Love & Lean List 04.03.23
Love and Lean is a list I curate every month of different foods, practices, etc that helped me be well this month. I don’t get paid for any links - I just want to save you a google search or two.
Since neither of us are fans of New Year’s Resolutions, my partner and I have more generally dubbed 2023 the Year of our Health. This means we are paying more attention to aches and pains - be they physical, mental, or emotional - and actively brainstorming and implementing sustainable ways to care for them.
Here are this month’s ~snippets~ of the wellness practice I am slowly cultivating. I started making…
Protein shakes. As a former college athlete, I was always told to grab a chocolate milk on the way out of weight room sessions. After a teammate told me she avoided them, I got it in my head that those milks were to blame for my [much, much more than] “Freshman Fifteen.” Several years later, I have protein in at least one meal a day, but apparently, that’s not enough.
My partner recently met with a nutritionist, who said the number one thing women often miss is protein. So, we made protein shakes our afternoon snack for one week, and I didn’t get a single afternoon headache. It’s always a bit of a trip when I learn there’s something to blame other than my post concussion syndrome for my symptoms, but at least I’ve gained a new tool for the arsenal. Slowly unlearning over here *crosses fingers.* On my physical therapist’s suggestion, I also started…
Hip yoga. I swear, I’m my PT’s favorite client. There’s always something new to diagnose or work through, whether from my soccer days, or my childhood. Lately, I’ve had to be relatively sedentary as I recover from my month long concussion treatment in January. This, combined with the wear and tear of two years of catering and a decade of sports have left my legs and feet prone to further injury. Apparently, your toes aren’t supposed to tingle when you forward bend… huh. So, through the Peleton app, I do ten minutes of hip yoga/stretching a day. Disclaimer: I hate yoga. I think it’s so boring… BUT, I’m bending farther, sitting deeper, and feeling better, so we’re sticking with it. I also prioritized…
Planting something. My best life would include having a yard I could weed every spring. When I go to my family home in Maryland, I spend most of my days knee deep in mulch and lawn care bags. In lieu of that (see: tiny New York apartment), we have plants all around our apartment, but they’ve all been around for years now. So, I bought a bag of dirt and used our old planting pots to grow something new. Full disclosure, I have yet to see anything out of my herb pot, but the marigolds are an inch tall and I could cry. Stay tuned. We’ve also been…
Watching Daisy Jones & The Six. My Spotify Wrapped informed me I have an unhealthy attachment to background noise (I was in the 94th percentile for minutes listened, thank you very much). What can I say… music helps my brain zero in and focus. Combine my love of music with a period piece about a rock band? Sheeeesh. It’s a tough watch (plenty of content warnings abound), but it’s been a nice escape for us.
What are four things you might love or lean on for your wellness this month?
As always,
Stephanie