Kat & Tshepi

Hello There,

Welcome back to the blog, how are you today?

And how was your week? We have been complaining (a lot) about weight gain recently, which is possibly caused by a surplus in the calories we consume daily. The caloric surplus suggests that we are eating more than we should, our fuel intake is exceeding our fuel expenditure, there is no balance between the two. We recalled previously that we experienced success whenever we consistently tracked our calories, but now we hardly track our food intake . Maybe tracking is a no brainer solution for us right now :).

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it,” – Peter Drucker.

Tracking your calories is one of the known and popular tools that one can use to manage their weight. Losing weight is not completely about calories in and calories out (The energy balance model) but there are other contributing factors such as stress, the environment, genes, hormones and health condition. With all these said, weight loss is fundamentally achieved by managing the food we eat, either by managing the type, the quantity or both, and therefore managing our overall calorie intake. The problem with tracking is that if it is not used correctly and with awareness it can lead to obsession and anxieties around food , so it is better to avoid it if one is prone to and sensitive to these conditions and just focus on consuming whole foods and eliminating processed foods, that will do the trick.

Tracking your food involves measuring your food items on the food scale, then logging the food and weight on a food tracking app. The food tracking app will guide you on estimating the amount of calories you need to eat in a day, so when you log your food for the day you are able to see whether you are exceeding your estimated calories intake or whether you are in a deficit. With this information you are then able to reduce or increase your food intake, you are able to tweak your food portions to be suitable for you, over time this helps with managing your weight. The food tracking apps we used are MyFitnessPal and Cronometer , but there are many others in app stores.

That’s it for this week, tracking your food is one of the many tools that you can use to lose weight, it is another addition to your artillery of weapons to fight against weight gain and obesity. It is time for us to switch back and build consistency in our food tracking, it has proven to work for us many times.

“To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.” -Winston Churchill.

Until next week, Stay blessed.

Kat and Tshepi