October 23, 2017 · 1:00 am

How Meditation Helped Me Soothe a Pulled Muscle

I woke up feeling stiff and sore one day last week. While I’m not still sure what caused it, it hurt to move my head in certain ways when I got up that morning.

A few years ago I experienced a more painful version of this injury after sleeping in an odd position, so this time I didn’t delay in following the home treatments that had worked so well back then.

It was better to treat it immediately than to do nothing wait for it to slowly get worse like it did last time.

The Cycle of Pain and Muscle Spasms

Here’s the problem with this kind of muscle strain: the pain, stiffness, and limited range of motion feed into each other in a cycle that can be tricky to break.

The pain made my muscles in my neck and shoulder tense up and spasm. This was even more true in the evening when I was tired and feeling more sore than I had when the day began.

My muscles contracting made the strain hurt even more because I didn’t have the full range of motion in that part of my body.  Positions that felt good for my muscles could be uncomfortable for my spine, and vice versa.

Not having the full range of motion in my neck and shoulder also made it difficult to truly relax. It was hard to turn my head in certain ways, for example, and sleeping in some positions was simply impossible.

Consciously trying to relax is also hard to do in this situation because I was so focused on how uncomfortable I was feeling.

The Treatment

One of the first things I did for myself after taking some over-the-counter pain relief medication was to find my microwave-actived heating pad. It’s a piece of cloth that’s filled with magical little beads. I don’t know what the beads are made of, but they warm up beautifully  and can be wrapped around any sore part of a body. I especially enjoy the gentle pressure that this heating pad provides since sitting or lying in certain positions were simply not happening for me at that point.

The medicine and heating pad were temporary fixes, though. What I really needed to do was to break the cycle of tension and pain.

That’s where meditating came in very handy. While the heating pad and medicine were doing their work of temporarily making me feel better, I opened up my meditation app and started using a session in it called “Body Scan.”

“Body Scan” is a guided meditation program that begins with asking you to focus on your breathing. After you’ve done that for a minute or two, it has you methodically relax every single part of your body beginning with your scalp and working your way down your body until even your toes have gotten some attention. If you feel any sensation in a part of your body, you’re supposed to take note of it without labelling it as good or bad.

This is a lot harder to do than you might imagine when the sensation in that area is objectively painful! It is an important part of the process, though.

I’d never thought I’d spend so much time thinking about everything from my ears to my fingers to the small of my back, but it really does work if you focus on the speaker’s voice and follow her instructions.

This wasn’t a quick fix. With that being said, it did help me to relax some tense muscles that really needed to be soothed.

Finding Relief

Time is by far the biggest healer of injuries like this, of course, but I also noticed another feedback loop developing that was much more positive than the first one.

Every time I meditated, my muscled relaxed a little more than they had in the previous session.

As they relaxed, my pain levels dropped even after I cut back or  fully stopped using medication and only relied on heating pads for relief.

As my pain levels dropped, I was able to move my head in ways that had been difficult the day before.

As my range of motion slowly improved again, my muscles spasmed less.

I have no idea how – or even if – this would work for more severe or longterm types of pain. It was a nice bit of relief for a temporary injury, though, and I was very grateful for it once I got into the habit of meditating more than once a day during he duration of this injury.

How has meditating improved your life lately?

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October 21, 2017 · 1:00 am

Suggestion Saturday: October 21, 2017

Here is this week’s list of short stories, articles, and other links from my favourite corners of the web.

How Reading Rewires Your Brain for More Intelligence and Empathy. I wonder if more intelligent and empathic people have a higher chance of finding pleasure in reading, too?

The Sorrow and Shame of the Accidental Killer. Wow, what a story. It must be excruciating to live with that much guilt over something you didn’t do on purpose and would give anything to fix.

On Presumed Innocence, Believing Victims, and Keeping the Legal Balance via CeeArrBookNerd‬. This is one of the most important articles I’ve read this week. I can’t agree with it more.

My Mum – from Schizophrenia to Dementia in 60 years via AmandaGreenUK‬. When one member of a family is mentally ill, it can affect everyone one around them. This blogger’s story was quite interesting.

First Evidence That Online Dating Is Changing the Nature of Society. This was fascinating. For any of my readers who don’t already know this, I met my spouse online.

Minimalism and Emails via WriterDann‬. Oh, I really need to start doing this. My inbox always gets stuffed.

