Today I’m sharing a few of my favorite things from the past week.
Cold weather accessories
I’ve mentioned before that I’ve been knitting to deal with anxiety. It’s not the only thing I’ve been doing to deal with it (therapy, medication, and meditation have also been happening), but knitting is one more thing that helps me deal with it. Well this week I finally packed up a bunch of the things that I’ve knit and dropped them off at Alpha House. They do really great work in Calgary with people who are experiencing homelessness. I included scarves, cowls, hats, and mittens. With the snow that’s coming this weekend I’m hoping it’ll keep some people warm.
While I live in Canada, the US election has been big news here too, as I’m sure it has been just about everywhere. I didn’t realize how much I was invested in it until this week. I knew that the results would take awhile to come in, and the waiting is tough. I was honestly surprised at how close it is. It makes me sad to think how many people voted for someone who doesn’t care about basic human rights. I wanted to feel like I was putting some good out into the world, so I figured it would be the perfect time to drop off the knitting donation.
Endure
The other night I started reading Endure (affiliate link) by Alex Hutchinson. Just like Spark by John Ratey, I love books that look at fitness and the science behind it – from kinesiology to physiology to biology. Endure definitely fits the bill and it’s been hard to put down.
Below is the synopsis from Good Reads:
From running a two-hour marathon to summiting Mount Everest, we’re fascinated by the extremes of human endurance, constantly testing both our physical and psychological limits.
How high or far or fast can humans go? And what about individual potential: what defines a person’s limits?
For years, physiology determined the answer: heart size, lung capacity, and muscle strength. But over the past decade, a wave of dramatic findings in the cutting-edge science of endurance has completely overturned our understanding of human limitation. Endure widely disseminates these findings for the first time: It’s the brain that dictates how far we can go—which means we can always push ourselves further.
Hutchinson presents an overview of science’s search for understanding human fatigue, from crude experiments with electricity and frogs’ legs to sophisticated brain imaging technology. Going beyond the traditional mechanical view of human limits (like a car with a brick on its gas pedal, we go until the tank runs out of gas), he instead argues that a key element in endurance is how the brain responds to distress signals—whether heat, or cold, or muscles screaming with lactic acid—and reveals that we can train to improve brain response.
An elite distance runner himself, Hutchinson takes us to the forefront of the new sports psychology—brain electrode jolts, computer-based training, subliminal messaging—and presents startling new discoveries enhancing the performance of athletes today and shows how anyone can utilize these tactics to bolster their own performance—and get the most out of their bodies.
Being able to wear flats in November
I had a doctor’s appointment yesterday, and when I went to get dressed I realized that I could wear flats! It’s not very often that that happens in Calgary in November. So far our weather has been pretty mild. I figured I should take advantage of the nice weather and wear them for probably the last time in while. We have snow and cold weather forecasted for tomorrow. Winter will be here before I know it, but this week I definitely wanted to make sure that I embraced the nice weather.
Peanut Butter Chocolate RX Bar
This past week I tried RX Bars for the first time. I don’t know why it took me so long to try them because they’re so good! The peanut butter chocolate one is the perfect mix of sweet and savory with the dates, chocolate, and peanut butter. I have a big box of them in my Amazon cart just waiting to be bought once I have a few more things in there. It’s so nice to have a healthy quick snack that I can eat when I’m feeling hungry between meals. It’s so easy to want to go to cookies or chips, but I feel like I’m making a better decision with the RX Bars.
I don’t have much planned for the weekend. I’ll go pick up my grocery order and other than that stay close to hope with all of the snow that’s supposed to happen. I’m doing some sort of online Harry Potter escape room with a friend on Saturday. It’s all supposed to happen and Zoom so it’ll be interesting to see how it works. I hope you all have something fun to look forward to this weekend.
What are you currently reading? Favorite flavor of RX Bar?
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