Kat & Tshepi

Hi There,

Welcome back to K&T blog, how was your week?

This week we had two things in our minds and conversations in relation to weight loss, one was the terrible effects of winter on weight loss progress, the second was the heartbreak of failure. Winter is very good at crushing weight loss efforts and progress, everything about you during winter says “eat more” and “don’t exercise” , this is natural because it is our bodies’ way of protecting us from losing its source of heat during winter(the fat). But if you let nature take its course in winter you will fail horribly on your weight loss goals and risk losing all the progress you have made up to this point. If you are in winter where you are right now and are struggling with keeping the weight off, do not fear but be prepared. We gave some tips for losing weight in this article (Weight loss tips for winter) when we began winter this year, check the tips out 🙂 .

The second thing that was on our minds was “how to deal with failure”, we think it is safe to say that we all fail at some things and at some points in our lifetime. We fail because we did not meet our own expectations or other people’s expectations, this can be crushing. But a good thing about failure is that if you pay attention to your perception , failure can become an opportunity to do better, it can become a source of strength and empower you to progress even further than your initial goal. Unfortunately the terrible feeling that comes with failure is unavoidable, even if you have a positive perception of your situation, it is a reality you have to live with but you are guaranteed it will pass. If you have been failing lately on your weight loss goals or other things in life and are feeling run-down, try to change your perception and allow the feeling of failure to stay a little while with you ( and it will certainly leave soon) and go for it again. “The past doesn’t matter. Take today” – Becky Sauerbrunn.

Last weekend we started our family vegetable garden for 2024, we have been gardening on and off since the dawn of Covid-19 in 2020 ,it seems that in winter we somehow get the knack to start a season of gardening. The more we learn about nutrition and health the more we feel like we can benefit more from growing our own foods because in this way we are in control of what goes into the food and the quality of the nutrients from the crops. If it is true that you are what you eat, then it makes sense to try and improve the quality of your foods, and this is what we are trying to do :).

We started small this year with just two x 10 metres rows of spinach and we aim to grow the garden from there. It does takes time and effort to grow the garden, but the rewards of eating fresh food feels satisfying and worthy, and not forgetting the emotional benefits of engaging with nature, it soothes the soul. Last year we managed to grow a vegetable garden of roughly 10 square metres with various vegetables from spinach, onions, lettuce, beetroot to herbs, cauliflower and broccoli, we spent 15-30 minutes per day tending to it.

This year we thought it would be a good idea to keep a record of this years garden from the beginning, through the growing stages and all the way to harvesting. So we are working on creating a page on this blog to track this process, and we will be updating it once a month (or anytime there is something exciting) to track and report on progress here. We hope it will be good 🙂 .

That’s it for this week, it is mid year 2024, we hope you are inspired to revive your weight loss efforts for the second half of the year or maybe you are even inspired to start your own vegetable garden and see where it will lead to. And hey you don’t need a lot of time for both, just 15-30 minutes per day is sufficient : ) . The secret of getting ahead is getting started – Mark Twain.

Until next week, stay blessed.

Kat & Tshepi