Hi There,
Welcome back to K&T blog, how are you?
Another week of 2024 is gone, it is not so long ago when we were making new year’s resolutions and committing to make improvements on our health and fitness, and now there is barely 4 months left before the year end. We hope you are still committed to your resolutions and that your weight loss and fitness plans are progressing according to your desire. If you are experiencing difficulties in exercising or in eating healthy, remember that “All things are difficult before they are easy “, It will certainly get easier when you keep at it long enough. On our side , the commitment is still alive, this week we recouped the training momentum that we lost at the beginning of winter, we even trained twice per day in some of the days ,we are happy with this :).
Last week we pointed out that “Humility” is one of the challenging practice to learn when you are trying to lose weight, it is about acknowledging that you don’t know it all, it requires you to accept some of the weaknesses that are holding you back and calls for changes. We blamed the Ego for this, the Ego always says “NO” at first before it can say ” Maybe Yes“, we can certainly do without it if we want to lose weight. Humility is at odds with the Ego, because it wants to relinquish the “Good Old days”, the old habits that are not so kind to us but are so much fun to have around, the habits that keep us from making progress.
This week we look at some of the things that we needed to let go of to make weight loss progress, these are the habits and the behaviors we had to change for us to say goodbye to the “Good Old days” which were characterised by short term pleasures, and which brought along a crew of weight gain and various health issues.
- Late night eating – Eating and snacking late at night was a norm for us. We had to let it go as we now know that eating as early as possible ensures that the food is digested and metabolised before bedtime.
- Sugar – We ditched adding sugar directly to our foods and drinks because almost all the foods we ate had sugar in them already. We were consuming way too much sugar than it was necessary.
- Sleeping late – When you are sleep deprived you turn to eat more, and it also becomes easier to avoid working out because of fatigue from the lack of sleep. Sleeping early helps the body to recover and perform well the next day, without the need for comfort eating.
- Watching TV – The couch can be a nightmare for weight loss, it contributes so much to a sedentary lifestyle. We drastically reduced screen time and now watch TV occasionally, and hey there is really no time for TV when you are active.
- Alcohol – We experienced many benefits as a result of eliminating alcohol, not just in health but in almost all areas of life . GOD, this one was a big win for us 🙂 .
- Starchy foods – We eliminated Pap (maize meal) altogether and reduced rice drastically, its easy to overeat these staples, and eating them more than once per day makes things worse.
- Fried foods – We choose grilled alternatives when cooking or eating out , even though fried food smells and taste good 🙂 .
- Processed snacks – We let go of the common snacks, these were highly calorific snacks such as biscuits/cookies, potato chips , sweets ,chocolates. If it has an ingredient list, chances are that it is not a good snack.
- Baked goods – These are delicious but worth reducing or eliminating because of the amount of sugar in them and their ability to make one eat more. These are so good that we still struggle with them even now .
- Sodas and Juices – These we eliminated altogether and replaced with tea, coffee ,sparkling water and sometimes kombucha. In rare occasions (very rare) we have sugar free alternative drinks and sodas. The added sugar and the lack of fibre on these drinks is not helpful to weight loss, and health in general.
That’s it for this week, the “Good Ol days” were temporarily fun and exciting to the senses, and they are hard to imagine living without, but the harsh truth is that they mostly takeaway from life than giving to life. The ego tells us they are compulsory and that is because the ego must have its way, but when we put ego to the side, we become clear sighted and accept that some foods and habits needs to be shown the door so that we can experience progress on our fitness and health. Old habits die hard but it is worthy to put up a fight against them for your own and beloved one’s sake.
If we were to choose and recommend one item to start letting go from the above list for some weight loss to be experienced, it would be Sugar (followed closely by alcohol). Until next week, Stay blessed.
Kat & Tshepi
Kat & Tshepi 