Topping Up the First Week of June

In my inaugural post rounding up things that have caught my attention this week, I want to set the scene by setting the intention of topping up my week and yours by reading these posts. I have a lot of interests and share many of the anxieties others have about what is going on in my body, community, and the world, so this is a place to share things I've rounded up from the week.

As you can see from the image above, I made it to my first baseball game of the season, in San Francisco. It was a great game, and the Giants won, but more impactful, was this being the biggest outing I’ve had since my surgery two months ago. Progress!

I was thrilled to listen to Jonathan Stewart of EverGreen Adventures on the About IBD Podcast—his background with diabetes and colitis was intense and hearing about his surgical and health journey made him go all in on helping people with chronic diseases get outside. I’ve trained using the Autoimmune Athlete for years because when I set out to train for a triathlon or run a marathon, I couldn’t find anyone talking about the pitfalls and victories of training with an ostomy or Crohn’s disease.

Protein is a particular obsession of mine, as it is so critical to normalizing metabolism for people with autoimmune diseases and for recovery in endurance training. New studies are also showing how protein can be used for protection and energy production, which seems to reinforce my position. Check out this article on Outside by one of my favorite sports science journalists, Alex Hutchison, who also wrote one of my favorite recent reads, The Explorer’s Gene.