Around The Clothesline And Off the Diet Rollercoaster

Posted: Wednesday 19 May 2010 04:12pm

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, said a wise Chinese philosopher. When Karen Gatt embarked on a journey 11 years ago to lose half her size, she was so fat she could barely walk to her own letterbox. Taking her first step, literally, on the road to weight loss was punishing.

At more than 130kg and the wearer of size 24-26 “tents”, the then 26-year-old mum of two was like a prisoner in her own home; the “only place I felt safe, away from the stares, whispers, taunts and sheer disgust that overwhelmed me every time I stepped out the door.”

Filled with self-loathing after a dinner dance in 1999, where Karen says she felt grotesque in a room of shiny, happy, beautiful people (as she perceived them), a switch flipped. After years of failed fad diets and gimmicks, that night she resolved to finally, permanently lose weight in her own, sensible way.

“I knew this time that I really had to change, I had to lose weight,” she says. “If I didn’t I would die – I was dying on the inside anyway and I didn’t think I could continue to face the world if this wasn’t a success and I let everybody down yet again.”

Not being able to walk for more than a few minutes without losing her breath and also unwilling to do so in public, Karen devised a unique exercise regime – doing laps of her little courtyard, around the clothesline. At first she could only manage five minutes a day – “which felt like five hours” – every day adding another minute.

Combined with a complete overhaul of the way she and the family ate, Karen lost 68kg in 13 months and has kept the weight off.

It could have remained an anonymous personal triumph except that Karen placed an ad in Melbourne’s Sunday Herald Sun nine years ago offering to help others achieve what she had.

It was spotted by a former colleague, Sue Smethurst, then my Associate Editor at New Idea. She sniffed a good story and the phenomenal reaction to the subsequent article gave her the idea for The Clothesline Diet, a book that has become an international phenomenon. Originally published here in 2002, it has just been released in the US to great fanfare.

“When I did the magazine story I knew I’d barely skimmed the surface of what Karen had achieved and had gone though living with obesity, so the book was born,” says Sue. “Our dream was always to see the book published in the US – the home of obesity – but it took us six years to get it there.

“We scraped up every dollar we had and literally walked the streets of New York knocking on publishers’ doors because no one would take appointments with us.

“We kept getting told `Americans won’t be interested in an Aussie diet’ but we kept going back! And going back and going back.

“We got knockback after knockback until we met a New York literary agent who saw the potential and introduced us to Harlequin [publishers] who loved the idea and embraced Karen.”

But even before the pair finally cracked the US publishing market, there was interest in Karen “Stateside”. One of Karen’s readers sent the book to an American friend, Dr Albert Bodt, who was so impressed by the simplicity of her plan and her success that he invited her to his clinic in California to talk to his patients.

“I read [Karen’s book] with great interest and found her experiences to be typical of many of my patients,” Dr Bodt says. “Many, like Karen, were overweight as children. As they grew into adulthood they became more sedentary and continued their dietary indiscretions.

“She gave each and every one of my patients a spark of hope; if she could do it, so could they. As Karen makes clear, it is simply a matter of changing one’s lifestyle.”

Karen now regularly travels to the US to help people lose weight.

However her most recent trip, with Sue, was for a triumphant publicity tour in New York marking The Clothesline Diet’s launch there.

There was an appearance on NBC’s Today show, a lunch with key magazine editors and bloggers, a satellite radio tour and interviews with leading US magazines Good Housekeeping and Family Circle. The piece de resistance was a billboard in Times Square.

Within 24 hours of the Today show appearance, Karen had had 10,000 new visitors to her website, www.theclotheslinedietclub.com and 167,000 hits.

 “The reception we received was amazing,” says Sue. “Globesity, as we call it, knows no borders. Americans have great affection for Aussies and embraced both Karen and the book – so much so, she will open her first US support group in Oklahoma in late June.

“It was also an incredible feeling to actually see the book on the shelf in Borders Madison Square Garden. The response from overweight Americans has justified our determination.”

(Sue had another US coup earlier this year, selling her luxe sun care brand, Hissy Fit, to an American pharmaceutical giant for mega dollars. But that’s another story …)

“I’m not a doctor or a dietitian, I’m just a mum who spent most of my life struggling to get off the diet roller coaster,” says Karen.

And in the same spirit as a wise Chinese philosopher: “It takes only one step to change your life.”

by Jenni Gilbert

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