Hi There,
Welcome back, what a week it has been. Week 2 of 26 was a roller-coaster ride of emotions, it was filled with uncertainties, doubt, anxieties and confusion. Being partners requires agreements, unity and moving forward towards the same goal, but to achieve this in reality, it takes the opposite of these traits which are disagreements, disunity and pulling at opposite direction but moving towards the same goal. This is where we found ourselves this week, having disagreements, not working in unison and pulling at different directions towards our goal, a carnage of enormous propositions when you are partners who deeply love one another (okay…okay maybe that is taking it a bit too far, it is just not a nice feeling). But in the midst of all this we realized that the beauty of the “not so beautiful” situation is that we are pulling towards opposite directions but the goal which is in the middle is finding the equilibrium point of the pendulum, we are finding balance to move forward through this unsavory couple’s situation.
Imagine a string with a weighted object fixed in the middle, two people then pulls the string on the opposite sides, as soon as there is tension on the string, the object in the middle will start to rise, and if these people move forward with the string still in tension, they will be able to carry the middle object with. We believe this is what is happening to us, the middle object is this 6 months’ fitness and weight loss project, the string is the disagreements and disunity, as we pull towards opposite directions, we are able to move the project towards the intended goal, we are trying to find a balance to be able to achieve our goal, but as long as we are moving forward. Perhaps Newton’s third law is applicable here “ For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction” 🙂 . But hey, these are common dynamics of teamwork up until the team finds a rhythm and a system that is conducive for high performance. We will get there.
This week’s blog is about “Tracking progress”, tracking progress is key on our journey as it helps us establish whether our efforts are yielding the intended results, it gives us an opportunity to tweak and improve our system and plans. Tracking also gives us a clear view of where we come from and where we are going. For this 6 months’ fitness and weight-loss journey we will be tracking our progress in terms of food, weight and training tracking.
1. Food tracking
To ensure that we eat the right food and in sufficient quantities, we will be using the Myfitnesspal App to log the food we eat. We have already established the calories we require to lose 1kg per month (you can check this out on our previous post “Setting targets”), Kat requires 1835 calories per day and Tshepi requires 1580 calories. To meet these calorie requirements, we have created a standard menu that we will be trying to stick to each day and log the food items on the App. This is not an easy task as we are mostly pressed for time to complete our daily tasks, this needs to be one of the tasks that we should make time for because of its importance and impact in reaching our goal.
2. Weight tracking
Every morning, immediately after waking up, we will be stepping on the scale and recording the reading. Doing this everyday provides us with insight into our eating habits from the previous day and we are able to see the trends on our weight based on the food we ate. This tracking also helps us to remember that we are on a 6 months’ fitness and weight loss journey and to stick to our goals. We have had many frustrating mornings because of the scale (heart-breaking stuff 🙂 ) and many joyous mornings when see that our efforts are paying off. So to get more joyous mornings, we have to eat right the day before. At the end of the week, we will log the daily scale readings and compare to the readings of the previous week.
3. Training tracking
To track our training progress, we created workout routines for 6 days of the week. We will be following these routines each time we hit the gym, and we will change the workouts as necessary (e.g increasing the load, sets and reps) to ensure that we get the right benefits from the workouts and to deny the body a chance to get used to the workouts. Just like human minds, our bodies also get complacent when they get used to a workout routine, so we need to keep surprising our bodies.
And that’s it for this week, it was a tough one with new and old challenges but we made it through. As they say “nothing worth having comes easy”, we believe this 6 months’ fitness and weight loss journey is a worthy cause for our personal development and self-actualization and it is definitely not easy. Hope you had a better week and wishing you all the best for the week ahead. Until the next blog, stay blessed.
Kat & Tshepi
Kat & Tshepi 