From Why Are More American Teenagers Than Ever Suffering From Severe Anxiety?

Jake was right — his parents didn’t understand. Jake didn’t really understand, either. But he also wasn’t good at verbalizing what he thought he knew: that going to school suddenly felt impossible, that people were undoubtedly judging him, that nothing he did felt good enough. “All of a sudden I couldn’t do anything,” he said. “I was so afraid.”

From Don’t You Worry, You Aliens:

There isn’t a virus. He’s pretty sure of that. The radio, when the BBC news had come back every day for a week, before ceasing once more, had mentioned rumours of a virus motivating some of the big “refugee trains” that had got stuck in the West Country. But nobody who’d left from round here had been ill. Nobody who’d come through had been ill.

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October 19, 2017 · 1:00 am

What I’m Not Willing to Give Up to Become Healthier

Over the last several years, I’ve started following multiple blogs and Twitter accounts that focus on fitness, nutrition, and wellness. I’ve made a lot of adjustments to my diet and lifestyle in order to make it healthier:

  • Lifting weights a few times a week
  • Getting a minimum of 12,000 steps a day
  • No longer drinking fruit juice
  • Switching from rice milk to almond milk to cut calories and added sugar in my diet.
  • Gradually increasing how many servings of vegetables I eat every day. I always ate enough fruit, but now I eat the recommended number of vegetable servings, too.

There have been many times when these sites suggested an ingredient tweak, a new recipe, or a workout routine that ended up working wonderfully for me. Some of them required a period of adjustment in the beginning, but I was soon able to adapt to them by keeping an open mind on changes that sounded even mildly interesting.

With that being said, there are a few things that I’m never going to stop eating because of how much I love them. I’m sharing them with you today to remind you that you don’t have to give up your favourite foods either. With an adjustment in how you make them or how often you serve them, anything can be part of a healthy diet.

 

Spaghetti

A couple of years ago, I began stumbling across articles about people who peeled vegetables like zucchini into noodle shapes and then served them with spaghetti sauce on top to reduce the calorie count of this dish. They called those noodles “zoodles,” and some of the sites I follow posted multiple entries about different ways to prepare and serve them.

I think it’s great that they found a way to make a lighter version of spaghetti, but I will never make that same switch. Spaghetti is one of those meals that I really look forward to eating in the autumn and winter because of how much I love it.

While I was perfectly willing to switch to whole wheat noodles and replace some of the meat in my sauce with extra chopped vegetables, I’m only interested in eating spaghetti if it has real noodles in it.

 

Maple Syrup

Yes, there are low-calorie, sugar-free syrup substitutes out there that taste okay. I’m glad that people who are diabetic or who watch their calories closely can enjoy something similar to it without raising their blood sugar or eating more than they should.

I love maple syrup so much, though, that I’d much rather enjoy the real thing sparingly than have pancakes every week with imitation syrup on them. The sugar and calorie content in maple syrup is high, so I generally only have it a couple of times a month during the cold season.

When I do treat myself with this meal, I serve it with homemade whole wheat pancakes and sliced fruit. This makes this dish more filling and nutritious. The fact that I have it so sparingly also makes it even more special when I do decide to make it.

 

Sweets

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts here, I cut back on the added sugars in my diet a few months ago. Chocolate and other sweets are a rare treat for both physical and mental health reasons. When I do indulge in them, I go straight for the good stuff.

If I’m going to eat chocolate, it will be something out of the ordinary. Most chocolate bars out there contain milk ingredients, but some of the speciality ones are surprisingly safe for me. I like dark, rich chocolate that satisfies you with a few small squares of it. Often I’ll choose dark chocolate that has nuts or dried fruit mixed into it. I’ve even found one brand of “milk” chocolate that’s safe for me. It’s specially marketed to people who are vegan or allergic to milk, and it’s delicious.

Some of the bars I love the most are between $5 and $10 each. Since I only eat them a few times a year, that splurge is more than worth it.

My other big indulgence is candy corn. I currently have a few containers of it squirrelled away in my cupboards now that it’s available again. I’m going to try to make them last through the winter. It’s not something I’ll eat every day, but it is something I’ll nibble on now and again.

What Do You Refuse to Give Up?

You don’t have to give up everything you love in order to become healthier. In fact, cutting all of the treats in life is a great way to crash and burn in a few days when your self control runs out.

