Happy Friday, everyone! Summer is flying by and I can't believe June is nearing its end already. When I went to the farmer's market earlier this week, I was overwhelmed by all the gorgeous summer produce like summer squashes, heirloom tomatoes, and berries and cherries all over the place.

Things have been quite busy over here, as I'm finishing up with this nutrition certification shortly, and am just a few weeks out from my kettlebell certification, so I've had to put a lot of focus into my training and nutritional preparation for that. There have definitely been some bumps in the road, which I'll be detailing in an upcoming post about my preparation, but I'm trying to keep focused on the goal at hand.

Onto it:

Here are the six things that I was inspired by, learned, and laughed and smiled at this week.

Would love to hear any fun things you've read, as well!

Inspired

1. I think it's safe to say everyone is currently obsessed with Amy Schumer- and for good reason. Girl calls it like it is, and isn't afraid to say so many of the things that most of us tend to notice but don't pipe up about for fear of disturbing the status quo or for the sake of politeness.

This video was awesome because of how it points out the amount of times women will apologize for, well, just being and living. Obviously, the amount of times "I'm sorry" was said in this video was exaggerated for the purpose of proving a point, but the sad thing is, is that it's actually not that far from reality.

I've apologized to other people when I have to correct them on the pronunciation of my name. I've apologized to countless waiters for my food allergies and dietary needs. I've apologized for being sick, etc. etc. How about we take a moment to make sure we aren't apologizing for just being?

2. I posted this on my Facebook page this week, but the awesome people at Buzzfeed decided to do this little experiment. How Do You Get a Bikini Body? Put a bikini on your body. Both women and men struggle with this "forever unattainable/last 10 pounds" mentality largely because of visual media like this. Let's continue changing the tide in a healthier, self-loving direction.

Learned

3. General Mills is cutting out all artificial ingredients in their cereals. Hooray for another step in the right direction! Still won't be eating cereal for breakfast everyday like when I was a kid, but this news eases some concerns about the fact that many families still do. Really curious to see how those Lucky Charms look after the upgrade!

4. Fewer people are sensitive to gluten then commonly believed. Not much of a surprise for me, as I've been vocal about my opinion of this. I've experienced both sides of it, as I've had to avoid gluten because of the inflammatory response it incites in people who have thyroid/auto-immune issues like mine, but I'm still a firm believer that people should not avoid it just because they think it's a "healthier" way of eating. A lot of gluten-free food items at the grocery store commonly have far less nutritional value and more added ingredients because you're stripping certain foods of it's original composition, then making up for it by adding sodium and sugars.

5. I echo a lot of sentiments in this WSJ article, "Into Yoga? Indian Experts Explain What You're Doing Wrong." Yoga lately has become so trendy that it consequently has been stripped of its original purpose and benefits by doing crazy things to it. Some classes combine rowing and yoga, or it'll be a hybrid class of yoga and pilates or yoga and bootcamp (*smack my forehead)- and I believe it takes away a lot of the awesome benefits of the classic practice. Worth the read!