Lifestyle habits and well-being: refocusing to better thrive

In this first episode of SayaCare podcast, we open the conversation with Lesly Joyce Nkuindja (@medwithjoy), a woman who embodies the complexity and richness of being a woman from the African diaspora in Canada. A medical student at McGill and a master’s candidate in kinesiology at Laval University, Lesly is also the founder of the Équilibrer avec Joy program, a space she created for women to learn how to take care of themselves without guilt.

Together, we explore what well-being really means when juggling school, work, family, cultural expectations, and the realities of migration. Lesly leads us to question our definitions of “self-care,” which are often imported from a Western ideal that does not correspond to our lives.

We talk about sleep, nutrition, exercise, but above all, listening to ourselves. How can we recognize the signals our bodies send us? How can we build sustainable routines that take into account who we really are, our rhythms, our constraints, and our strengths? And above all, how can we break out of the cycle of guilt-abandonment-restart that exhausts so many women?

Lesly shares practical tools drawn from her dual background in medicine and kinesiology, and invites us to understand that well-being is not a state to be achieved, but a daily practice, imperfect and deeply human.

A deeply necessary episode for all those who have learned to put themselves last.

Thanks to the Canadian Race Relations Foundation for your support in making this initiative possible.

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