Maybe some of the things I mentioned today are foods that you’re also determined to fit into a healthy diet. If so, cool! If not, what small changes are you able to make to your diet and daily habits? What favourite foods or drinks are you never going to be willing to give up?

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October 16, 2017 · 1:00 am

Tailored Book Recommendations Are the Best

The Chronicles of Narnia was one of the first series I remember being recommended to me. My generous uncle gave me all seven books in that series at once when I was in elementary school.

As soon as I read The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, I began quietly touching the back of every closet to see if it contained a wall behind the clothing hanging in there or if it would somehow lead me somewhere interesting. I was a little young for the later, darker instalments at the time, but I loved the first few stories immediately and soon grew up enough to enjoy the rest, too.

One of the things I loved the most about the magic in that world was how unpredictable it was. Aslan didn’t always show up when you expected him to, and he didn’t necessarily meet my expectations of what the creator of a planet would be like either. I spent more time than I care to admit memorizing little details about Narnia and wondering what it would be like to go there for real.

When my uncle heard how much I adored his gift, he came up with something even better for the next round of gift-giving: copies of The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy.  The Hobbit was an instant hit with me. I loved Bilbo’s cautious nature and the exciting details of his trek to The Lonely Mountain. It was one of my first brushes with characters who were in real danger when they went on an adventure. This was a more treacherous world than the one the Pevensie children knew.  There were no adults around to save them, and I was never entirely certain if Bilbo or his companions would make it home safely again.

Not only were there carnivorous trolls in The Hobbit, Bilbo also had to face conniving Gollum (whose backstory and identity wasn’t revealed until The Fellowship of the Ring), gigantic spiders who also wanted to eat him, and many other perils.

My uncle knew what he was doing when he recommended these stories to me. The basic rules of magic were different in each universe because one was written for a younger audience than the other was, but they were both filled with creatures whose very existence tickled my imagination.

Tailor Your Recommendations

Suggesting the right book for someone is kind of like giving them clothing. Knowing the right size (or genre, in this case) will go a long way in helping you pick something out, but there are many other small details that matter as well. You have to know someone incredibly well in order to have any chance at all of giving them something they’ll want to use or read over and over again.

There have been times when I’ve recommended books to people who ended up not enjoying those tales at all. In other cases, I’ve had books recommended to me that didn’t quite fit my tastes.

Other than obvious errors like writing two-dimensional characters or using cliches excessively, so much of what goes into a great story is subjective. You might be bored stiff by plot lines that I love, and I might feel the same way about the stories that someone else could spend all day reading without ever growing tired of them.

So it came as a huge surprise to me when a friend recently recommended a book that I’m loving so far: The Utterly Uninteresting and Unadventurous Tales of Fred, the Vampire Accountant by Drew Hayes.

Fred was a completely ordinary man who was turned into a vampire as an adult. He gained strength and became a physically healthier version of himself, but he otherwise remained the same shy and quiet man he’d always been.

No, he didn’t sparkle in the sunlight, seduce teenage girls, radically change his habits, or suddenly have the nearly-supernatural ability to conquer the world. (There’s nothing wrong with liking any of these tropes, of course, but they’re not the kind of storylines I generally want to read about).

Honestly, other than the fact that he drank blood and was now allergic to daylight, Fred reminded me of myself and of a few of my friends. He had a kind soul and a sharp wit. Sometimes he worried more than he should. He wasn’t the life of the party, although he was incredibly likeable and charming once you got to know him beyond his day job and strange affliction.

This is the kind of vampire fiction I will never get enough of. It has a dry sense of humour and a realistic take on what it might be like to become a vampire but still have nearly all of the problems from your old life following you around.

Will you like this story? I don’t know. There are some readers who I’m sure will stop a few pages in once they realize that Fred is breaking nearly all of the rules that have ever been made about what a vampire is supposed to be like. It’s completely okay for them to do that, and I hope they find what they’re looking for elsewhere.

When I recommend this tale to people in the future, I’m going to save it for folks who enjoy unconventional monsters, sarcasm, and the realization that becoming a vampire isn’t always all it’s cracked up to be. There’s an audience out there for every book and a book that’s perfect for even the most selective reader if you look long enough for them.

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October 14, 2017 · 1:00 am

Suggestion Saturday: October 14, 2017

Here is this week’s list of short stories, articles, recipes, and other links from my favourite corners of the web.

