5 Ideas for New Year’s Resolutions

BLOGGER: JULIE WEBSTER

We are always thinking of ways in which we can lose weight, eat better, exercise more, and so on.

How often do we think outside of that box? Here are some ideas for making our lives and the planet healthier!

1. Change the Way You Eat

Idea #1 – Make it a point to sit down with friends and family for at least three meals per week.

With the change in schedules and the availability of fast food, our society has moved far away from the relaxing social meals of the past. When eating with friends and family, we eat slower because we are talking and enjoying the conversation. Not only will we feel better physically but we will be filled much more emotionally.

Unfortunately it is not only our country that is compromising the way we eat. In John Robbins book, Healthy at 100 he notes the following:

“In almost every culture in the world, eating dinner together has been a place for families to strengthen bonds. The French in particular have long cherished mealtime as a family ritual, so much so that children have traditionally not been allowed to open the refrigerator between meals. But the days of sitting for hours around the table savoring small portions of several courses and relishing each other’s company seem to have passed. Instead, it has become commonplace for the French to eat in front of their television sets, while talking on the telephone, and even alone. As McDonald’s has become more popular in France than anywhere else in Europe, the average French meal, which twenty-five years ago lasted 88 minutes, has been reduced to only 38 minutes today.”

Idea #2 – Stop eating in the car, in front of the television, or standing at the counter.

Our digestive system is not meant to adapt under any of these circumstances! When we sit down, relax, focus on our food, and breathe, our bodies are prepared to produce the appropriate amount of digestive enzymes and we get the most benefit (nutrients) out of our food. Part of the reason we overeat is due to these unconscious methods of eating. We hardly chew our food and inhale it at such a rate that our brains have yet received signals that we are actually full. Consequently we overeat and feel bloated and gain weight. The crazy part about the whole process is we have no idea just how much this type of eating has compromised our health.

If this is you, maybe one of your resolutions is to make the time to sit down, relax, and take a few deep breaths before taking your first bite. Appreciate the amazing fact that food is our lifeline to health. Enjoy it fully.

Although this has sounded crazy to most people that know me, even if I am alone at home for dinner, I actually prepare a delicious nutritious meal, pour a nice glass of wine, set the table, light a candle or two and really enjoy the time of eating a wonderful meal in a relaxed setting. I am sure this sounds off the charts for many of you but I encourage you to try it once or twice. It is a great experience!

Idea #3 – Learn about Slow Food

Slow Food is a movement that counters fast food. It is about creating a way of eating and living that associates the pleasure of food with community and the environment. There are many Slow Food movements throughout the world. Here a some sites to learn more: http://slowfoodcu.wordpress.com/about/

http://www.slowfoodusa.org/index.php/slow_food/

2. Change your Shopping Habits

Idea #1 – Stay out of the middle of the grocery store!

The most natural and healthy foods are found around the periphery of the store. You will find the most nutritious and least processed foods in this area. Not only is the food more processed as you wander down the aisles but can be more expensive. Plus the amount of packaging adds to the increase in waste products in our landfills.

Idea #2 – Take a list and Do NOT go when you are hungry!

I realize that neither of these ideas are new yet can save you a lot of money and keep you on a healthier track of food. Think about what you would like to make and jot down the ingredients you need. Make it an intention to get only those ingredients. Of course if you see some great sale on fruit or vegetables you might want to get extra while you are there. The main thing you want to avoid is picking up that junk snack food that you know isn’t good for you and yet is so tempting when you are hungry and just mindlessly wandering the aisles of the store.

Idea #3 – Change one/two buying habits into healthier choices.

Although eating organic and antibiotic free meats can be expensive, in the long run it is cheaper than eating a bunch of junk and ending up sick! Besides, by watching for specials in the produce, meat and fish section of the stores, you can find deals that are worth the purchase. For example, not too long ago the Whole Foods in Boulder had grass fed ground beef on sale at an amazingly cheap price. Now I don’t often eat ground beef but at that price it was worth purchasing it and keeping it in my freezer for that unexpected time I might want to make something with it.

