Thanks for checking out the Monthly Learning Roundup. These bite-sized, monthly posts are designed to give you a quick hit of interesting learnings and articles I came across last month.

It’s a motley assortment of tips, resources, and links that will hopefully give you a bit of inspiration for the upcoming month. Enjoy!

What I’m reading —

How to Configure Your iPhone to Work for You, Not Against You by Coach Tony

If you own an iPhone, this is a must-read article for you. So often we let the manufacturers and designers of our smart phones (who spend Billions of dollars to keep us hooked) dictate how we interact with our phones – this article helps you take back that power. Coach Tony does a great job laying out the steps and configuration from simple to complex. You don’t necessarily have to adopt all of the new configurations so it’s worth taking a look through the list to see which ones resonate with you first. If you like the first few configurations you make, try some other ones. Let’s shift the relationship we have with our phones one step at a time.

Books, documentaries, or podcast episodes that I enjoyed last month —

Becoming a Supple Leopard by Kelly Starrett & Glen Cordoza

This tome of a book is the holy grail for anyone looking to improve their mobility in athletics to day-to-day activities. I’ve been more conscious of my mobility of late after starting heavier weights for my olympic lifts. It’s become (painfully) clear that my lack of mobility in my hamstrings, calves, and ankles limit my ability to stabilize and be more explosive. With the help of this book and weekly stretch classes at my gym, I’m getting better. I’m also getting a better idea of how to better brace my spine for day-to-day activities and use “smashing” and “flossing” tools like foam rollers and acu-balls to loosen my muscles. There’s a long way to go before I can say I’m more mobile but I’m happy I’m taking the first step now in my early 30s.

Quotes that are inspiring me —

Learning is the only thing the mind never exhausts, never fears, and never regrets.

— Leonardo Da Vinci

Behaviour change of the month —

Time-Restricted Feeding

Based on recent research on mice, time-restricted feeding (TRF) has shown to lead to weight loss and lean muscle gain. There’s increasing science out there that your body performs important regenerative activites during a fasting period and we’re often short-changing this function when we eat later in the evening.

The gist of TRF is that you restrict the time of day that you eat food according to your circardian rhythm. A typical fast would begin at sundown and continue for 13-hours. So, if you were to begin your fast at 6pm, your next intake of food should be at 7am.

I’m trying it out for the next 12 weeks to see if TRF makes a difference in my biomarkers. It’ll be a bit of a shift for me as I tend to eat later in the evening (7-9pm) but I’m guessing this new rhythm will help me feel more rejuvanated in the morning & energized throughout the day.

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Featured image by Hutomo Abrianto.

As always, thanks for checking out this Monthly Learnings Roundup.