Under One Roof. My family moved around a bit when I was a kid. Every time we packed up to go to another house, I secretly wished to find the belongings of the previous inhabitants in its attic or crawl space.This story reminded me of that memory.

Ten Awesome Things My Wife DIdn’t Have Growing Up in America via queerxfamily. It is so interesting to read posts like this that compare small differences between countries. I wish I could find more of them out there.

Diwali Over the Years via rachnaparmar. This was such an interesting explanation of this holiday. I didn’t know anything about Diwali when I first found this post, but it seems like it’s a lot of fun.

Black Forest Naked Cake. I’m sharing this with you in honour of Oktoberfest. If I were going to celebrate it, I’d make this version of black forest cake for sure.

My Dual Identity via ‪ManisMadness‬. This was a good post.

How Science Found a Way to Help Coma Patients Communicate. Mind-blowing is the only word I can think of to explain this article. Wow!

From Return of the City-State:

If you’d been born 1,500 years ago in southern Europe, you’d have been convinced that the Roman empire would last forever. It had, after all, been around for 1,000 years. And yet, following a period of economic and military decline, it fell apart. By 476 CE it was gone.

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October 12, 2017 · 1:00 am

Mindfulness on a Rainy Day

Today’s post is going to be a little shorter than normal. Why write more words than you have to?

As I mentioned last week, the weather here in Ontario has been unusual in all sorts of different ways over the last few years. We have finally seemed to drift away from the summer-like heat of September and early October, but we’re continuing to experience the same kinds of heavy rainstorms we did this past spring and summer.

Yesterday was a particularly drizzly day. We didn’t get many millimetres of rain, but it did rain off and on so frequently that it felt like the world was always going to be this damp. What made me giggle about this thought was that only a few days ago I felt like the world was going to remain hot and humid forever.

Oh, how things change. Sometimes it happens when we least expect it, too.

I stood in front of my window and watched the rain fall. There weren’t any particular thoughts rolling through my mind in that moment. It was relaxing to watch the people, cars, and bicyclists pass by on the ground below me.

Suddenly, I remembered a story from my childhood that had to do with rainy days and the things people do on them.

Old Memories Surfaced

When I was a child, I loved going out for long walks in the rain. My mother didn’t know this at the time, but I used to collect some of the earthworms that crawled onto the sidewalks when the ground became too soggy to hold them.

Some of those worms came home with me if I thought they weren’t strong enough to survive outside or if I hadn’t already picked up my fair share of them during the current storm. Sometimes people accidentally stepped on worms on the sidewalk. It made me sad to see them injured. I tried my best to help out the ones I could. There was an aquarium filled with soil and plants in my bedroom where they could live safely, so that’s where I put them.

A year or two later, my family moved a few thousand miles away. One of the many things we did before we packed up the moving van and began a new chapter of our family’s adventure in the same state my siblings and I were born in was to take that aquarium and dump the soil (and earthworms!) into our backyard. I assume we repotted the plants as well, but I don’t remember that part of that day.

It wasn’t until all of the soil had been dumped out that mom noticed there were an extremely large number of plump, healthy worms wiggling around in it. I believe I told her what I’d been doing at that point and that she was surprised by it. One of my strongest memories of that day was feeling surprised that she hadn’t noticed what I’d been up to. I’d always assumed that she had ways of knowing everything her kids did!

It’s funny how a storm can dredge up half-forgotten moments like that. I hadn’t thought about that memory in years.

Mindfulness Through It All

The rain continued to fall yesterday. I saw people scurrying on the street below. They stayed close to the buildings and other covered parts of the street. Maybe that was why I only saw a handful of opened umbrellas being used down there? The sidewalk was quite damp, but there weren’t too many big puddles on the ground.

One of the things I appreciate the most about practicing mindfulness is how it frees me to enjoy little moments like this one.

I smiled at the memories that cropped up in my mind. When they faded away again, I returned to watching what was happening on the street.

There’s something beautiful about living in the moment like that. I was grateful for the rain and for the time to relive a happy, old memory before returning to the present day.

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October 9, 2017 · 1:00 am

Dual Citizens Get Two Thanksgivings

Seven years ago, I became a Canadian citizen. There are many things I love about being a citizen of both Canada and the United States. Having the excuse to celebrate Thanksgiving twice every year is definitely part of that list.

Yes, this is blog post about food.