The same goes for produce. Although you can’t necessarily store it, there are certain foods that I (now) only buy organic. The reason being is that certain plants are sprayed much more with pesticides and the produce absorbs more of it. Two examples are strawberries and spinach. I only buy these if they’re organic!

So start with one or two things that (you feel) are easy to change in your diet. Maybe it is organic produce or antibiotic free chicken, whatever it is, it will have a positive impact on your overall health over time.

3. Become a Part-Time or Full-Time Locavore!

What is that you ask? The term Locavore started in the San Francisco area not too many years ago. The premise was to encourage people to only purchase food that has been grown within a 100 mile radius of where you live.

Eating local foods is a great step towards saving our planet and increasing our health. When you purchase food that is grown within 100 miles of home, you are helping the environment. It requires much less fossil fuel to get it to the store! In addition, the food is much fresher as it is picked when ripe, thus allowing time for all the nutrients to get into the food. You are also eating foods that are in season; something we are designed to do.

Although this might not always be easy, start with your local Farmer’s Market. You will meet some great people – the farmers and ranchers. You will find you have a much greater connection to the person growing your food, the food will taste amazingly so much better, and you will feel a greater part of the whole food chain. If you are in a cold climate where this is only available in the summer, start there and get to talking to the farmers. Chances are that many of them will be able to provide you with food in the winter months as well.

I have found a local organic farmer, Jay Hill Farm that grows greens and various other produce all winter long. I just have to email her and it will be picked the following morning and ready for pick up after 11am. I have made salads with her mixed greens and arugula for many friends and family. I always get the same reaction, ‘wow this is the best salad I’ve ever had!’ In so much as I would like to think it is my amazing ability to make a salad, I know better. The main difference is the fresh and vibrant taste of the greens!

Want to learn more about the ‘locavore’ movement? Here is a link and quote:

“The “locavore” movement encourages consumers to buy from farmers’ markets or even to grow or pick their own food, arguing that fresh, local products are more nutritious and taste better. Locavores also shun supermarket offerings as an environmentally friendly measure, since shipping food over long distances often requires more fuel for transportation.”

For the full description from Oxford, read this. http://blog.oup.com/2007/11/locavore/

For additional benefits on the locavore lifestyle, check out this site. http://www.locavores.com/how/

For ideas of the closest Farmer’s Market and where you can find local ranchers, here are some websites:

Local Harvest is a great source for finding food grown close to you.

http://www.localharvest.org/

This USDA site might offer you some farmer’s market information.

http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/FarmersMarkets

Eatwild.com is your source for safe, healthy, natural and nutritious grass-fed beef, lamb, goats, bison, poultry, pork, dairy and other wild edibles. You can go here to find ranchers in your area.

http://www.eatwild.com/

If you can’t find one, the U.S. Wellness Meats in an alternative place to get grass fed meat and more.

http://www.grasslandbeef.com/StoreFront.bok

4. Change your Water Drinking Habits

Idea #1 – Purchase water in larger quantities and fill your own bottles.

To begin, water is life. Without it we will die and yet we don’t drink enough. Many people are walking around dehydrated and don’t even know it. For more details on signs of dehydration and more on the benefits of drinking water, read this article.

Meanwhile there are many more people drinking water-like products than ever before. First, many of those are processed and have various types of sugar and more. Rather than purchase these expensive products drink good water! Second, realize the environmental consequence of using all those bottles!

Last, if you do not have good water available in your area, purchase a water filter. There are many types on the market and are worth the cost.

Idea #2 – Purchase a healthy reusable bottle for your water.

BPA is a chemical that is found in hard plastic. It is very toxic and has been proven to cause cancer. Although more companies are aware of this and changing their bottles, not all are there yet. If using a plastic bottle, look for one that says, “BPA Free.”

One of the companies that have taken on this change is Nalgene. I really like their bottles as they have a variety of designs to meet everyone’s needs. If you cannot find them locally, here is their website. http://www.nalgene-outdoor.com/store/

The second option is to use one of the Swiss made bottles. They are stainless steel on the inside so no worries about the plastic. Again you might be able to find these locally but if not, here is their website. http://mysigg.com/index.asp

5. Find Ways to Help Sustainability and Decrease your Carbon Footprint

In addition to the aforementioned, here are some relatively easy things you can do that have a positive effect on our environment.

