Helping women feel beautiful inside and out

Losing the weight, not the wine!

Kathryn Morrow

Owner & Founder, KGM Nutrition

As a young girl I always felt like I was in competition with someone–and while I feel like success was ingrained in me, it resulted in me putting a lot of pressure on myself. I was always pushed to be ‘the best’, and while I believe intentions were always good, it caused me to strive to be what I thought others wanted me to be, rather than really finding out who I really was.

I have a memory from when I was about six years old. I came home from school one day and told my mother I wanted to be a hairdresser when I grew up. My mother replied something like, ‘No you don’t. Hairdressers don’t make any money. You’re too smart for that’. At around that age I had started to really appreciate beauty. I noticed which teachers had nice hair and nice dresses, and I noticed things like pink lipstick and black eyelashes on some of the ladies in church. I remember hoping I would be just as beautiful when I grew up to be a woman myself.

Now that I’m an adult, I can see that is NOT the correlation my mother was trying to make. She simply wanted what was best for me and, as some mothers do, she projected her desires for her own life onto me based on things she wanted or perhaps couldn’t have. I can’t totally blame her. From a very young age I was labeled as ‘gifted’, so naturally my parents set the bar high for me… and, unfortunately, they didn’t know how to nurture me in a way that would bring out my best qualities, pushing me to only excel academically and intellectually, which inadvertently dismissed my softer, nurturing side.

My family also struggled financially, and although my parents did a great job keeping the financial stress from reaching me and my younger sister, we knew it was there. In an effort to give me what they didn’t have, my well-meaning parents sent me off in a direction that didn’t necessarily let me explore my soft and feminine side. And so, I continued competing for the best grades, scholarships, and bursaries… none of which let the real me shine through. The pressure was always on and when I was asked about my goals, I would say I wanted to be a doctor or a CEO.

After all, that was the correct answer, right?

After university things changed. I had just spent 22 years bending over backwards trying to excel in every area of my life. I was exhausted! Although I had set my sights on completing a master’s degree directly after my undergrad, I decided to take a sharp turn in a different direction to become an au pair in another country. There was a lot more to me than good grades and success on paper. I LOVED babies, and although everyone in my family praised me for it to the rest of our friends saying things like, ‘Kathryn is so great with babies’, no-one seemed to really talk about what it would be like to be a wife and mother one day. This is often the natural progression for a lot of girls, but no-one prepares you for the job! But wait! What if the answer to

‘what do you want to be when you grow up?’ isn’t a doctor, but rather a wife and mama? There is a disconnect here–not just in my own upbringing but in the world in general. Women are neglecting or forgetting what they were created to do and be.

Flash forward several years to when I got married. My husband owned and operated a fitness studio. Not long after we were married, I started my own business, which basically took over his, and then we amalgamated the two! Coincidentally, while I was in university, I enrolled in nutrition courses, because I was so passionate about beauty and nutrition. I understood that both are contributing factors in taking care of your body. Of course, I was still quite taken by beautiful hair and make-up, but I discovered a more ‘academic’ way to study aesthetics.

So, I began my journey in the nutrition world. By the time I met my husband in my early 30s I had taken several diploma programs in nutrition and had done some undergraduate research as well, and I finally came full circle and enrolled in that master’s degree program I had set my sights on as a young girl. But guess what? Rather than move forward in engineering or business, I found my passion and dove head first into my program, completing it in record time!

For probably the first time in my life I felt satisfied with my academic and employment endeavours. I was using my education to help women feel better about themselves, and I was having a profound impact! My way of doing things left women feeling validated. The world tries to tell us that beauty is on the inside, and I couldn’t agree more, but we are women! We were made to be beautiful on the outside too, and society often looks down their nose at us for having ‘superficial goals’. In my experience, these goals are not superficial at all.

In fact, they are heavily correlated with how we feel about ourselves in general and should never be dismissed.

As I started working with women and increasing their confidence by helping them shape their bodies, I started to see the ripple effect and noticed these women were becoming stronger in business, with family and with themselves in general. This is the exact opposite of superficial.

