The Story of a Trip to Winnipeg

February can be a difficult month for weight loss. Valentine’s Day is just another reason to celebrate and before you know it, you’re into all kinds of bad habits like eating out too much and night time snacking.

In the middle of this, we planned a little trip to visit friends who had moved up to Canada. I knew that meant we’d be eating out even more, so I knew that I needed to find an easy way to keep track of calories when I wasn’t cooking at home.

I’d heard some good things about the Lose It! app. The food diary is one of the easiest to use. The feature I was really looking forward to was its lists of calorie counts for a lot of restaurants and grocery store brands. It has a barcode scanner, too, for packaged foods, but I’ve been doing my best to avoid getting too many pre-made meals. It also lets you measure out your home made meals and save them for when you make them again.

 
But then my phone died! That was so frustrating because I like to take photos with my phone. Not to mention my plans to get into the habit of using Lose It. I decided to wait until the trip to replace my phone because my husband’s friend had told him that with the exchange rate, he could save a lot buying across the border. I thought it might be worthwhile for something as big ticket as smartphone.

Winnipeg was super cold on Friday and Saturday that weekend, but nothing we weren’t used to. It was a public holiday in Canada, so we were going to go phone shopping early—but then I decided I might as well save more money and try to find a used phone. I didn’t have a lot of time to browse around online classifieds, but my husband’s friend told me that my best bet in Winnipeg was Kijiji. It was how he’d found most of his apartments until he bought his house.

I didn’t get to use the calorie counter the way I’d wanted to, but we went to some great places in Winnipeg. When I finally found someone selling their phone that I wanted to buy, she said we should meet at a coffee shop that also sold books on Westminster Avenue. They also had these sandwiches made out of Onigri rice between seaweed, which turned out to be pretty light on calories once I
finally got that app running.It was a pretty good price, especially with the exchange rate, but I think the best part of it all was finding this gem in a place I’d never been to before.

It was a long drive for a short trip, but Canada was an adventure. My husband got a chance to reconnect with an old friend and I got to explore the city a little bit.