Idea #1 – Decrease the amount of animal products you eat.

One of the ways we can have the greatest impact on our planet is to change our diet towards a vegetarian one. Now I am not proposing that we all give up animal products. I personally cannot imagine doing this and yet I am very impressed by those that have.

What I do realize is that even with eating grass fed and antibiotic free beef, cage free and natural chicken, and non-farmed fish, we are still using a great deal of the resources available on our planet. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, “Livestock production is responsible for more climate change gasses than all the motor vehicles in the world. In total, it is responsible for 18 percent of human induced greenhouse gas emissions. It is also a major source of land and water degradation.”

So what do we do about this? Well, my goal is to start by having one day a week that I eat no animal products. I will then work towards two days. If each of us gave up one or two days a week, we would have a huge impact on our planet. With this being said, I intend to put more vegetarian recipes on my website!

Idea #1 – Change your lIghtbulbs!

As your light bulbs burn out, replace them with Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs. They are 75% more efficient and last 10 times as long. http://www.rodale.com/cfl-and-led-lightbulbs

Idea #2 – Start unplugging what you are not using!

Unplug lights, stereos, printers, heaters, and anything else when not in use. Even if the units are turned off, many of them continue to use energy. The only way you can be assured they are not is to unplug them from the wall. It only takes an extra second but can have a huge impact on our energy output.

Idea #3 – Recycle!!!

Make it a goal to have a minimal amount of non-recyclable trash. Last year I made my goal to not have more than one (kitchen) bag of trash for two weeks. So far I am there all but those times that I have a big party. Once you get in the habit it is really easy. If you have a local recycling program, learn about all that you can recycle. If you are lucky enough to live in a place like Boulder, then you also have compostable recycling. If not, get a bin and start composting. Here is some information on how:

Idea #4 – Buy products with the least amount of packaging.

As mentioned earlier, if you stay along the periphery of the store, you will find the packaging to be at a minimum. Even at this however you need to think! I do see these plastic containers for spinach and mixed greens. Don’t buy them! Instead buy in the bulk.

To support this concept even more, I just purchased some reusable vegetable bags. I haven’t tried them yet but am excited to decrease the amount of plastic bags I accumulate. Check out their website! http://www.3bbags.com/

Idea #5 – Use less paper products.

Two ways that are extremely easy is in the kitchen. Rather than purchasing paper napkins, get some really nice cloth ones. It is a much nicer feel on your mouth and hands and they last forever! I still have the original ones I bought about 25 years ago! (I use them for outside picnics and camping.)

The other easy change is in using dish towels rather than paper towels. Dish towels or sponges are great and can be reused for a long time. Of course we do still need some paper towels but not so many.

Idea #6 – When Purchasing Paper Products, Get Recyclable Products

You can avoid the bleaching process and save the trees! “ If every household in the United States replaced one roll of virgin-fiber paper towels with 100 percent recycled paper towels, we could save 1.4 million trees.” Source: Care2 http://www.care2.com/greenliving/paper-towels-and-napkins-vs-cloth.html

Idea #6 – See how you’re doing!

Calculate your Carbon Footprint now and then again every few months. There are a lot of different sites to figure out this process, just search for carbon footprint calculator. This one is pretty simple but a good place to start: http://www.nature.org/initiatives/climatechange/calculator/?src=l12

If you have information or ideas that are along these thoughts, please share them! I look forward to hearing from you and HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

ulie Webster is a Certified Massage Therapist and Certified Health Counselor. She provides health education online and through seminars. In addition she has written a book titled “Regaining Good Posture” which is available as an ebook, with videos performing each of the stretches, through her website: www.julie-webster.com Julie is also available for presentations on posture and various health topics to corporations. To reach her visit her website or email her at info@julie-webster.com

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Alert! Your Water May Become Irreversibly Polluted!

