Helping women feel better about themselves

This is the mantra of Jo Mason and a group of like-minded women who are putting together an innovative new event aimed at helping women of a particular age feel good about themselves.

Women, Waistlines and Wellness is set to take place next month and will feature a day of empowering lectures and demonstrations giving by inspirational women across a variety of subjects which specifically affect women aged between 40 and 60.

Paralympian Wendy Smith, who lives in Tiptree, is among the speakers already lined up along with internationally respected motivational speaker Mary Daniels and Tanith Lee, who will speak about the menopause and her own experience of going through it when she was just 37.

Jo, who lives with husband Gareth and their two children on Mersea Island, will herself be taking on the waistlines aspect of the event with her own insight into feeling good about your body and what you put in it.

The idea for the event, which will be followed by a day of specialist workshops, came about as a result of her continued work helping women break bad eating habits.

"I basically defeat diets.

"I don't believe they work and I think they actually cause long-term damage because all that happens is you end up starving yourself before you get weighed and then you treat yourself with something on the way home.

"It is not educating you or teaching your body good habit and we need to tackle that."

Jo, dishes out a bit of tough love to the women who come to her for help - assisting with a healthy eating plan and setting about re-training their attitudes to food.

She explains she first got involved in helping women after being given a leaflet to become a franchisee for a meal replacement company.

"I didn't like the idea of the shakes but I did think the concept of coaching someone and giving advice and support was a good one and I thought I could do that myself.

"Once I was ready to go someone approached me for help but I was surprised at how obstructive she was.

"She knew what she had to do and I knew it would work, but she just wasn't doing it.

"Then I had a lightbulb moment that it is not just about calories and exercise - basically you need to re-train the brain to think in a different way because it is the perception of food that causes the problems.

"People have this perception they need to eat cake and the foods that are not good for them but you don't have to.

"You don't need it," says Jo, who is originally from Ipswich but moved to Essex with New Zealander Gareth, who is a Major in the Army and runs the medical centre at Merville Barracks.

Since starting out, she has never been short of clients and those coming to her for help and support vary.

"It is about how you feel about yourself - some don't have a weight problem but they have binged for years and want to break that cycle.

"Others do lose quite a bit of weight but realise it was about more than that.

"Life is so short, why would you want to look back and realise you spent all that time thinking about food and what your should and should not eat ?

"And it was while I was helping a group of women who had come to me together for some support that we started thinking about putting on this event," says Jo.

She and the three women began to form a strong bond.

"At one of the sessions it became clear they all felt rubbish and as a result, they were eating rubbish. They had lost their mojo.

"I went to a well-being event with one of the ladies in Southend, which is more spirituality-based, where I was working as well and we were just chatting about how great it would be to have an event like that one which was entirely for women.

"Which would help them realise they are not rubbish, teach them really," she said.

Jo approached Mary Daniels, who was speaking at that event, to see if she would be interested in being part of the inuagural women-only event she had in mind.

"Mary is a really big name in the Mind, Body and Soul world and so it was quite surreal when we ended up sitting in one of the other lady's gardens discussing the event over skype with her."

She was soon on board and swiftly followed by an expert in advising women on the best colours to wear.

Jo was adamant she wanted women with real experiences to talk to guests at the event, which eventually got the name of Women Waistlines and Wellness.

"It didn't have a name for a long while and we thought long and hard about what we were going to call it and wanted to address the issues that are really important.

"I wanted to avoid using 'weightloss' because sometimes concerns are not just about losing weight."

Osteopath Karen Farrant, who is one of the friends Jo has been working with to organise the event, will give a talk about body image.

"She was worried at first because she had not spoken publicly before but she has done lots of research and she has her own personal story to tell about having something happen to her that really affected her self- esteem and it is these that other women want to hear and are inspired by," says Jo, 42.

Also giving speeches, alongside Jo who will speak about her own work defeating diets, will be self-styled Mrs Menopause Tanith Lee who went through the menopause at 37.

"It is such an important issue for the women we are encouraging to come forward so we had to have someone speak on it but I wanted to find someone who wasn't boring and Tanith is certainly not that.

"She talks about how she did not even realise she was going through it at the time but it led her to suffer mental health issues.

"These are such topical issues at the moment it is such a good time to put on an event like this.

"We spent a long time coming up with posters and flyers for the event and choosing famous inspirational quotes and a name for the web-site because I wanted it to be something which would resonate.

"We thought about it for months and then I just thought of 'the wonder within' and it was perfect.

"We all have a 'wonder within' and we all need to find it," she adds.

With tickets already selling for the event on April 28, followed by the workshops the next day, Jo hopes it will become an annual event and the idea will form a movement of like-minded women all supporting each other.

* The event will take place at Quay Place, Ipswich on Saturday April 28. Go to www.honourthewonderwithin.com for information about ticket prices.