Hey guys, has anyone noticed the take the stairs challenge at RRC Princess campus? I bet you all have, and some of you are just ignoring it – Jérèmie Wookey and Jeff Ward. You have no idea the benefits to your heart and your waist simply by taking the stairs every time you go up. I know you’re probably thinking who cares; I’d rather deal with awkward silences than walk flights of stairs. But the truth of the matter is that taking the stairs gets the blood flowing, just like we’ve been talking about, and makes you feel good that you did, at least, a little physical activity for the day.
I can hear people at home going, but Kiley if we all decide to take the stairs the stairway will get way to crowded; then taking the stairs will be like dealing with rush hour traffic in Winnipeg. Well, I really don’t know what to say, except, there are way more stairs on campus, two per building in fact, than there are elevators. So, get your butts in gear and get up those stairs because if you’re not injured, disabled, or below three and above 80 years old you can do it, I have faith in you!
After another week of CreComm the weekend has arrived. Weekends are a great way to put the past week and the week ahead into perspective. They give you a chance to relax rejuvenating your mind, body, and soul. It’s important for your mental and social health’s to use your weekend to your advantage. Clearing your mind of stress is a great way to become more productive; you can think more clearly about the work ahead, and leave you open to finding inspiration. Whether you sit at home reading or watching TV, or go out and enjoy the wonderful weather use your weekend to forget about whatever’s been stressing you out and spend time on you.
Do you know how important your mental and emotional health is for you? Check out this website at helpguide.org to find out for yourself.
Pull-up your socks Manitoban’s and challenge yourself for the month of November to eat within a 100-mile radius of your homes, or more specifically 160 kilometers. The 100-Mile Challenge encourages people to buy and eat local foods. It’s amazing how far the food in our grocery stores travel simply to end up on our plate, and while thinking about that think about the insane amount of energy that gets used to get our food from point A to point B. On average the ingredients on our plates have traveled at least 1500 kilometers.
1. Taste the difference. At a farmers’ market, most local produce has been picked inside of 24 hours. It comes to you ripe, fresh, and with its full flavor, unlike supermarket food that may have been picked weeks or months before. Close-to-home foods can also be bred for taste, rather than withstanding the abuse of shipping or industrial harvesting.
2. Know what you’re eating. Buying food today is complicated. What pesticides were used? Is that corn genetically modified? Was that chicken free range or did it grow in a box? People who eat locally find it easier to get answers. Many build relationships with farmers whom they trust. And when in doubt, they can drive out to the farms and see for themselves.
3. Meet your neighbours. Local eating is social. Studies show that people shopping at farmers’ market have ten times more conversations than their counterparts at the supermarket. Join a community garden and you’ll actually meet the people you pass on the street. Sign up with the 100-Mile Diet Society; we’ll be working to connect people in your area who care about the same things you do.
4. Get in touch with the season. When you eat locally, you eat what’s in season. You’ll remember that cherries are the taste of summer. Even in winter, comfort foods like squash soup and pancakes just make sense – a lot more sense than flavorless cherries from the other side of the world.
5. Discover new flavors. Ever tried sunchokes? How about purslane, quail eggs, yerba mora, or tayberries? These are just a few of the new (to us) flavors we sampled over a year of local eating. Our local spot prawns, we learned, are tastier than popular tiger prawns. Even familiar foods were more interesting. Count the types of pear on offer at your supermarket. Maybe three? Small farms are keeping alive nearly 300 other varieties – while more than 2,000 more have been lost in our rush to sameness.
6. Explore your home. Visiting local farms is a way to be a tourist on your own home turf, with plenty of stops for snacks.
7. Save the world. A study in Iowa found that a regional diet consumed 17 times less oil and gas than a typical diet bases on food shipped across the country. The ingredients for a typical British meal, sourced locally, travelled 66 times fewer “food miles.” Or we can just kept burning those fossil fuels and learn to live with global climate change.
8. Support small farms. We discovered that many people from all walks of life dream of working the land – maybe you do too. In areas with strong local markets, the family farm is reviving. That’s the whole lot better than the jobs at Wal-Mart and fast-food outlets that the globalized economy offers in North American towns.
9. Give back to the local economy. A British study tracked how much of the money spent at a local food business stayed in the local economy, and how many times it was reinvested. The total value was almost twice the contribution of a dollar spent at a supermarket chain.
10. Be healthy. Everyone wants to know whether the 100-Mile Diet worked as a weight-loss program. Well, yes, we lost a few pound apiece. More importantly, though, we felt better than ever. We ate more vegetables and fewer processed products, sampled a wider variety of foods, and ate more fresh food at its nutritional peak. Eating from farmers’ markets and cooking from scratch, we never felt a need to count calories.
11. Have more fun while traveling. Once you’re addicted to local eating, you’ll want to explore it wherever you go by trying the local ingredients used by the people themselves.