ALERT: YOUR WATER MAY BECOME IRREVERSIBLY POLLUTED!

BLOGGER: STEPHANIE LOW

When my good friend Debbie Heiser asked me to write this blog, my first response, as always, was…no, no, focus on saving the environment… or become ineffective…we have so little time…and on and on. Until it suddenly dawned on me what a tremendous opportunity this is to do precisely that, to tell a BIG bunch of people exactly what’s happening just under our radar, and if we’re lucky, to raise such a public stink about it that it will “drive the devils back to hell,” in the words of the Liberian women who unseated their tyrannical leader Charles Taylor by sheer resolve and their determination to survive.

 

And that’s where we’re at–on the survival brink–only most of us are unaware of the massive disaster bearing down on us. Most of my smart, environmentally informed NY friends haven’t a clue about the threat that natural gas drilling in New York State’s Marcellus Shale is, much less what it could mean to us. So unless you live in that area (the southeastern tier of NYS), or have a home in Pennsylvania, or speak often with people from devastated communities in Texas, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, West Virginia, or Ohio, prepare to be surprised, shocked, outraged, and maybe even mobilized and activated.

 

If you live in New York State, you need to know that we’re at major risk of losing not just our legally unfiltered drinking water (the best in the country, along with only 3-4 other areas of similar size), but our water to bathe in, wash our vegetables in, water our cropland, splash around the open summer hydrants in, water our parks and potted plants in, and on and on.

 

And if you’re a Pennsylvanian and use the great Monongahela for your tap water, you’ve already been warned to drink and cook with bottled water. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette headlined last November 17th, “Mon River Solids a Threat to Machinery but Not Health.” (http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08322/928571-113.stm )  I wonder how many people laughed at the transparently political claim that pollutants able to damage machinery would leave human bodies unharmed. I laughed—an outraged laugh to be sure—but then I don’t live in Pittsburgh.

 The consequences of such a loss, were it irrevocable –and according to the Post-Gazette, “Water treatment facilities aren’t set up to filter out [these] contaminants” – boggles the mind. We’ve never had to contemplate this kind of disaster, so all its ramifications aren’t immediately apparent, but the potential cost of importing all our water makes our current deficit, again, laughable. Then again, NYC alone uses more than 1.1 billion gallons of water daily. New York State population is twice NYC’s—how in the world could that much water be imported? Water is life; polluted water is no water and that’s death.

 

So, before going on to quote how and why this natural gas drilling technology creates death, I want to provide a little background on why we’re talking about it at all in NYS. I first heard about it last summer, before the financial meltdown, when natural gas developers such as Chesapeake Energy were moving in fast to buy up mineral rights from impoverished landowners in the Marcellus Shale area. The Marcellus Shale is a northeastern multi-state underground geological formation lying partially in the southeastern tier of NYS. It contains largely untapped natural gas deposits, untapped because they were economically inaccessible until our old friends Halliburton invented a technique called hydraulic fracturing–or fracking, in the vernacular. Today fracking is used for nine out of 10 natural gas wells in the United States.

Briefly, this process shoots vast amounts of water, sand and chemicals several miles underground to fracture the rock and let the gas rise to the surface. “When the gas surfaces, so does the water—laden with natural toxins, including suspected cancer-causing compounds” such as heavy metals and radiation from deep within the earth. What’s worse, added to the shale’s toxins are those injected with the fracking fluids, now returned to the surface, where the tainted water lies in open, unlined waste pits, allowing the toxins to be carried by air as far as 200 miles away. (http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=705332 )

It’s claimed that the chemicals are so diluted as to be no threat to public health, but “six-tenths of one percent of two million gallons of drilling water still equals 10,000 gallons of toxic chemicals—and that’s just from one well.” (http://www.propublica.org/feature/new-yorks-gas-rush-poses-environmental-threat-722/ )  “The US Department of Energy lists [this] water from gas drilling as among the most toxic of any oil industry byproduct.” (http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=705332 ) 

