Best of 2023
Image courtesy of @boliviainteligente via Unsplash
Happy New Year!
A note to kick off the new year:
I’m grateful you’re all part of this small, but mighty newsletter. Really, it means a great deal to me. Thank you! Wishing you a fun, productive, loved-one filled, healthy new year!
Now on to this week’s post. Pop culture tells me people like ‘best of’ and ‘year in review’ lists. Here’s mine. In no particular order!
Best of 2023
1) The Bar Method, Noho (north of Houston!) studio
You can find me here 6 days per week. It’s hard, but it’s never felt like a chore. I feel great after every class, guaranteed. Enough said? At least for now…
Bar Method 2023 year in review
2) Smoothies
2023 was the year I brought smoothies back. It wasn’t that I’d sworn off them, it was that I started making oatmeal muffins and then overnight oats for breakfast instead. I like to chew and I typically prefer warm or room temperature foods. Once I learned of Dr. Brooke Goldner and decided to try her hyper-nourishment protocol, it was back to daily smoothies. I can’t, or wasn’t, getting veggies in early in the day without a smoothie. Green smoothies also have a unique ability to both boost and balance my energy.
green smoothie
3) Water
I started drinking 100 ounces of water daily this year, also part of my experiment with Dr. Goldner’s hyper-nourishment protocol. I don’t always reach my goal, but considering I was only drinking roughly half the water I’m drinking now, I’d say this is going well. I can feel the difference in my body. Those of us who consume caffeine may function best with even more than 100 ounces.
The first few days of adding this to my routine, I wasn’t as hungry. However, my system quickly got used to it and I was back to my typical volume of food. At home, I drink from a 24 ounce ball jar. Four fill-ups of the jar and I’ve reached my goal.
When I’m not home, the key to reaching my goal is carrying a water bottle, whether I’m taking class, out walking, or running errands for more than an hour. Hydro Flask is my go-to water bottle.
18 ounce Hydro Flask
4) Arugula
I’m sold on the power of cruciferous vegetables. Are you? Recently, I discovered that I don’t dislike arugula salad. This was great news.
Necessity is the mother of invention. I had a box of arugula in the fridge for smoothies, but it was dinner time and I wanted a salad. So I used the arugula. It wasn’t my first or second choice of salad green, but it was all I had. Since then I’ve been eating arugula salads regularly. I’ll share preparation tips in a future post.
5 ounce box of arugula with carrots, red onion, lemon juice, balsamic vinegar, 1/2 avocado mashed (not pictured)
5) Tea Dealers, Matchaful and coffee
I walked into Tea Dealers for the first time a few years ago. It’s a 5 minute walk from my apartment. After buying loose tea there for some months, I tried their matcha. I’ve been hooked ever since. The matcha latte I make at home with homemade almond milk and the matcha from Tea Dealers is my favorite. I also pick up matcha au laits at Matchaful after class. Matchaful is a plant-based cafe. Their baked goods are healthy-er in comparison to most.
Coffee has been in and out of my life since my first full-time job after college. I worked at a small video production company in Arlington, VA and one of the owners was a coffee snob. He bought nice beans and we made coffee in the afternoon. This was a formative coffee experience.
I love the taste of coffee, and I like caffeine. Truthfully, I think my body would do best without caffeine, but on a scale of harmful to not harmful, I think it’s fine. Some people’s bodies process the caffeine in coffee better than others. I’m not one of those people. I think I became a coffee person again this year because I like the coffee shop routine. I drink a cup (12 oz, soo not actually a cup) two or three times a week. My new favorite coffee shop is La Cabra, but La Colombe, Devocion, Joe Coffee, and Blue Bottle are all on my list.
Homemade matcha latte
6) Baggu medium nylon crescent bag
It fits my water bottle, barre socks, foldable bag for groceries, phone, wallet, lip balm, keys. It’s a crossbody. It doesn’t fall off my shoulder or hurt my hands. How a bag impacts my body’s mechanics is now important to me. I think years of yoga helped shape the way I feel about shoes and bags.