As my business grew, I discovered I was even more passionate about not only helping women feel better in their own skin, but I also found a way to work part-time and get back to my TRUE passion– family. My husband and I have had to make some tough choices along the way, but it has left us where we are today, and I couldn’t be more grateful.

In 2018 I finally became pregnant with our

(now) two-year-old twin girls. Later that year we quadrupled our business, and I was getting ready to take a nice long maternity leave. As a young mid-thirties couple who had finally seen their business take off, we were both approaching semi-retirement, and we felt satisfied with our work life. We were content and happy with our growth. Unfortunately, when my girls were born in 2019, we realised the business didn’t function at the same capacity without me, and to my great disappointment I didn’t get to take maternity leave after all. Bitter, hurt and just overall sad, I packed up my newborn babies and took them to work with me. I guess that success that was ingrained in me many years ago had its place – if something failed, you fixed it. If you could do something better, you did! And so off I went… two babies in tow.

Not long after, I think everyone is aware of the turn the world took in 2020. At first, I was extremely stressed. Our business was shut down, our income was completely taken away and the whole world seemed to be completely upside down. We weren’t even sure if we had enough toilet paper to last us, and stores were selling out! I was scared, frustrated and stressed to the max. But guess what? Remember that maternity leave I couldn’t take? Well, my twins were now 12 months old and here I was confined to my home… just me, my husband and our girls. BOOM! Maternity leave! Maybe it wasn’t exactly the way I dreamed it would be, but the fact is I got to stay home and focus on my family without the stress of going to work or managing staff. A blessing in disguise.

Through this experience my husband and I had to make some tough decisions. In mid-2020 we gave up our home to save our business, which later failed, and that stung quite a bit. For many this would have caused a tailspin, but my husband and I decided to look at it differently. We took the opportunity to move to a nicer part of the world (after all we no longer had these ties to the city where we ran our business), and we focused on moving forward rather than on what we had lost. Our family was stronger than ever! I have no doubt in my mind that is because I was able to stay home full time and regain the leadership role in my home, and this is where my business finally evolved.

Today I am a proud mama to three sweet children: my twin toddlers and a newborn baby boy. After experiencing what it was like to be at home full time, I now value being at home and being present with my family more than ever. My bonus ‘maternity leave’ was exactly what I needed. Because of this, I was able to really hone in on my niche. Who was it that I really wanted to help? Other mamas with young children at home.

As I started working with more and more clients, I realised there are a lot of mamas out there that were also forced back to work after the birth of their children, or since COVID have been confined to a private office in their home, completely separated from their family. As a result of this discovery, my business has grown from helping women feel great in their own skin and excel in their lives, to also being a business run by women for women that trains and certifies other women to work part-time from home (often for a full-time income) as accountability coaches, nutrition coaches and marketers. Helping other women and mamas just like themselves (and just like me!).

We were made to be beautiful on the outside too, and society often looks down their nose at us for having ‘superficial goals’. - Kathryn Morrow

At KGM we have two main programs:

• A nutrition and weight loss program built specifically for women and mothers who are tired of depriving themselves. Like me, many families have experienced a great deal of loss in the last 18 months, so the last thing we want to lose is exciting food, cheat meals and yes, that mouth-watering glass of wine at the end of the day. We ‘Lose the Weight, Not the Wine’. My team and I have a program that allows busy mamas to meal prep with ease, eat exciting and rich epicurean foods and enjoy alcoholic beverages, all while staying healthy and losing weight. Our simple approach to weight loss is built on three main pillars: nutrition, fitness and accountability/relationship.

• A certification and training program for women who want to embrace their feminine side and take on the role of the matriarch in their family by staying home and raising their children and still working part-time for a very lucrative income teaching other women how to ‘Lose the Weight, Not the Wine’.

My passion for being a wife and mother has now helped us not only recover almost everything we lost but is in the process of propelling us further than we thought we would ever go! We also encourage other women to call on their softer sides by spending more time with their families and raising their own children.

Being an at-home mama should make a comeback – at least if I have anything to say about it! My life is now dedicated to my family, and to helping women lose weight, regain their self-confidence and relish their Feminessence®.

“Weight loss doesn’t have to be hard! ”