If you’re wondering how these contaminants might affect our bodies, read the 2007 testimony before the House Committee on Oversight given by the expert Dr. Theo Colborn, whose credentials include a “B.S. in pharmacy from Rutgers University, an M.A. in fresh water ecology from Western State College of Colorado, and a PhD in zoology, with distributed minors in epidemiology, toxicology, and water chemistry from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.” She knows what she’s talking about. (http://s3.amazonaws.com/propublica/assets/natural_gas/colburn_testimony_071025.pdf )

 

“We are certain of one thing,” she testified. “Even at extremely low levels one would not want to drink the majority of the chemicals on the list.” Reading her testimony on the effects of the known 265 chemicals in the drilled water—and many are unknown, claimed as “proprietary secrets” by the gas developers—you’re immediately clear that you never want to have to worry if they’re going to issue from your tap.

Or you can read a much more personal account of just one of over 800 documented reports of “sickened people and animals, clouded…drinking water…flammable wells.” http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE52C07920090313?pageNumber=3&virtualBrandChannel=0&sp=true  Pat Farnelli talks about her children’s diarrhea and vomiting, her own stomach cramps so excruciating that “It felt like an appendicitis attack.” Others, who can barely afford bottled water for themselves, watch their animals endure projectile vomiting and lose their hair.

The fact that this is happening in Pennsylvania is important to notice because the NYS DEC claims that NYS wouldn’t be subject to all the horrible environmental and public health effects seen in western states such as NM, CO and TX because the Marcellus is geologically different from ones out West. But Pennsylvania sits on the same Marcellus Shale that NYS sits on—the effects would be the same.

An even more frightening episode involving fracking toxins happened “in the summer of 2008 when a Colorado nurse almost died from exposure while treating a gas field worker whose clothing had been doused with the chemicals.” She suffered “from heart, lung, and liver failure, plus kidney damage and blurred vision.” http://www.ombwatch.org/node/3847 )

Although human health effects include cluster illnesses and death, drilling is currently permitted within 150 feet of New Yorkers’ homes and private water wells, and within 50 feet of streams. Toxins from the drilling process leach into wells, aquifers, watersheds and rivers, contaminating the water supply along with land for local farming.

But one of the worst aspects of fracking isn’t immediately apparent—it’s the immense amounts of water required. Each well’s ten possible fracking events requires 1-5 million gallons of fresh water. That’s a possible 50 million gallons of water for one well–and Chesapeake Energy, the major player in the Marcellus Shale, “is planning to significantly increase its Marcellus Shale drilling activity during 2009-2010,” according to its website http://www.chk.com/Operations/Unconventional/Pages/MarcellusShale.aspx). This translates into thousands of wells. Multiply each by 50,000,000 gallons.

Where is all this water going to come from?? The UN recently reported the current and looming water shortages around the world. It warned that, aside from creating “climate change refugees…water shortages are having another unusual effect: they are beginning to constrain economic growth…in parts of China, India…and the western United States…The world will have “substantially more people” living in urban and coastal areas vulnerable to scarce water resources.” (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20090312.WATER12/TPStory/Environment )

 

In other words, we are looking into a near future when water has become the new oil, and yet many of our state officials are willing to officiate over the permanent loss of billions upon billions of gallons of one of most precious natural resources, in return for the very illusory fool’s gold of immediate tax revenues–what’s been estimated to be about $1 billion a year.

 

This doesn’t even begin to address the immediate fiscal fact that if NYC, with just half the state’s population, loses its legally unfiltered water supply, law mandates that it must build a filtration plant. Cost: $27 billion. (If you want to know where that number comes from, multiply the $3.1 billion Croton filtration plant, which supplies 10% of NYC’s water, by the remaining 90%, which flows to us from the Delaware watershed. Voilà–$27 billion! Not a good bargain.) http://boogiedowner.blogspot.com/2008/11/croton-filtration-plant-to-cost-31.html How the rest of the state will get potable water is anybody’s guess. And the future is visible out West. (http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE52A04P20090311)

 

All this doesn’t include the worse news that we don’t necessarily have the filtering technology to eliminate all the fracking chemicals, some of which the industry refuses to disclose as “proprietary,” like the Coke recipe. (Coke, however, does us the favor of listing its ingredients on the side of the bottle.) Filtering tainted water would be, at best, very slow, very expensive, and very possibly ineffective. Given that scenario, I’d consider moving out of the state. But a lot of people don’t have that choice. And then there’s the question of where to move to?  Over half the United States is under consideration for this kind of devastating gas drilling.

