Utah Olympic Park

Savour a tranquil Sydney picnic spots lunch while you soak up Clark Island’s exceptional vistas and historic surroundings. A question I am asked over and over again is how to make it through the holidays. I’ve written other posts about it, but then it got me thinking that there really isn’t a “holiday season.” What I mean by that is, yes there are holidays, but we have events throughout the whole year when we are faced with less than desirable food choices. If you live in colder climates, January through April or so is your comfort food time, which is usually heavier food. Let’s not forget Valentine’s Day when most people go out to eat. There’s also baptisms, first communions, Easter, Passover, etc. There’s mother’s day in May, Father’s day in June. Memorial day kicks off summer parties, golfing, BBQ season, right? So, it now becomes oh man, how do I go to these picnics week after week and maintain my diet? Now we hit Labor day big bash, local fairs, Halloween candy, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukah, New Years. Oh, and that doesn’t include all the birthdays, weddings and anniversaries. Do you see a pattern here?

Temptation
The real fact of the matter is, there isn’t one season where we have temptations. They face us every day. We have to determine if and how we want to make lifestyle changes to make it through all these events. They are always going to be there and if you allow yourself that “oh, it’s only once in a while pig out day” that is one thing. But look at all the days in one month that can add up to. They can add up to at least 4 or more times a month. That’s not once in a while, that is completely sabotaging your hard work. So you have to decide what is more important to you. Busting your butt all week with a clean diet and awesome workout routines to blow it every single weekend? Or would you rather bust your butt all week with a clean diet, awesome workout and learning how to control what you’re eating and drinking?

Invitations
I already know what you’re going to say, because I hear it all the time. Well so and so invited me over, I can’t be rude. OK, first off, if so and so is your family, friend or colleague and they are inviting you over, they should know your lifestyle well enough of what is important to you. There’s nothing wrong with asking what’s on the menu. Say you’d like to bring a dish. If they say no, they have plenty, say OK, but could you still tell me? Would it be OK if I brought an appetizer of a bottle of wine? Then you’ll at least know what they are serving. And if you know the whole meal would be nothing you’ll eat, then bring something you will eat. Yes, I said it. If they get insulted, then they truly don’t respect you or care about you. I cook beef when friends come over because I know they enjoy it. It’s not a favorite of mine, so I make it for them and I always have a salad and plenty of veggies. So I’ll either stick to that, or I’ll make chicken or something else along with the beef dish. You have to decide what you’re comfortable doing and what is important to you. If it’s someone you don’t know very well and are just making acquaintances, then what the heck eat before you get there. And either way, bring something to the host/hostess. I’m sorry, I don’t care how well you do/don’t know them, I was brought up that it’s impolite to show up anywhere empty handed. You could even bring flowers. No matter even if it one of my sister’s houses, they say don’t bring anything, I bring something.

Tips
Let me see if I can break down some tips for you.

• Eat something before hand so you don’t go starving (which will give you more motivation to say no to the “junk” you know you mind wants but your body isn’t craving).
• Bring something healthy you know you will eat and can share with others.
• Go for the healthier appetizers: veggies/no dip, (or maybe hummus), shrimp cocktail, salsa (on veggies or baked pita wedges)
• For the entrée – select mostly veggies, salad, etc. limit your animal protein amounts (no larger than the palm of your hand) and omit any carbs if it’s after lunch.
• If it’s a picnic; stay away from any mayonnaise salad (including coleslaw) or white pasta/potato salad. (Besides ewwww mayo out in the heat? I think not.)
• Go for the salads made with salad dressing, fresh veggies like broccoli slaw, Cole slaw w/out the creamy dressing.
• If you’re going to have any animal protein, skip the bun and the cheese. Watch out for the condiments.
• Fill up on fruits and vegies.
• Drink lots and lots of water.
• If you’re drinking alcohol, try seltzer with a little alcohol or wine in it. You’ll still get the alcohol, but fewer calories and you’ll drink it slower.
• If you want dessert, allow yourself a taste, not a whole piece. Ten bites of something won’t taste any better than the first bite. Savor it and enjoy – don’t over indulge.
• If you go out to dinner, omit the bread and carbs all together.
• Ask for a salad, extra veggies and have your meat/fish broiled or baked and ask for no “sauce/marinade” unless it’s on the side.

