Hi There,
Welcome back to K&T blog, How are you?
We hope you have been keeping well and working at your weight loss one day at a time. There is power in working with simplicity, focusing on what is doable at a time and place whilst maintaining a clear picture of your end goal in mind. This reduces the intensity and the overwhelming pressure of your goal, such as reaching your ideal and healthy weight. Sustainable weight loss takes time, if you rush it, you end up losing muscle and not fat, you end up tired and back where you started, you end up scaring your self-esteem and start to believe you cannot do it. But with simplicity, focusing on one workout session at a time, one healthy meal at a time is sensible and achievable, and before you know it, you are being complimented for your progress and leaner figure :). “Focus on the step in front of you, not the whole staircase.”
This week we try our hand at advertising and marketing, we are advocating the consumption of real food in opposition to highly processed foods, the foods that have hijacked our healthy diets and are causing havoc to our health and life. Store marketers have always lured us into buying more things than we have to with attractive offers such as, “buy 1 get 1 free”, “pay for 2 get the third for free”,”50% marked down prices when buying 2 or more” and “while stock lasts”. We are certainly hooked and interested when we see such financially palatable offers, even when we are skeptical (these are probably the prices we should be paying for the items in the first place).
This week we have our own marketing lure, buy 1 (reduce processed foods) get 2 for free (reduced intake of salt and sugar) , we are saying “if you reduce processed food on your daily diet you automatically reduce your intake of two problematic food items, salt and sugar “. Salt and Sugar are two very distinct and palatable food items, they are found in almost all foods we eat but we know that they are the culprits in many of our health issues. These two are combined contributors to high blood pressure, diabetes, strokes, , obesity, accelerated aging, inflammation, cancer , renal failure , and heart disease (heart disease is leading cause of death globally and these two have something to say in this)
The recommended intake of salt is 500mg per day but our estimated consumptions is 3400mg. The recommended daily limit of sugar is 6 teaspoons (Women) and 9 teaspoons (Men) but the actual consumption is 17 teaspoons, it is worth noting that Sugar is not a need for the body (maybe this is worth reading again), so the recommended figure is a limit and not a requirement . We normally come across people who says that they are not consuming sugary or salty foods, but they struggle with weight loss and related health issues. The problem is that the focus is on the sugar or salt we directly add to food, not the added sugars and salt that is found in almost all processed foods . Approximately 75% of salt consumed daily comes from processed foods and we approximately consume almost double the recommended added sugars limit, also mainly coming from processed foods.
The best way to control the intake of salt and sugar is by eliminating or reducing processed foods as these are contained in appalling numbers. A can of soda has 10 teaspoons of sugar, a doughnut has 2.5 teaspoons of sugar, medium French fries has 210mg of salt, a slice of pizza has 639mg of salt, a slice of white bread has 170mg of salt and around 2g of sugar, a burger has 120mg of salt and 1.3 teaspoons of sugar. These examples gives an idea of a shock that one will encounter If they add the amounts of salt and sugar in a diet full of processed foods from morning to evening.
That’s it for this week, there are many benefits in making efforts to reduce processed foods from one’s diet, although they are very tasty and enjoyable they do more harm than good, this reduction gives one the key benefit of reduced Sugar and Salt, two problematic food items. We managed to reduce our consumption of processed foods to about 10% daily by slowly eliminating them one food at a time, whilst increasing whole food items one at a time, doing this consistently overhauled our diet .
We hope our marketing attempts to improve health worked , buy 1 get two for free 🙂 . Until next week, Stay blessed.
Kat & Tshepi
Kat & Tshepi 