Kat & Tshepi

Hello there, welcome back to the blog.

Today we would like to talk about this thing called losing weight, this is the process of shedding undesired body fat. Before the year 2020, it would not have crossed our minds that one day we would be going through the pains and frustrations of trying to lose weight. We had seen people transforming their bodies, much to our dismay. We never really understood the purpose of body transformation, why change the way you are or the way you look? We suppose it is true that we are afraid of what we don’t understand, we turn to judge what is not in alignment with our values.

There are many reasons a person can decide to lose weight, some loose weight for aesthetic reasons, some for medical reasons, some for athletic reasons and others for mental and emotional reasons. Who is to say which are the right reasons and which are the wrong ones, but whatever the reason one thing is for sure ,weight loss is a mystery for many that are attempting to do it. It is a frustrating and painful experience that you can only understand when you are seriously trying to lose weight.

These pains and frustrations are the reason we started this blog, to help with easing them, as well as overcoming the helplessness that accompanies the process. We (Kat and Tshepi) started the journey of losing weight for a combination of medical , mental and emotional reasons. These were the driving forces in the beginning and we have since added more reasons as our journey unfolded and as we realized more benefits, such as athleticism, energy regulation, aesthetics, longevity and fitness level. The pains and frustrations we experienced on our journey and still are experiencing to a certain degree are:

• Not making progress.
• Choosing a diet.
• Reducing food portions.
• Buying things we think we need for weight loss.
• Fear of how we going to look.
• losing and regaining the weight.
• Emotional and physical fatigue.
• Food cravings.
• Plateauing.

We believe that everyone who attempts to lose weight experience some or all of these frustrations which are wrapped in the mystery of losing weight. On our journey, we started clearing the cloud surrounding weight loss when we took back our power and chose what is good and best for us. It seems like human nature to handover our power to others when we don’t understand something or feel incapable of doing it. This is the case with weight loss, we tend to trust what we hear without questioning it, we buy supplements and diets without testing the realities of their claims, we have high expectations that are not grounded in simplistic reasoning.

It is only when we started to invest time in learning about our nutrition did we start to make progress. Only when we allowed ourselves the grace of trial and error did we start to lose weight. Learning about food and consistently changing our diet to get to what works well for us was the key. This required patience, which is something you don’t have when you trying to lose weight. The mystery of weight loss is unraveled through learning, implementing and patience in continuous trial and error.

It is empowering when you take responsibility for your own diet, when you decide for yourself which food to eat , what routine to follow, all based on your context and needs, this is where weight loss becomes less mysterious and more of an acquired skill. Brian Wansink stated that “The best diet is the one you don’t know you’re on.”, we couldn’t agree more, the best diet for you does not have a name, it consists of food that you choose and enjoy, it is a diet that you create for yourself based on your own preferences. How powerful is that?

When we created our weight loss guide we tried not to be overly prescriptive in terms of food items and diet because we understand that everyone is different, we instead recommended an umbrella composition of healthy foods, which are whole unprocessed foods, these are foods that are in their natural state or as close as possible to their natural state. With our guide, the power is in your hands(the way it should be 🙂 ), you choose the foods you want to reduce/eliminate, you choose the foods you want to increase/introduce.

That’s it for this week, the mystery of weight loss is demystified through taking your power back by learning about and choosing the food that is best and specific for you, and doing this consistently with patience. To help with creating a diet that works for you, start by looking into whole unprocessed foods as your foundation, these are “fruit and vegetables, nuts and seeds, beans and lentils, milk, wholegrains, and unprocessed meats and fish” .

Until next week, Stay blessed.

Kat & Tshepi