COV E R ST O RY – SA BIN E G RUCH E T
HAPPY IN THE middle BY SHARI HALL
With her glowing smile, stunning wavy brunette hair, head-turning body, and a winning personality that grabs your attention from the moment she walks into a room, it’s hard to believe Tahitian-born, with a French Polynesian father, 47-year-old, 5'10" Sabine Gruchet felt she wasn’t good enough. Gracing the covers of magazines worldwide from London to Sydney for more than 30 years might seem the epitome of a successful modeling career. But, for this French Polynesian beauty, there was a point when she simply asked herself, “Is it worth it?” For seventeen years, Sabine was a size 6/8, the desired average size of a straight-sized model. The pressure to sustain her ‘sample’ size measurements was incessant. If it wasn’t from her agent or the brand she represented, then it was from her 5'1" mother, a mirror twin petite, slim woman who was an entrepreneur, singer, and model herself. “The psychology of being told not to gain weight, made me gain weight! My mum got upset if I was gaining weight. Yes, she praised me and instilled confidence in me when I did the right thing, but she would also tell me off,” Sabine recalls. This led to years of binge eating and other self-sabotaging behaviours. For Sabine, it was a mentally unsustainable way to live. She saw how stress and overwhelm affected her mother. “I learned the mind is a very powerful thing. My mum, who began as a singer, moved on to own a chain of boutiques, she started me in fashion, she definitely worked too hard, and every time she got stressed, she got a new lump. She had many cancers throughout her life and died while I was in my twenties.” The average woman wears a size 16/18, yet most models promote size 4/6, which is not even 5% of the population, according to Sabine. Her body changed shape when she was in her thirties, and it was getting harder and harder to maintain her physique. She made the decision to switch to “plus-sized” modeling. Ironically, at a size 14, Sabine was told she 58 ISSUE 101
was too small and needed to be at least a size 18 to 22. She was encouraged to be bigger and to eat more. Originally, she thought, “How great! I can eat whatever I want!” Her size increased easily, and with confidence and humour, she embraced her new curves. Her highly-relatable demeanour and authentic presentation style had her instantly selling out every item she advertised on shopping TV. Yet even at 95kg, the pressure remained the same. She was measured every day, like a live mannequin, to fit the samples, often being told, “Your arms are too small,” or “Your waist is still too small.” So, she ate some more, to the point where it became out of control and she just couldn’t stop. When she returned to Australia, she was shocked to find she was a size 20/22 and 103 kgs. It seemed there was no way to halt the weight gain.
Fate would have it that the right opportunity came to her at just the right time – to become an ambassador for Nestle’s Optifast. The Optifast Program, developed in 1974, is a clinically proven, scientifically designed very low calorie diet, doctor recommended for the management of obesity. Placing her in a state of mild ketosis (the process where your body begins to burn fat rather than carbohydrates for fuel), she was down a dress size in six days. The rapid results motivated her to continue. With the combination of shakes, bars and low starch vegetables, thirteen weeks later she found herself 20kg lighter, having lost thirty percent of her body weight. Thereafter, she continued to lose one to two kilograms per week until she reached her desired 30 kilo weight loss - not too skinny, not too fat, but happy in the middle. Describing herself as a “natural psychologist,” Sabine intuitively knew that how you feel inside can dramatically affect how you show up in the world. An entrepreneur since the age of 17, (as the owner of two lingerie boutiques), it was time for her to use her lifetime of knowledge and experience in the lingerie industry to create a