No, this isn’t about turkey. Don’t tell the rest of the omnivores out there, but I’m actually not a big fan of turkey. It isn’t something my spouse and I eat on Thanksgiving the vast majority of the time. If it disappeared from the traditional menu altogether, I honestly wouldn’t miss it.

While there are many other foods I’d happily eat during this holiday, my ideal Thanksgiving dinner could easily be comprised of nothing but the three dishes below. I am only particular about how one of them is made for reasons that I’ll explain later on this post.

The first mandatory dish for Lydia’s ideal Thanksgiving is mashed potatoes with gravy.

Yes, I will love them if they came from dehydrated potato flakes and powdered gravy.

Yes, I will love them if they came from a frozen bag of mashed potatoes (so long as there aren’t any milk products in them) and if the gravy was an everyday ground beef gravy.

Yes,I will love them if they came from real potatoes that were peeled, boiled, and mashed to perfection and if the gravy was a fancy one made from drippings, broth, spices, and flour moments before it was brought to the table.

In short, there is no wrong way to make mashed potatoes and gravy. As long as eating it won’t make me physically ill, I will enjoy them however they are prepared. Mashed potatoes are the ultimate comfort food.

The second mandatory dish for Lydia’s ideal Thanksgiving is pie.

We’ve had store-bought blueberry, apple, or lemon meringue pie for the last few Thanksgivings at my house, but any kind of pie will do.

Yes, I will love them if they’re homemade from the finest organic ingredients by someone who thought about nothing but happy thoughts while rolling out the dough.

Yes, I will love them if they’re store-bought, generic, and a little squished from being carried home with lots of other groceries.

Yes, I will love them if they have lemon meringue, strawberries, blueberries, cherries, peaches, pumpkins, squash, or just about any other kind of pie-friendly filling in them.

If you provide some non-dairy ice cream to go along with the pie, I’ll be absolutely thrilled. This is not a requirement, though, and I actually didn’t bother to eat ice cream with the apple pie my spouse and I enjoyed this Thanksgiving.

I am not particular about this dessert. The fact that it exists at all will almost certainly make me perfectly happy. All pie is delicious pie.

The final mandatory dish for Lydia’s ideal Thanksgiving is angel eggs.

You probably know them as devilled eggs instead. When I was a child, my parents renamed a few foods that had the word “devil” in them like devilled eggs (we called them angel eggs) or devil’s food cake (we called it chocolate cake). Why they did that is a long, complicated story, but when I grew up I never made the switch from referring to them as angel eggs to devilled eggs like the rest of the world does.

They were known as angel eggs when I was three, and I will still call them that when I’m a hundred and three. This is where I suddenly become stubborn and picky about my food.

No, I will not call them devilled eggs. You can call them whatever you wish, but my mind was made up on this topic very early in life.

No, I do not want store-bought angel eggs. I’d honestly rather pretend like such a thing was never invented at all.

No, I do not want anyone who doesn’t know our family recipe to attempt to make them no matter how delicious they think their version of it may be. My mother’s angel eggs are the best ones in the world. Not only are they the perfect blend of ingredients, they remind me of some very happy childhood memories.

Happy Thanksgiving

Now that you know exactly where my loyalties lie, Happy Thanksgiving to all of my Canadian readers. I hope this post made you smile.

If you live somewhere else in the world, this Canadian officially gives you permission to borrow our holiday if you’re in the mood for a festive meal today. Feel free to include your favourite foods in them, too, and to ignore the ones you may not like no matter how traditional they may be.

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October 7, 2017 · 1:00 am

Suggestion Saturday: October 7, 2017

Happy Thanksgiving to all of my Canadian readers! I’ve decided to split up my holiday-themed links between the dates when Canadians and Americans celebrate this holiday since most of my readers come from one of these two countries.

I was originally planning to put a traditional Thanksgiving picture in this post, but this photo was too funny to pass over. I have no idea what the model in it is doing, but I hope that all of your squash are cooked and preferably made into delicious pies this weekend.

Without further ado, here is this week’s list of recipes, memories, blog posts, and other links from my favourite corners of the web.

Thanksgiving Cake via NiloufersKtchn. Ooh, this looks good!

Thanksgiving in Germany. Had my ancestors remained in Germany, I might be getting ready for Erntedank instead this weekend. It was quite interesting to read about how this holiday is observed over there.