When Harry Met Sally
We’ve all seen the movie When Harry met Sally, right? Sally orders everything on the side, or totally different than the menu. That is so me. I’ll tell you, I have friends that still bust me about what a pain I am when we go out to eat. Here’s what I say to them “I’m paying for it, so I should get what I want. If it’s on the menu, I should be able to have it with my meal. Frankly, I cook better than most places we end up eating, so if I’m going to pay money, I’m going to get what I want.” I don’t care if they like it or not, because it boils down to my health. And if people choose to eat salads soaked in dressing so it’s like soup, fried foods, butter, sour cream, that’s up to them. It isn’t my business. I just try real hard not to say anything when they complain about how they feel and how they should lose weight. I just bite my tongue and take a deep breath. The bottom line is, you can decide what you want to do. It’s your health and your body. You only have one life – make the decisions you can LIVE with.

I hope you find these tips helpful. Here’s to your health and mindful decisions.

Lisa has lost over 80 pounds and kept it off for over 12 years. She knows what it is like to get made fun of when you’re a child. She knows the pain of missing dances, the prom and dates through her teen years. Lisa struggled with yo-yo dieting most of her life. She’s gone through drastic measures to lose weight, but now found the real truth in keeping the weight off. Lisa now helps others get on the fit track; mind, body, spiritual and financial. She’s taught people measurable steps of what it takes to be successful. If you want to know how, or want Lisa to help you, go to [http://www.born2befit.com] and sign up to receive Lisa’s news letters. She will inspire you and get you on the right path. So do it now, you won’t be sorry. Get in touch on how to get 80 pounds.

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Recycling

Office rubbish removal Sydney is highly trained in the art of waste disposal and have years of experience managing, sorting, getting rid of and cleaning up trash. During the 1960s and ’70s it was thought that emissions from factory chimneys and sewage pipes constituted the biggest environmental problem. But since then, due to new, worldwide “Eco-laws”, these discharges have decreased considerably. Instead, the focus has switched to the environmental problems associated with the goods that are produced and consumed in modern society. Many of the most environmentally damaging substances are currently being supplied through glass bottles, newspapers, plastic bags, coke cans, cardboard boxes and sweet wrappers just to mention a few.

To tell you what recycling is and what the word actually embodies may seem strange to you. I am sure all of you think you know exactly what it entails. But in theory recycling involves the separation and collection of materials for processing and re-manufacturing old products into new products, and the use of these new products, completing the cycle.

Glass is one of the most common man-made materials. It is made from sand, limestone and sodium carbonate and silica. The ingredients are heated to a high temperature in a furnace until they melt together. The molten glass from the furnace cools to form sheets, or may be moulded to make objects. Actually glass is completely recyclable and making products from recycled glass rather than starting from scratch saves energy resources. Recycled glass is made into new beverage bottles, food jars, insulation and other construction materials. Usually, clear glass containers are recycled into new clear glass products, while coloured glass containers are recycled into new coloured glass products.

In fact, the recycling of glass as well other products, such as aluminum and steel cans, cardboard, car tyres, newspapers and certain plastics is a growing industry in most of the world today. In South Africa however, we don’t have a very high level of recycling. There aren’t enough people who take an active interest in the environment and try to do their bit in preserving nature, by for example, taking used bottles, aluminum cans or even leaves and other garden refuse to recycling sites. This is probably due to a lot of reasons. The first and foremost being that, in South Africa, we don’t have many recycling centres and, lets face it, how many of us really sort our rubbish before throwing it in the rubbish bin?

Since it is now these products, and no longer industrial emissions, that accounts for most of the environmentally harmful substances being discharged in nature the conditions for environmental efforts have fundamentally changed. As the “release sites” or the polluters, have become so numerous, a totally new system for controlling and handling environmentally harmful wastes is needed.

One way could be to transfer the responsibility for this to the producer of goods, according to the established principle “the polluter pays.”

However, I found this principle not be all that efficient in practise. To find out what is actually being done at the industrial level, I spoke with William Footman, one of the regional managers of Nampak, which is one of South Africa’s 2 glass manufacturers. He told me that the reason we don’t have a very developed glass recycling programme in this country, is due to the fact that we only have two factories where glass can be recycled back into beverage bottles. And as it is far too expensive for the companies to transport old bottles back to their factories for recycling, they would rather produce new, rather than re-use the old glass.

But, producers who put a product on the market should, quite simply, be responsible for taking back as much as is sold. What is important for environmental policy is the creation of a system in which each producer assumes his responsibility. But should all the responsibility lie on the producers? Every consumer who buys these products should make an asserted effort to help keep our planet clean.

