TLT (tofu lettuce and tomato) melt on a GF tortilla, side of carrot ginger slaw at one of my favorite local eateries. Went here recently with a friend just prior to seeing the new Avengers movie.
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Lots of good reads on the internet lately! Plus a few photos of life lately to illustrate as always. Also, following recent tradition, there are a few pop culture-y things at the tail end of the post that I think play into issues of the body in mainstream consciousness. These days it’s been a whole lot of getting into the swing of things. Letting the dust continue to settle from the end of Spring semester and looking ahead to projects and endeavors that are pretty much packing my summer into a solid mass of busyness. I’m not complaining–I’d much rather have my time filled up, I love staying busy and having a somewhat fast paced schedule. More on that to come. For now, some reading!
Lacy Davis’s article “My Job is to Stand in my Strength” pretty much sums it up right now. That feeling of early summer listlessness, the inevitable shifts and changes it brings and standing in strength through all of that with your health in mind and your body cared for.
“Standing in my strength, to me, means the acknowledgement that I not only have the power to make positive and negative choices, but also that I have the power to enjoy my life or not. When I say “I wanted to do XYZ (let’s say XYZ is write) but instead I did ABC (cruised Facebook) because I juuuust couldn’t help it and now I feel terrible about my action”, well- that just downplays the fact that I am the one that chooses the things that I do and also that my choices help me to live a life of agency.”
A great read that definitely helped me come to terms with some of my life’s bustle and recent world events. Food for thought, as always.
Lots of time spent on the mat lately. I’ve been getting better about practicing a few things regularly: stretching after cardio and flossing my teeth. This is an example of the former.
Of course, there are a plethora of books I’ve got in mind for non-academic summer reading. This is certainly one of them (along with Kate Mulgrew’s and Sally Mann’s new memoirs, plus anything and everything by Tana French, and a Jo Nesbo novel a friend gave me). I think a lot about singledom and spinsterhood as a lady bachelor. Looking forward to reading a whole book on the topic.
Smoothie bowl of champions.
Sayward Rebhal’s “Of Green Juice and Gin — AKA, Why I think we all Need to Chill the Eff Out Around Food” is pretty much perfection as far as I’m concerned. This post plays quite nicely off of the Super Strength Health article as it also deals with strength, particularly in light of food choices and quotidian decisions surrounding eating. As you likely already know as a reader of this blog, I love food politics. This is certainly the most applicable issue to combining the personal with the political: sometimes it’s just as radical to eat a cupcake as it is to eat a salad. I’ve been coming to terms with that lately, and trying to give my body what it needs while maintaining a healthy relationship with things like desserts.
Sayward describes her food philosophy in a mini manifesto:
“I believe that the healthiest, highest quality food is fresh, local, whole, and organic. I believe that it is unrealistic to expect to eat the healthiest, highest quality food 100% of the time, and holistically healthy people are pretty much okay with that — because holistically healthy people have learned to chill the eff out around food.
I believe that the mental anguish you feel over eating the cookie is infinitely more damaging to your physical health than the actual cookie itself.
I believe in eating foods which make your body feel good, and avoiding foods which make it feel bad. Excessive cookies don’t make anyone feel good, but occasional cookies are delightful.
If you can truly make choices based on the way that the food will make your body feel, then it’s hard to go wrong. But eating this way requires tuning in to your intuitive self, which takes practice. More importantly, it also requires NOT scrutinizing and over-analyzing every little burp, bump, hiccup, and bad day — because that sort of hyper-focus will only breed anxiety. There is a balance there, and that balance is the sweet spot.
The sweet spot can only be found when you chill the eff out around food.”
Spot on if you ask me.
Pretty typical work lunch these past few days: salad loaded with veggies over local romaine with a ginger/sesame/miso dressing I made the other night; magic beans; red quinoa; cold echinacea tea; raw almonds; orange.
As I mentioned, I saw the Avengers: Age of Ultron last week. Great flick, but I keep muddling over the whole Black Widow issue. There have been a couple of good articles about her (bodily) portrayal, most notably Linda Holmes’s article for the NPR blog Monkey See and this article from Bitch Media that I just stumbled on this morning. Interestingly, they use the same photo of Widow to illustrate both posts.
Have a great Thursday, all!
