Kat & Tshepi

Hello There,

Welcome back to K&T blog. How was your week?

We hope all is well on your side and that you are making good progress on your weight loss and overall fitness. The week has been good on our side, we are slowly getting back to consistent training due to the warm weather, winter really disrupted our regular training. This week we pondered on what it took us to lose weight , it was a motivational exercise to do because the challenges and setbacks brought about by Winter can easily make one forget about their progress, wins and accomplishments. There is something about remembering your past victories that propels you to sail past the present challenges and moves you closer to your desired future state, it is worth doing frequently 🙂 .

Based on our experience, we can confidently say that it takes a combination of visible and invisible factors to successfully lose weight and most importantly to sustain that loss. The visible factors are what we see and do daily to lose weight , this is where most of us focus on. But there are other factors, which we think are far more important for achieving weight loss goals, these are factors we don’t see or not pay attention to as they are not tangible. We have put together a list of 5 invisible and 5 visible actions that we believe have helped us to lose weight.

1. INVISIBLE ACTIONS

1.1 Humility – Acknowledging and accepting that we have lost control over our eating and lifestyle habits was a powerful step to start making progress. Our ego tells us things are not that bad, it does not allow us to see and accept the reality of our gained weight and lifestyle. This is probably the most challenging action.

1.2 Open Mindedness – Being open to new experiences and being ready to listen helped us to discover what we did not know. Similar to humility, our ego tells us we know what it takes to lose weight and we can do it in our own terms. We are always humbled by how little we know every time we think we know so much.

1.3 Consistent mindset – A burning desire to lose weight needs to be stoked each and every day, we talk about weight loss and fitness every day. Occasional remembrance or banter that one is on a weight loss journey does not yield results, it must be a priority each and every day.

1.4 Long term view – Having a short term view of losing weight results in gaining back the weight or even more thereafter, you are guaranteed to gain the weight back if you go back to old ways. Curating an approach that can be a lifestyle for you will work better in the long term. So it is better to choose the food and exercise regiment you are most likely to enjoy for a long time.

1.5 Self Appreciation and Gratitude – Body image issues might just be the most underrated factor in weight loss success or failure. Having a negative view of your body will not make you feel good, and will create faulty expectations of your weight loss and lead to disappointment. Learning to be grateful for ones body, appreciating it and allowing it to be as healthy and fit as it can be is a winning formula. Weight loss is like a project to see how best and optimal your OWN body can be, it is endeavoring to make the best of your body whilst there is still a chance. Oscar Wilde said “Be yourself, everyone else is already taken”, this applies well to our unique body, there is no other like it.

2. VISIBLE ACTIONS

2.1 Preparing food in advance – Having food readily available helps us from going too hungry for too long and to avoid convenient foods. Being too hungry and easily reaching for whatever is available leads to overeating.

2.2 Not going a week without exercising – Loosing a week of training feels like starting all over again, It is twice as hard to rebuild training momentum once you loose it and therefore can be easily postponed to another week. The good old “I will start on Monday” excuse does not work, start today.

2.3 Take to the scale frequently – The scale never lies , it is a good reminder of what you need to do. We take scale measurements every morning, this helps to be aware of how we are doing and reminds us of our goals. Scale is a good tool for building consistency and keeping your goal alive.

2.4 Drastically reduce processed foods – Processed food are really bad and they are causing serious health issues. In addition to causing health issues, processed foods are highly calorific and not providing satiety, which means it is easy to eat a lot more. It is better to opt for whole natural foods, this way you can eat more with less health worries, and enjoy the weight loss that comes with this option.

2.5 Learn the basics of nutrition – It was a game changer for us to learn the basics of nutrition, it helped us in making better and informed decisions about our food and lifestyle choices. There are tons of reputable sources on the internet on nutrition and losing weight, we hope this blog is one of them too 🙂 .

That’s it for this week, It takes a combination of visible and invisible factors to lose weight . The visible actions will get the weight off successfully but keeping the weight off for good requires the invisible actions, these have the ability to power and sustain your weight loss. We hope this information will help in some way on your weight loss and fitness journey.

Until next week, Stay blessed.

Kat & Tshepi