Sh[r]ed it!

Weight loss is a journey, and people embark on it for different reasons. These days, there’s more and more awareness around the subject, and several businesses (legit and non-legit) thrive off it. I first made the decision to keep light after I learnt that the physiologic male weight for an adult male is 70kg. Female, 55. You know as well as I do that it’s always easy to make decisions. Remember how you’ve made new year resolutions over and over. Each year you tell yourself this is it! But next year comes, and you’re back to square one.

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Deciding to keep a healthy weight can be a struggle. Sometimes, your genetics is the problem. Sometimes, it’s the constant abundance of yummy foods that surround you. The real problem, in my opinion, is Discipline… or the lack thereof. I know this because I’ve been down that road. Indeed I still am. Discipline means finding a plan that works and sticking to it like it’s a religion.

Discipline aside, people embark on a weight loss journey not even having any understanding how the whole thing works. You need to understand the basic concept of Calorie Balance to lose (or add) weight. For males, every day your body uses about 2500 calories to keep you alive – all your body systems functioning right. When your calorie intake exceeds 2500 calories, your body stores the extra energy as fat. That’s how you gain weight. To lose weight you “simply” take in fewer calories than your body uses. When you up your calorie expenditure by exercising and being more physically active, you lose weight even faster. You also need to be realistic with your goals. Understand that to lose 1kg of body fat, you need to burn about 9000 calories. That means a calorie deficit of 500 calories daily will help you lose just 1kg in about 3 weeks.

Keeping a healthy weight is not only good for your looks. It’s important for your health. You reduce your risk of Diabetes, Hypertension and other chronic illnesses. If your weight is above normal for your age, losing weight is a journey you should consider. I’m on mine. The Body Mass Index (BMI) gives you an idea how OK you are for weight. To have a rough idea if your current weight is ideal, you can calculate your BMI here.

 

 

Any awesome technology from Africa?

I’ve had this conversation a few times with different people. The last time was a few weeks ago when I was in an Uber. A friendly young guy was my driver. I sat right in the front passenger’s seat like I normally do. Not long into our trip, a Yango cab passed. Me: “That’s your new competition.” “I’m on all of them” he replied. Yango is a new cab-hailing service in Ghana. There’s the almighty Uber. There’s Bolt. Stiff stiff competition.

Our conversation soon went in the direction of how “these whites” make a lot of money by simply being innovative. Every Uber driver periodically pays 25% of their income to Uber. Seeing Uber operates in over 60 countries, you don’t need plenty of mathematics to realize Uber makes crazy money just from letting you use your own car (that you bought with your own money o) as a cab. You see, it’s about creating a solution (easy transportation) that people need and creating a robust platform for anyone who can drive a car to use. They pay a percentage, you generate revenue. Another example is Airbnb.

I’m always quick to wonder if any significant number of this kind of revolutionary solutions ever originate from Africa. I mean, an invention, a technology, a discovery in any field of human endeavour, from Africa that has been adopted all over the world as a solution to any of humanity’s problems.

If you consider yourself a modern African, all the things you depend on to run your modern day-to-day life, right from when you get up from bed in the morning, till you go back to sleep at night.. Think about them. Equipment and tools that serve your entertainment, mobility, cooking and catering, fashion, housing, etc. Which of them were invented or developed in Africa?

Africans are net consumers of solutions. We love tech and gadgets, the most sophisticated cars, all the stuff that makes a man “modern” but we haven’t decided we also should be making solutions that we, and the rest of the world can use.

PS: I’m sure there are solutions that are proudly from Africa. But we consume waaaaayy more than we dare to produce.