Lifestyle

As I’ve made pretty clear in the past couple of years, I love Winnipeg. Born and raised here, I moved away at 18 only to return at 33. For the past three years, I’ve fallen harder for this prairie city than I ever thought possible. One of the reasons I love it so much? The unbelievable wealth of local makers. This year, more than ever before, I’m trying to support local businesses. With that in mind, I thought I’d put together a guide of the best local Winnipeg gifts for Christmas and beyond.

While this year might not have round-the-world adventures, I’m still going to try to make the best of it, still going to try to be productive. So what does the rest of 2020 have in store for me?

Over the past few months, I’ve been sharing my new approach to being healthy (both in body and in mind) on this blog. This particular post will probably make a lot more…

Long-time readers of this blog will know that I struggled with eating well. Food and alcohol have been huge parts of my life, and as established in a previous post, I have always been that girl that would say yes to everything (food and drink related, at least). You could always count on me to have that shot with you, to share that pizza with you, to go for a midnight junk food run. Although my parents always made sure I had very healthy food at home, by the time I could ride a bicycle I was always off spending my babysitting money on sweets and sugary drinks. When I moved out on my own at 18, I often made extremely poor lifestyle choices, and that continued until, well, three months ago.

“I don’t want to be unhealthy anymore,” I thought to myself as I laid in bed that cold Saturday morning. It sounds like the simplest, most obvious thought to have, but this time it hit me in my core. I didn’t want to just be healthy in January. I wanted to be healthy all year round, all the time.

I’ve never thought of myself as unhealthy, but I’ve never thought of myself as healthy, either. I always thought I floated somewhere in the middle, if that makes sense.

But as I laid there, I started being honest with myself. I held nothing back. The truth – there’s that word again – was that I didn’t feel very good a lot of the time, both mentally and physically. I knew I was constantly coming up with excuses for why I didn’t eat well, why I didn’t exercise, and why I allowed my mental health to suffer when I knew there were things I could be doing to help.

The year was 1997. White eyeliner was in. Spice Girls were on top of the world. I burst a blood vessel in my eye from sobbing during Titanic at the cinema. And while…