The following has been contributed by Vancouver-based wellness educator and holistic nutritionist Nicole Porter. She specializes in helping busy professionals live more balanced, less stressful lives.

October’s Healthy Workplace Month might have come to an end, but stress in the workplace will always exist. As a Nutritionist and Wellness Consultant who typically works with busy, stressed out professionals (sound familiar?), I know that the most common stressor is work, often because of tight deadlines, struggling to find work/life balance, conflicts with colleagues, or adapting to new technologies. And although a little bit of stress is okay (it helps us gain clarity and get things done urgently), problems arise when stress is chronic, contributing to issues ranging from fatigue to headaches to weight gain to serious disease.

But those aren’t the only stresses we need to manage. There are other hidden stressors that impact your body, hormones and health in the exact same way as the work stresses listed above. These include stressors such as poor nutrition, lack of sleep, dehydration, excessive screen time, intense exercise, and dieting. Even the negativity typically associated with dieting and body image has been shown to cause stress on the body. And if studies estimate that up to 95% of disease is stress-related, it’s time we get this stress thing under control.

To understand what stress is doing to your body, we need to talk a bit of physiology. Keep in mind that your body is a beautiful, amazing thing, constantly making adjustments to find a state of balance so you stay alive. When you’re under stress, your body thinks your life is at risk, so it reacts by protecting you. Continue reading this post ⟩⟩

Hundreds of thousands of lights will illuminate one of Coquitlam’s star attractions this holiday season. The Lights at Lafarge Winter Lights Display is a free attraction with community engagement, family fun, and plenty of photo opportunities!

Winter Lights at Lafarge Lake

Dates: November 25, 2017 to January 21, 2018
Times: Nightly 4:30pm to 11:00pm (past midnight on New Year’s Eve)
Where: Lafarge Lake, Town Centre Park Coquitlam
Admission: FREE!

Enter to Win

Share your photos online using #explorecoquitlam and tag @Miss604 to enter to win a $400 Coquitlam prize pack! Full details here »

The Lights at Lafarge Winter Lights Display is located just steps from Lafarge Lake-Douglas SkyTrain Station and is a wonderful opportunity to get outdoors and get active with friends and family.

Follow the 1.2km trail around the lake and enter a variety of themed light zones. Walk through the lighted 90-foot-long framed caterpillar, take pics at the Arbour Walk lighted archway, visit the Fantasy Forest with an elfin tree house, and tip toe through the Woodland Garden with overhead starbursts and tulip lights over the ground.

Coquitlam’s Park Spark Team will be on site, at various times during the lights display, to host free activities including light making workshops, special theme nights and drop-in scavenger hunts. Get active and enhance your Winter Lights experience.

Miss604 is the proud social media sponsor of Lights at Lafarge

Follow the City of Coquitlam on Facebook and Twitter for more information.

Benjamin Hertwig will read from his debut poetry collection “Slow War” at the historic Seaforth Armoury on Friday. Nominated for this year’s Governor General’s Award in Poetry, “Slow War” is only the second collection of poetry to be published by a Canadian veteran of the war in Afghanistan.

“Slow War” is at once an account of contemporary warfare and a personal journey of loss and the search for healing. It stands in the tradition of Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est” and Kevin Powers’s “Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting.”

“I know of few books that deal with the experience of combat in such a humane and almost tender way. Benjamin Hertwig’s Slow War is a powerful and moving work of art.” —John Skoyles, poetry editor of Ploughshares, author of Suddenly It’s Evening

Authors at the Armoury: Benjamin Hertwig

When: Friday, November 3, 2017 from 6:30pm (doors) 7:00pm to 8:30pm
Where: The Seaforth Armoury (1650 Burrard St, Vancouver)
Tickets: Free event. RSVP on Facebook. Cash bar in the Officers’ Mess.

