And I am not saying that we shouldn’t aim to be fit and healthy in our lives because I do think that’s important. However, the motivating factor for any lifestyle change should be about your health. We shouldn’t be dieting because some magazine says you need to be a size 6 to look good or because everyone you know is saying that they want to lose weight this year. Diet’s don’t work. If you are genuinely concerned about your health or you are genuinely unhappy with the way you look and feel, then you should do something about it the right way, for the right reasons. And in the meantime whilst you’re on your journey, you need to learn to love and accept yourself the way that you are because it is not what we look like on the outside that makes us as human beings. Nor is that what brings true happiness.

Ok so what am I really getting at? I’m saying try and go easy on yourself this month. If you want to make lifestyle changes, keep them real. Remember that not every day will start or finish as you intend it to, and if it doesn’t, then you need to accept that and say tomorrow is a new day. No beating yourself up if you’ve put on a few Christmas kilos (shit I know I have!) No beating yourself up if you don’t stick to your New Year’s Resolutions, and no negativity about how you look. Be positive and you’ll go a lot further in your goals.

So with that I’m going to leave you with this gorgeous image of Tara Lynn. It was taken by Solve Sundsbo (some time ago, for an old issue of V magazine) but wanted to share, because I just loved it when I first saw it. It’s bold, it’s brave and it really is just beautiful…

Until next time

x