 

Other effects of drilling include incessant truck traffic, spills, rampant noise pollution, the destruction of forests and wildlife habitats, and the degradation of air quality. On many drilling sites, frequent accidental gas fires have burned for weeks. In short, New York’s bucolic hiking, hunting, and fishing areas—an economic resource for tourism–would become burnt-out industrial sites. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQOiJ3Ne7j0,  http://www.endeavornews.com/news/2008/1004/news/011.html    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxNpz41wSOg&feature=related)

 

There’s another aspect to losing fresh water throughout the state: over the last two centuries, rural areas provided much of urban food. Very soon, as we’re beginning to experience now, food from great distances will become too expensive to import. The rural areas that would see the most extensive gas drilling would not only have lost enough water to make food production difficult-to-impossible and expensive—it would have lost uncalculated acres of land to drilling and drilling rig devastation, which leaves the land so polluted that it becomes unreclamably barren. Losing our water to gas drilling now means losing our local food when faster-than-expected global warming creates local shortages. That’s in the foreseeable future.

 

Have you heard enough? Are you scared? Are you scared enough to write a letter to Governor Paterson and ask him for protection against this uncalculated risk? And get all your friends to do it too? He could Just Say No to gas drilling, but he needs to hear from a HUGE number of constituents to out-shout the voice of the natural gas industry, which stands to reap billions from the rape of New York. Meanwhile New York faces a budget deficit that is drawing the attention of all legislators and the press and the public as well.

 

Well, here’s a letter, all written, stating much of what I’ve just described. Copy and paste it into a Word document, print it out and mail it, signed. Get all your friends to do the same. And when you’ve done that, send a little post back to this blog to let me know you’re on the case. We need to stand together and work together…or else.

 

Stephanie

 

NEXT TIME: The Ban(e)-Boone Plan

 

 

Governor David A. Paterson
State Capitol
Albany, NY 12224

Dear Governor Paterson:

I oppose natural gas drilling within or near any of New York State's drinking water supplies and call for a ban on such a practice. This includes but is not limited to the Catskill and Delaware watersheds, which provide 90 percent of the drinking water for over nine million New Yorkers. Such a ban should apply to all local watersheds and ground water sources all over New York State.

Gas drilling in our watersheds and near our aquifers would put our most precious natural resource -- clean, pure drinking water -- at severe risk of contamination. It will also pollute our air and soil, have negative impacts on people's health, and increase greenhouse gas emissions.

Governor, the long-term costs of extracting gas from shale far outweigh any short-term economic benefits.  I call on you to ban it in New York State. But you can do more than that.

 

2008 saw a new national record for drilling permits—more than 7100. Over 44 million acres of public lands are being leased for oil and gas development. According to The Wall Street Journal, more rigs are operating in the U.S. than at any point in over two decades. The gas drilling industry is poised to expand its activities throughout the country. We cannot, as a nation, live with the devastation this will present to our air, land, public health, and especially our water. There are tremendous possibilities in the wind and solar industries that need to be addressed and promoted.

 

I call on you to lead a governors’ initiative to protect every state’s waters from the shortsighted pursuit of drilling money and its citizens from the critical shortages this pursuit will inevitably create. I urge you to join with governors such as Bill Ritter in Colorado, where regulations have been tightened as a result of toxic spills into streams, threatening the Colorado River and the drinking water of nearby municipa-lities.  You, as the Governor of an important state, can be the leader we need to bring sanity to a looming crisis masquerading as an economic opportunity. I call on you to be that leader.

Sincerely,

Your Name
Your Organization
123 Your St.
Yousville, YO 12345
Phone: (123)456-7890
Fax: (123)456-7890x123

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