Kat & Tshepi

Hi There,

Hope your week was nothing less than enjoyable. We had an exciting week, it was a week filled with hope, joy and anxiety as we anticipated to see how we did on our fitness and weight-loss journey for the 1^st month. Did we do enough to meet our monthly target? Are we weighting 1kg less as we planned? Did our strategy work? This were the questions that circulated in our minds as we headed into the last week of the first month of the 6 months journey. The fear of failure entangled with the prospect of winning was the order of the days leading up to the 15^th of February.

In this week, we managed to get back to the gym and resumed our resistance training. It was a pleasure to get back to the gym, we almost forgot how enjoyable it is when we train together since we have not been doing so for two weeks. We do resistance training on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays from 5am to 6am, we just wake up and train in the comfort of our bedroom. We initially invested a lot in gym equipment and set-up a dedicated home gym but we found ourselves not using the home gym, instead we train in our bedroom with just a few dumbbells and a weight bench (picture below), It has been over a year now. Simplicity is really key when investing in gym equipment, you really don’t need a lot of equipment to get fit.

Waking up at 4:30am and preparing to train at 5 was hard at first, but with consistency it has become a habit and we don’t sweat it anymore, the body clock has adjusted accordingly. Kat is a morning person and Tshepi is not so, the morning energies are quite different but they somehow balance each other and we are able to put in the work whilst the kids are sleeping. This time has become our time to connect and escape the world, whilst working on our fitness goals. We really enjoy working out together, it feels good (even though the exercises are tough 🙂 ) , it gives us a strong head-start to the day, as well as a great sense of achievement when we are done with the workout. It was just good to resume the resistance training 🙂 .

1. First month’s progress tracking

The 15^th of February marked the end of the first month of our 6-month fitness and weight-loss journey. Our target was to lose 1kg each following the meal and training plans we had set at the beginning of the journey. We both managed to exceed our targets for the month, Kat lost 1.10 kg and Tshepi lost 1.7 kg (someone was serious 🙂 ) as can be seen on the pictures below. Whew, it was a relief and elating to step on the scale on the 15^th. In analyzing the progress, we can attribute the success to consistency in eating as per our set meal plans, we paid good attention to the nutrition.

Tracking progress is very crucial on our journey as it gives us a good idea of whether we are on the right track or not, it gives us an insight into what is working well and what needs adjustment, it also amplifies our commitment to the process as we feel more motivated and eager to do even better. As they say “if you can’t measure it, it does not exist”, therefore tracking progress helps us to measure our goal, it ascertains that the goal exists and it is alive. Tracking progress also validates our efforts in achieving the set goal.

This is how our week and the end of the first month unfolded. We are happy with the progress so far and the sense of achievement is boosting our morale and self-confidence. As we head into the new week, we are eager and will attempt to make improvements on those aspects and areas where we are still lacking, and these are being consistent with resistance training and tracking our calories for every meal (we are just lazy sometimes 🙂 ), and this is what we will attempt in this week. Thank you for following our blog, and until next week, stay blessed.

Kat & Tshepi