February Notes & Notables

All the things I loved in Feb: food, habits, practices, products & more <3

Happy Mondayyyy 🤎 It’s the last week of February — and I’m so excited to start this new monthly series recapping everything I loved about the month. I hope it serves as a space where you can take what inspires you, find tools to implement into your life, & learn some health nuggets along the way to better your days.

Let’s get right into February’s Most Notable 😌

1. Rucking

A Q1 health goal of mine was to start adding rucking to my fitness routine weekly! I’m so obsessed with how functional and efficient this is as a cardio workout. Not only am I a fan because it spares your joints, but rucking has truly been around since our hunter-gatherer days, except it wasn’t called rucking, it was called surviving. A hot fact about rucking is that it gets you into a Zone 2 cardio state — meaning you’re exerting at a physical output that’s more than walking, but less than running. When we work in Zone 2, fat oxidation is maximized — meaning rucking can be a super effective workout for fat loss.

You can order an official “rucksack” or weighted vest, but I went old school and just filled a backpack with sandbags.

But needless to say, I’ve been loving staying consistent with this in my fitness routine.

2. Activist Manuka Honey Face Mask

Seriously, this mask was one of my top self care highlights of the month. I first discovered it at a local conscious beauty spa here in Fort Collins, Colorado. And while I’m usually not a big skincare junkie, I’ve actually found that this was something worthy of the hype, and of course it’s purely derived from nature.

I’ve been seeing it all over Instagram recently too, and heard that it’s been compared as the natural equivalent to spironolactone (🤯!!!) You can use it as a spot treatment or a light cleanser, too!!

10/10 February find.

3. Intentional Cooking

I’m the type of person that tends to try and optimize every single minute of the day — I’m very into executing. However, I am (trying) to remind myself that if you’re always living for tomorrow or the “end goal”, when are you really living?? Slowing down is not a waste of time (this takes constant reaffirming for me)

So this month, I wanted to find intentional instances in my day where I allowed myself to do just that. One way I’ve been practicing this is when I’m cooking. I think cooking often gets thrown into the chore category, but I’ve attempted to switch that narrative and view cooking as an act of *self-care*.

It helps to find fun new things you wouldn’t usually do in the kitchen. The other morning, I switched up my routine and made homemade 3 ingredient mini bagels. A wholesome and fun change up for a random Wednesday morning !!!

It’s quick and easy, here’s the recipe 🥯 🤎

4. F. lux Blue Light Dimmer

A handy dandy tool to install like now on your laptop!! I appreciate any modern day tool that supports our natural circadian patterns amongst an environment that is pretty much set up to disrupt it. You can install f.lux on your laptop for free, and it will adjust / dim your laptop screen lighting according to the sunset and the sunrise so you aren’t getting blasted by blue light once the sun goes down.

A game changer for evening laptop work!

5. This Specific Joe Dispenza Morning Meditation

Joe Dispenza has been my go to since pre-college and has quite literally changed my life.

Whenever I try meditations that aren’t Joe Dispenza, I don’t stick with them nor do I like my feel energy is nearly as… transformed. Headspace, Gabby Bernstein, the occasional rando on Youtube, I’ve done it. Nothing compares to Joe Dispenza.

My absolute favorite is this 24 minute one which you can find on Spotify or Youtube. It transforms my whole morning and honestly, the trajectory of my day. I highly recommend reading his books!!!

If 24 minutes intimidates you (it totally did for me when I first started meditating), my best tip is to try to make a spruced up routine out of it. Create a ritual. Make a “meditation station”. Habit stack it with legs up the wall or a face mask. When I was in college living at my dad’s, my favorite way to meditate was sitting on our peaceful backyard patio in the sun.

Another meditation tidbit: Meditation does not have to mean sitting with an empty mind. I use it as time with myself to practice stepping into the feeling of achieving my wildest goals as if they have already happened. I practice changing my energy, and it has been so impactful for me.

Meditation can look any you’d like it to. I hope you try it <3

6. Start of Month Mini Vision Board

This is a fun little practice I started at the beginning of this year. To get me motivated for the new month ahead, I’ve been creating a mini digital vision board that I keep on my Notion Life Hub tab. Obviously if you do this, put it somewhere you are able to see it every day like your laptop screen savor!

It served as a little symbol and reminder for what I wanted to attract, cultivate, embody, and make happen in the month of February.

Andddd I can confirm it was effective. I booked a pottery class, bought a red light, focused on content creation, and practiced more compassion towards myself this month 😌

7. Wise Traditions Podcast

I’m a big fan of the Weston A. Price philosophy. I remember growing up and my dad playing this podcast in the car often. I picked it back up this month and it just reminded of how simple health can really be when we hone into our ancestral roots and lean into traditional practices.

The content is digestible, inspiring, and tangible.

8. Kiwi Kiwi Kiwi

Superrrr random one, but February was the month I became obsessed with Kiwi. I think they are so slept on. I know this because I was sleeping on them. This is such a weird take but I was honestly kind of intimidated by them? LOL.

But guess what? Kiwi has more Vitamin C than an orange, is a great source of fiber, and are filled with potassium.

Kiwi is also a low-glycemic fruit, meaning that its a good choice in terms of blood sugar stabilization due to it’s fiber content.

9. Coffee Shop Reads

By now, I feel like I associate coffee shops with getting into focus mode and as a place where I lock in to work on my goals. Buuuutttt I’ve realized how much I cherish the simplicity of coming with just a good book in hand — savoring the act of sipping slowly on my coffee while enjoying the ambiance. I feel so filled up afterwards.

Slowing down is not a waste of time !!! (yet another reminder mostly for me) I honestly think it speeds us up in a weird roundabout way. I hope to create even more time for this in March.

10. Gratitude Jar

I’ll leave you with a tangible practice that I’ve been loving. Go and cut up a bunch of small pieces of paper and grab an empty mason jar (or any type of free vessel you can find). Daily, weekly, monthly, whenever you think of it — start filling it up with what you are grateful for!

My fiance and I started doing this in 2023 and we wait until the end of the year to read and revisit all of them, and I can’t even tell you how sweet it is to relive those moments of gratitude for the year you just lived!!! You’ll find you forget about a lot of the happiness-filled moments you wrote down, and it just serves as a reminder that there’s always some good to be found.

This is also an amazing, quick ritual if sitting down to journal just isn’t your thing. You can implement this practice during breakfast in the morning, right before you walk out the door for work, or leave it by your bed side to jot down before you go to sleep.

It makes for such a wholesome year-end activity. And we’re only coming up on the 3rd month of year, meaning there’s lots of gratitude to still be had <3

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I hope February was sweet to you and that you enjoyed my most notables of the month. I would LOVE for you to share yours in the comments. Let’s inspire each other!!!

May March bring you all the abundance, momentum, and joy !!! ✨

In health,

Hanna