Seven Secrets of Beauty and Wellbeing: Kate Shapland
Kate Shapland knows more than a thing or two about brilliant beauty products, as an award-winning beauty journalist herself for over 25 years – including for many years at The Telegraph. It was during this time that Kate realised the industry with which she was so familiar wasn’t taking leg issues seriously - so she decided to take things into her own hands and become ‘The Legologist’ - an expert on fluid retention, vascular issues and cellulite.
Kate believes that, as well as providing physical support to carry us through life, legs can be linked to emotional conflict as their shape and wellbeing can really impact how we feel. Legs change through life's chapters, with cellulite, fluid retention and vascular issues making them heavy, tired and uncomfortable.
After many years of research, Kate ‘The Legologist’ decided she wanted to create a brand to help people love their legs. Combining all of her knowledge with the formulaic know-how of a top French chemist, they developed the pioneering ‘Lymphology Complex®’ and Legology was born. Each one of the products contains this special blend of ingredients to promote lymph flow and the signature scent of citrus, amber, moss and oak makes using the range an experience to look forward to.
But for any entrepreneur, life is a juggling act. So here, Kate shares her secrets on finding and maintaining beauty and wellbeing…
1. Making things. All praise my mother: she taught me to drive, the importance of being financially independent, to grow and make things (except meals; she gave up early on with me and cooking). She got me and my sisters knitting and crocheting from a young age because she maintained that making things – being creative and using your hands – makes you feel content, stops you worrying about stuff and means you are never bored. And she’s right - it’s a great distraction when things get a bit hardcore because you have to apply yourself fully and that focus pushes everything else out of your head even if it’s for a few brief rows of cross stitch. As a result I’ve always got a needlecraft project – tapestry, quilt, whatever – on the go and this is the first thing I do when I’m stressed or a bit down. Sometimes I get home from work, pick up a bit of embroidery and find myself still in my coat working on it two hours later. Few things make me happier and more hopeful than a new project or plotting a new bit of the garden. It’s nesting I suppose and it makes me happy.
2. Being in the moment. It has taken me ‘til my fifth decade to make this a habit. For years I only lived for the future, but hope and possibilities somehow became a prison for me – life felt like one big race and I was exhausted. Looking back I think I probably started to rip through life as a way of replacing a personal loss in my life in my early thirties. Being focused on the horizon all the time gave me little time to dwell – I had to keeping going forward. But actually dwell is exactly what I needed to do and once I realised that and gave myself a chance and time I felt less hollow and stressed, more still, more feeling and more in touch with life. I needed to live in the moment in order to make the future happen. I won’t say Eckhart Tolle saved me exactly but The Power Of Now has taught me – and regularly reminds me - how to pace myself and make the minutes matter. It’s on my bedside table, along with Matt Haig’s Book Of Comfort, which a rather insightful friend gave me recently.
3. Listening in. Mostly to the radio. I’m Robert Elms’s biggest fan. What I love about the radio is the way it transports you out of a world that’s causing you stress and connects you with another. If you have it on in the background it has a wonderfully calming effect. And if you listen to programmes regularly you are part of a community. Community matters, and I don’t necessarily mean the community generated through social media. I mean physical community. There’s something fundamentally enriching about not just knowing your neighbours and your local shop owner but also knowing a little about their lives – just asking takes you out of yourself and your momentary anxieties. It’s a real form of social connectedness and develops a sense of belonging that sometimes we find lacking in our lives. We work hard on community at Legology. I like to maintain a personal connection with our customers and I’ll always personally answer any queries they have about leg issues where I can or recommend someone, like a great vascular surgeon, where I can’t. The people connection is the part of my job I love most and I didn’t expect that, having spent my professional life until now working solitarily.
4. Wandering about. I’m a bit of a rambler and I can’t ever imagine a time when I won’t be walking the hills and dales. In the summer I take off every evening, fast as I can after an absorbing day at work, switch off the phone and feel the day roll off my back with the steps. I’m as happy in the country as I am wandering in London or even mud larking. It’s become more important in recent years and, although limited during the pandemic, it was still a great way to knock anxiety on the head. So many upsides to walking – great time to talk to yourself and work through the pros and cons of thorny little issues, brilliant excuse for sitting on a hill and getting lost in the view for hours, excellent way to get all those feel good endorphins racing around the body and get the circulation and lymph pumping – all so powerful in contributing to a better, more positive outlook on things.
5. Letting go. Standing back and letting things go or dropping out works like magic when you’re feeling hemmed in. I recently moved house and because the reno work was delayed due to supply shortages I spent some months living without central heating or hot water and none of my belongings around me. I won’t lie, it was miserable at times. But I also found it curiously liberating. Having the ability to control things taken out of your hands is remarkably freeing. I think we can get very caught up in control, trying to stage manage everything to the nth degree and being all the more stressed for it. That said, I have now bought a bed and fully acknowledge the wellbeing benefits of going to a bedroom to sleep rather than on a sofa bed in your sitting room. Still got a stylish packing box for a bedside table though. It’s a similar sense of liberation to clearing your calendar, something I do when I start to get that familiar sense of being a bit on the edge. I immediately drop things – meeting dates, chores, hairdresser, everything, until there’s nothing left in the diary for at least a week. It’s like dropping out and the space gives you wonderful sense of clarity, protection and freedom. We’re all way too busy.
6. Writing something. Notepad, cards and a good pen over laptop every time! Especially when you’re writing a note to someone with a special something you’ve found for them. People with pugs, they get pug notes and things from me all the time. As do people who love hedgehogs. And I love the whole process: the finding of the thing (often useless, like a fridge magnet), the note writing and the satisfaction of sending it all off. It’s happy making.
7. Good maintenance. In all honesty, when the wheels have well and truly fallen off the lorry in life/work the last thing you feel like doing is going for a facial. I had very little time for this when the business was young. Sometimes in life you have to forget yourself in order to make other things happen, and it’s interesting to recognise what your beauty boundaries are and what keeps you from falling completely into the cracks during these times. For me it’s keeping my eyebrows plucked, drinking a litre of water every day and having long baths, because being low maintenance is nothing to be proud of ultimately. Looking good means you feel better. It’s very simple.