5 Ways to Have a Sustainable Thanksgiving. I especially liked the idea of turning leftovers into soup.

Vegan Pumpkin Spice Cake. Desserts are one of my favourite parts of Thanksgiving dinner. Can you tell?

Talking Turkey: Thanksgiving Traditions and a Sperm Donor via AmberLeventry. I love the fact that this blogger is so interested in helping her children develop relationships with their donor siblings. What a wonderful way to celebrate Thanksgiving.

Getting Ready for the Holidays: Eating Pie on a Weight-Loss Diet. While I don’t worry about counting calories or eating a healthy diet on Thanksgiving, this post has some great tips for reducing your calorie count if this is something you’ll be thinking about when you decide what kind of dessert to have.

A Special Reason Why I Celebrate Thanksgiving in Mexico via fabiolaofmexico. This sounds like so much fun.

Perfectly Nerdy Thanksgiving Feast Ideas: A Recipe Round-Up. The fact that this blogger found a way to include everything from Harry Potter to Alice in Wonderland to The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe was impressive.

Perpetual and Universal Peace: A Message of Thanksgiving in 1814 via ‪18thCand19thC‬. I found it fascinating to see how people viewed this holiday 200+ years ago.

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October 5, 2017 · 1:00 am

The Endless Summer of 2017: A Review

Title: The Summer That Refused to End: What Really Happened to Ontario in 2017

Author: Gaia Terra

Publisher: Cosmos

Release Date: June 21, 2017

End Date: Unknown

Rating: 3 Earths out of 5

Review:

Just when you thought summer had ended…it came back for more!

The summer of 2017 definitely started out innocently enough. Without digging too much into the backstory here since it isn’t strictly necessary to know in order to enjoy this instalment, every season has been full of surprises for us these last few years. None of them have been particularly normal. After a strangely warm winter and cold, rainy spring, I was looking forward to seeing what the weather would do next. It was so hot and dry during the summer of 2016 that I honestly had no idea what to expect for 2017. It was nice to see this summer begin so gently. I felt like we were able to reclaim some of the mild spring days I would have loved in April or May once they decided to pop up in June instead.

Wow, were there bumps in the road along the way, though. Yes, we had about the same number of the heat waves I was expecting to find. We also had far more rain than was usual, especially in the months of July and August when it is usually much drier here. I certainly didn’t mind the extra precipitation, and I don’t think our crops did either. What did bother me was how it ended. Normally, daytime highs of 30 Celsius (86 Fahrenheit for the American fans out there) have mostly faded away by mid September. When this kept happening over and over again even as we galloped from the end of September to the beginning of October I was beyond perplexed. I’m all for mixing the seasons a little bit during the transitions between them, but shouldn’t summer gracefully give way to autumn at a certain point in the plot?

I did love the rain, though, and am grateful for how often summer fell back onto this device when her other tricks weren’t working out as well as she had hoped. Once she decides to pass the baton onto autumn, I hope her predecessor will continue this tradition for the next few months. There is nothing quite like a rainy autumn afternoon to set the mood when you’re reading a scary book or trying to finish cooking Thanksgiving dinner. Speaking of Thanksgiving, summer, is there any chance you’ll be retiring before then?

By now my readers are probably wondering if I’d recommend the summer of 2017 to them. There certainly were plenty of upbeat moments during it, especially for those of us who love a strong thunderstorm. What it really boils down to is how much time you’re willing to invest in such a thing. This one was a little long for my tastes, although I can see how it would appeal to true connoisseurs of this season.

Previoius posts in this series:

A Review of Today’s Rainy Weather

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October 2, 2017 · 1:00 am

What I Love About Weightlifting

Last Thursday I blogged about the parts of weighlifting that I hate.

Now it’s time to dig into all of the reasons why I love this form of exercise. Today’s post will be longer than the one that was published here last week because there are far more things I enjoy about bodybuilding than there are things I don’t.

If I had known how much I was going to enjoy it, I would have started doing it much sooner in life!

Growing Stronger

I know I’ve mention this several times before in previous posts, but it is incredible to see how much easier all kinds of tasks are when you’re physically capable of lifting heavier loads.

The first time I noticed I was growing stronger happened when my groceries began to feel lighter. Since I don’t own a car, I need to carry home everything I buy. There was a time a few years ago when I had to plan ahead for shopping trips that involved buying a few litres of milk, canned goods, and other items that weren’t light.