Baggu crescent bag
7) Theragun
I try to use it every morning for a few minutes before Bar Method class. I also gave one as a gift this year. I think foam rolling is just as good, maybe even better, but I have difficulty committing to foam rolling, so Theragun it is.
Theragun
8) Physical therapy
Life changing.
I like to feel good. All the time. With a body that is somehow flexible and tight at the same time, throw screens in, add curiosity about how my body works, and you may understand how strongly I feel about physical therapy. If you know my history with yoga, you may think I’m exaggerating about being tight. Here’s the conversation we have when I’m getting bodywork on the PT table. Me: “are your other clients this tight?” Joe (my PT): “No.”
Find a DPT with a personal development and results-oriented mindset who’s continually engaged in bettering their practice. I was fortunate enough to find that through a referral from one of my yoga teachers. I predict physical therapy is going to move from the thing we think about for older people and acute injury recovery to a requirement for all of us in counteracting our modern lifestyles. Give it 5-10 years and I think (hope!) we’ll see this shift. ;)
I don’t think pain is our fate. If you’re back [insert body part] hurts, try PT. If you can’t find a good DPT in your area, consider committing to a daily stretching routine. I started going to PT because of a femoral hernia, which I’m fairly confident was caused by lifting weights with a trainer at the gym. The two doctors I saw told me I should treat it with surgery. I decided to see what could be done without surgery. Surgery is of course an option, but it may not be the only option.
9) A planner
Getting to-do’s, goals, priorities, and work notes out of my head and into a book has been really helpful. No, I don’t want to do it on a computer. ;) I read The Bullet Journal Method a couple of years ago and I was sold. I don’t follow the method to the letter, but it provided a good foundation for getting started.
Brain dumps are tangibly more enjoyable when they are into a notebook I love. I find my notebooks at McNally Jackson in Soho. I also found a $7 pen I love at Goods for the Study. The first ink cartridge lasted for a couple of years at least. I just replaced it.
planner
10) Book: The Pleasure Trap
This book explains how and why we’re wired to eat. Once we understand these innate mechanisms, we can recognize patterns in our lifestyles that we may need to change, if we want to eat to live. This is a great book, written in 2006. I read it this summer and intended to write an entire blog post on it shortly after. Other subjects made their way to the front of the line first, but I still intend to write a post about this book.
11) Nutr machine
Is it loud? Yes. Does it fit well and look nice enough on my small, NYC apartment counter? Yes. Does the small size make it easy to clean? Yes.
I’m not recommending that everyone start making their own nut milk, but I was buying a more expensive almond milk because I didn’t want any weird filler ingredients, so making my own milk is a bit less expensive. There’s also nothing like the taste of fresh almond milk from soaked almonds.
raw almonds
I like my tea, and my coffee hot! I use this mug nearly every day for tea. I use a different travel mug for coffee because you can’t get the coffee smell out of a travel mug.
13) Whoop
Fitness data lovers unite. Data motivates me. To do something different, to keep going.
I was a Fitbit loyalist for ~15 years. I still use the Fitbit Aria scale. I didn’t take switching to a new tracker lightly. After joining Whoop’s 30-day free trial in November, I’m paying $18/month. I can see the cost reflected in the quality of the data. It took me a couple of months to get used to not seeing steps, but I’m now bought-in that “strain” is a better metric.
14) Soy
I doubled down on my soy intake to address hot flashes from menopause. It worked. I wrote an article about my experience with menopause and soy a few months ago. Perhaps I will repurpose it for the blog.
air fried tofu; shiso leaves and thai basil from garden
Meh of 2023
Worst was too strong a word for this thing. There’s only one on the list.
The salad bowl. I like the way raw food makes me feel. I’d estimate my diet is somewhere between 50-75% raw. I like making and eating giant salads. I eat these salads out of a mixing bowl. I don’t want to, but what are my options?! Are there any bowl artisans out there? Call me!
melamine mixing bowl
What’s next for 2024?
52 weeks of blogging in my 52nd year! I will strive for formatting posts in such a way that you can bounce around, take what you’d like, and leave the rest. Your feedback is always welcome.
What’s on your best of list for 2023? Let me know in the comments below!
