Food-wise: I am linking two very interesting articles.
One is a National Geographic article regarding what "ancestors" of different areas of the world eat. As you would suspect, what certain people eat in one country, as local food, is vastly different than what other people in a different country eat. This article is pointing out that "paleo" eating, as it is described, is inaccurate regarding what primitive people ate. Sometimes, people didn't eat meat for a long time, if meat was scarce. Also, the photos of the food varieties were inspiring--it makes you want to try new food.
Link: The Evolution of Diet
The second article is called, "You are What Your Bacteria Eat: The Importance of Feeding Your Microbiome." This is regarding The Gut Project and feeding the bacterias that live inside you. Different people have different percentiles of different types of bacteria in their gut and in and on their bodies. Since it is such a huge amount of bacteria, scientists are now talking about feeding our bodies not just as a single organism but as a complex system of organisms. Given that certain bacteria like certain types of food, the reasoning is that you can eat in a way that encourages good gut bacteria and discourages the bad gut bacteria. The problem is that we dont' really know the optimal percentiles of each type of gut bacteria. However, there seems to be a general consensus that eating sugar and flour are a bad thing and encourages the wrong things to happen in our bodies. In any case, I've felt encourage to eat a wider variety of foods after reading this article.
Link: You are What Your Bacteria Eat: The Importance of Feeding Your Microbiome
Regarding variety, here are some of the foods I ate in the last week: butternut squash, sweet potatoes, apples, cranberries, tangerine, pomegranate, soybean "nuts," peanuts, green pepper, onion, tomato, cottage cheese, beef, bacon, eggs, unflavored Greek yogurt, carrots, green beans, corn, peas, beets, honeydew melon, cantaloupe, Italian seasoning, curry seasoning, dried apricots, avocado, American cheese, milk, feta cheese, ...
Exercise-wise: I am still cautious about my knee, hurt in March, that is newly feeling so much better. My doctor told me: healing from injuries takes much longer than people think; several months longer than we think. I am still doing rehab knee exercises. But I am also slowly re-introducing exercises back into the routine. My latest re-introduction was my Warrior/Triangle vinyasa, which is a series of 5 yoga poses that flow into each other, which stretch the legs in various ways. Stretching is extreme exercise, so I proceed cautiously, not wanting to go backwards in my healing process. But so far, it's been good! I've been walking regularly with no problems either. So yes, just feeling mostly back to normal is incredibly motivational!
Other news: I'm not going to formally do January Jeans Club this year. I'm going to do it for myself mentally, as I always do, but I'm not going to be blogging about it. My reason for not doing it is that it takes too much time and energy out of this already busy holiday season. On top of everything else, It really wore me out last year. So if somebody else wants to host January Jeans Club, I'd be happy to steer people toward your blogging of it. And I'd also give you the links to last year's January Jeans Club postings--because a lot of this can be reused--you don't have to reinvent the wheel. So let me know...
Leaving you with a magical song that you definitely know:
Even my husband was singing along. :-)
Have a Delightful Day!