I searched the Internet to find out exactly how poorly we as South Africans compare to the rest of the world in recycling. The country that has been in the forefront of recycling, particularly for household waste, is Sweden. Swedes have to carefully recycle and separate their own rubbish for the refuse collectors on a daily basis. Even in the middle of their very cold winters, in raging snowstorms, the Swedish people go to the recycling stations with their household trash to perform the daily ritual of separating cardboard from plastics and glass from biological waste.

Actually nearly all 1st world countries and many developing countries have developing or already highly developed recycling programmes, and South Africa desperately needs to jump on the ‘recycling wagon’. A step in the right direction could be to build recycling plants all over the country. Every town should set up a sufficient number of collection stations and every household should share the responsibility and sort their rubbish to ensure that batteries and electrical appliances are not thrown in landfills, that glass, aluminium cans and plastic bags don’t clutter the country-side. Working together with the producers, consumers should send items back to factories, to be recycled and thereby reused.

The process of recycling, for example paper, entails the conversion of waste paper to various types of finer grades of paper. First, careful sorting is required so that items such as plastic wrapping, paper clips and staples can be removed. Waste paper is divided into categories such as newsprint; typing and computer paper; and magazines, which have shiny paper and coloured inks and need special treatment. Next, the ink must be removed. This is done by soaking the paper and breaking it up into small pieces in giant washers, then treating it with chemicals that loosen the ink so that it can be rinsed away. Sometimes more than one such chemical must be used because many types of ink must be removed. Finally, the wet, shredded waste paper is blended with other materials according to the type of end product that is desired. Old pieces of cloth, which are used to produce the finest, most expensive grades of paper, may be mixed in. Wood pulp and other forms of cellulose such as straw may also be added in varying proportions. If white paper or paper for greeting cards or stationery is to be produced, bleach may also be added to lighten it; if newsprint is to be produced, a mixture of red and blue dyes is added to reduce the greyness of the final product. Chemical preservatives are also added at this point.

At this time, the fully treated material is a sort of liquid sludge that is ready to be made into paper. In most papermaking operations, the sludge passes through a machine called a beater, which is essentially a very heavy roller that presses the fibres in the sludge together and squeezes out the water. The paper is formed and held together by the natural interlocking of the long cellulose or cloth fibres as they are pressed and dried. No glue is used in the process and in fact, the natural glue in wood is removed chemically before the paper is made.

A refining machine brushes the roll of sludge to smooth out irregularities. The papermaking machine presses the sludge into thin slices, which are then further dried by pressing or by being placed in furnaces. Finally, the paper is polished or chemically treated to give it the proper finish and lastly packaged and sent to customers.

The papermaking process itself is pretty much the same whether one uses virgin materials, recycled materials, or a mixture of the two. The difference is in the preparation of the sludge. Recycled material requires careful sorting. This in turn means that the paper mills must have a place to store waste paper and the staff to sort it, as well as a means of disposing of waste paper that cannot be used. Removing ink from waste paper also requires special chemicals, equipment, and equipment operators. As a result, some paper mills are not set up to use any recycled materials. That’s why the forests are getting smaller and smaller.

Also, not all paper products can be made with recycled paper. Brown grocery bags, for example, can be recycled into other types of paper, but they must be made, at least partially, out of virgin materials because only virgin materials have the long unbroken fibres that give the bags their necessary strength. Unlike glass bottles and aluminum cans, which can be recycled an infinite number of times, paper cannot be recycled indefinitely. Each time it is recycled, its quality degrades slightly because the fibres become more and more broken. At some point recycled paper has to be mixed in with virgin material, and eventually after repeated uses, it ends up in a landfill or and incinerator.

Obviously as recycling plants and collection sites have to be set up all over the country and for all the various types of materials we use in every day life, it is going to be a very expensive process to start, but it is vital that the wheels are set in motion before it is too late! In turn this will lead to many new jobs opening up for unskilled as well as skilled people in South Africa helping to keep our country cleaner as well as decreasing unemployment and thereby promoting the economy.
I know that to fully understand why recycling is important and to have a general feeling of responsibility and to want to keep the environment clean stems from having an education and understanding the concept of pollution. I also understand that it is not easy for the many people in our country without a proper education, to feel the need to recycle, as they may not understand they urgency of it. But if all of us in this room today already knew and understood what recycling is and how much damage is done to the ecosystem by not recycling, why do we not feel the need to take action and start taking care of our beautiful country!

References:

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