The pedestrian entrance is off 1st Ave and there will be free parking behind the armoury. Following the reading, Benjamin Hertwig will do a book signing. This event is sponsored by the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada Museum & Archives. Follow on Instagram and Twitter for updates.

Over 150 local farms and producers will keep the harvest rolling in this season at Vancouver Winter Farmers Markets two weekly winter markets.

Starting November 4th, these festive and family-friendly events will run rain or shine and offer Vancouver’s best source of winter produce, locally raised meat, poultry, & eggs, sustainable seafood, craft alcohol, artisanal cheese & bread, a wide mix of prepared food, wild harvested products, handmade craft, and food trucks.

Vancouver Winter Farmers Markets

What: Nat Bailey Winter Farmers Market
Where: 4601 Ontario St, Vancouver
When: Saturdays 10:00am to 2:00pm, November 4 – April 21 (closed December 30)

Find a selection of food trucks and hot drink vendors along with market musicians for your enjoyment. There are plenty of covered seating areas and warming stations too.

What: Hastings Park Winter Farmers Market
Where: PNE, Renfrew & Hastings, Vancouver
When: Sundays 10:00am to 2:00pm, November 5 – April 29 (closed December 24 & 31)

Hastings Park has 20+ new vendors this season – including farms, cheesemakers, craft alcohol producers, food trucks, and artisanal food producers. There is free parking for market shoppers at Gate 2 off of Renfrew St.

Other highlights of the weekly Winter Markets include live music, face painting for kids, educational activities and community programming, and a great opportunity to connect with local farmers and producers.

For more information, and to find out what’s in season, follow Vancouver Farmers Markets on Facebook and Twitter.

I fully admit that I love watching recipe videos on Facebook and Instagram, but I rarely get my act together enough to actually grocery shop, chop, and prepare those delicious-looking meals. Fresh Prep is a Vancouver-based meal kit delivery service that is dedicated to helping busy people get back in the kitchen, putting healthy and delicious dinners together in under 30 minutes. They do the prep for you, delivered right to your door!

Fresh Prep Vancouver

Fresh Prep makes easy and convenient for busy people to cook high-quality meals. They deliver meal kits to your door, keeping the ingredients fresh until you’re ready to cook. Designed by chefs and nutritionists, each kit contains pre-chopped, portioned ingredients and recipe instructions so you can cook delicious meals in 15-30 minutes with fewer dishes, and less cleanup.

How it Works

Sign up for Fresh Prep
Pick your recipes & delivery dates
Get your weekly box
Cook incredible meals in under 30 minutes!

Their produce is organic and local wherever possible and their meat is raised without unnecessary hormones or antibiotics which results in better taste. Fresh Prep meals cost roughly $10 per meal per person. This price is less than if you were to purchase all ingredients for the meals separately at the grocery store, also leaving out the convenience factor of our service.

For a quick sample/teaser, this week’s menu alone includes Shredded Chicken and Vermicelli Noodles with Peanut Sauce, Maple Glazed Salmon with Chard and Quinoa, Sweet and Spicy Sriracha Teriyaki Stir Fry with Snow Peas and Mushrooms, and more!

You only receive and pay for the ingredients you need for each meal producing less food waste. Fresh Prep is unique because they use reusable cooler bags instead of sending meals via FedEx in disposable cardboard boxes. If customers return the plastic packaging, they will properly recycle it, also reducing the environmental impact.

Enter to Win

I have a $100 credit to give away so that a lucky winner can enjoy the benefits Fresh Prep Vancouver! Here’s how you can enter to win:

• Leave a comment on this post (1 entry)
• Click below to post an entry on Twitter

[clickToTweet tweet=”RT to enter to win a $100 @freshprepvan gift card http://ow.ly/kXzt30geGtN #freshprepvan” quote=” Click to enter via Twitter” theme=”style6″]

Get inspired! Follow Fresh Prep on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter for more information. I will draw one winner at random from all entries at 12:00pm on Monday, November 6, 2017.

Update The winner is Linda Webster!