Often I would break this errand up into two trips to make it easier on me. If I had several heavy items on my list that had to be purchased immediately, sometimes I’d also need to pause and rest for a minute before picking up my load again.

I slowly became capable of bigger loads over longer distances, though, and now I rarely think about what I’m putting in my shopping cart as far as its weight goes. Unless I’m sick or injured, I can carry home just about any combination of ingredients I might need for my small household.

This spilled over into other ordinary parts of daily life, too, like bringing a bottle of detergent and a large hamper full of a few loads of dirty clothing and from the laundry room. I was always able to lift that stuff, but it definitely feels lighter than it used to.

Having More Energy

When I began working on this post this past weekend, I’d just arrived home from a long, brisk walk outdoors that lasted about an hour. The weather has finally grown cooler here in Toronto, and I was soaking up every bit of mild air I could before I jumped into writing.

There were many things I was hoping would happen when I first began lifting weights, but having more energy wasn’t one of them. In fact, I didn’t think about it much at all back then.

It wasn’t until I began to feel more energetic that I realized how much my life was changing for the better. I was never so tired that I thought something might be medically wrong with me. This was a mild symptom of my fairly inactive lifestyle back then that I didn’t really notice until it began to fade away.

It simply never occurred to me that I could get a burst of energy from exercising or that someday I wouldn’t be so sleepy every night before bed or after a long, brisk walk.

Sleeping Better

Speaking of sleep, it is much easier for me to lie down and get a good night’s rest when I’m in my regular routine of lifting weights.

Exercise in general does wonders for my ability to fall asleep quickly and stay asleep all night, but weightlifting in particular has had a positive impact on how I feel every night when I go to bed and every morning when I wake up again.

I have no idea why or how this works, but I notice a reduction in the quality of my sleep every time I have to temporarily take a break from lifting weights due to illness or injury. It always feels great to get back into my regular routine and then begin falling asleep quickly at night as a result of that.

Losing Inches

While weight loss was one of my original goals when I first began working out again, I didn’t realize how much my body would begin to change as a result of lifting weights in ways that had nothing to do with how much I weighed.

This is another one of those situations where I wish I’d snapped pictures, taken measurements, and otherwise kept a closer eye on where I started out and what I look like today.

I didn’t need those measurements to start noticing a difference in the way my clothing fit, though. Pants that had been a little tight in the past suddenly began to feel looser even during times when my weight itself wasn’t changing at all. The same thing happened to a few other articles of clothing as well.

A pound of muscle is much denser than a pound of fat. Over time even small changes in what percentage you have of each can lead to big changes in how you look and feel.

As my body fat percentage slowly began to drop, I started to look and feel better in clothing I’d owned for ages.

The interesting thing about this is how my goals have shifted over time. The fitter I become, the bigger my goals become for the future. I rarely think about how much I weigh anymore. There are far more interesting goals to pursue these days.

Reducing the Risks of Certain Diseases

I’m going to be honest with you here. This wasn’t something I thought a lot of about when I first began lifting weights. It’s a benefit that I only realized was happening after I’d gotten into the habit of including this form of exercise in my regular routine and began reading about the benefits of staying active in general.

With that being said, I do have relatives who were diagnosed with certain diseases that have been shown to happen less often among people who lift weights and otherwise exercise regularly. There are no guarantees in life, but I’m glad that I’m helping to reduce my risk of developing these diseases.

Nobody can choose what genetic risk factors they were born with, but you can control many other risk factors like diet, alcohol consumption, and exercise.

Seeing What My Body Is Capable Of

I was never one of those kids who excelled at or looked forward to gym class. The schools I attended focused very heavily on team sports for physical education. While that may have been motivating for students who enjoyed and were good at basketball, football, or volleyball, I sure wasn’t one of them.

One of the best parts of becoming an adult has been gaining the freedom to explore many different types of exercise and discovering what actually appeals to me. It has been especially interesting to see what my body is capable of as far as weightlifting goes.

I never would have imagined that I’d love lifting weights or that I’d become as strong as I have. There are so many goals I still want to accomplish, and I’m looking forward to seeing what I’ll be able to do next.

If you haven’t begun lifting weights yet, I can’t encourage you enough to give it a try. It is such a fantastic way to get into better shape and, as I hope this post has showed you, the benefits of it can affect so many different parts of your life.

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