OPRAH’S WEIGHT GAIN, USING LESS PLASTIC, & NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS

Wondering what the connection between Oprah’s weight gain, using less plastic in your life, and those pesky New Year’s resolutions could possibly be?

First, for those who are new to this site . . . a brief introduction. Our world is drowning in unnecessary plastic usage. It is an immense ecological disaster that few people are aware of and that every one contributes to.

Our Raison d’etre is information and transformation. For example did you know that:

• Americans use 2.5 million plastic bottles every HOUR.
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• Plastic bags and other plastic garbage thrown into the ocean kill as many as 1 million sea creatures every year.
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• Today, Americans generate 10.5 million tons of plastic waste a year but recycle only 1 or 2 % of it.
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• An estimated 14 billion pounds of trash, much of it plastic is dumped in the world’s oceans every year.

The truth is that this is a world wide problem!!!

Every year, around 500 billion plastic bags are used worldwide. 500,000,000,000. Five hundred followed by nine zeros. That’s a lot of bags. So many that over one million bags are being used every minute and they’re damaging our environment.

OK, back to Oprah’s weight gain and the New Year’s resolutions that never seem to last more than a few weeks.

How this possibly to linked to using less plastic? Here how.

University studies have discovered that it takes approximately 6 to 9 months to change a habit, to change the brain’s pathways. No wonder people give up after a few weeks of trying to quit smoking, or dieting, or (yes!) trying to stop using plastic. No one ever told them that it takes times to change the brain’s pathways!

Our brains have enormous “plasticity,” meaning they can create new cells and pathways. But our brains create strong tendencies to do the same thing over and over.

The brain cells that fire together wire together. Meaning, they have a strong tendency to run the same program the next time. That’s why lasting change takes lots of practice; you’ve got to create a pathway to the new options.

When asked whether to use paper or plastic, I, like many others, have begun bringing reusable bags to shop. I am taking major steps to find ways to re-cycle and use less plastic on a daily basis, but the hardest thing remains remembering to bring my reusable bags to shop the next time. Don’t ask me how many times I’ve put the bags in the car, driven to the market, and walked into the store with the bags still in the car! (Argh!)

What’s the moral of all of this?

So many of us speed through life multi-tasking that we forget that our brains easily go into auto drive before we are even aware it. Whether you are trying to loose weight, stop smoking, or trying to change some other pattern of behavior . . . remember if you slip into the old bad habit you are trying to break, don’t beat up on yourself. Your brain needs to build up new patterns and that, as science is proving, takes time. So, forgive yourself, move on, and try again!

Oprah, you slipped, that’s all. Now, while I’ve got your attention. Remember to dispose of that plastic water bottle properly. Better still, can the bottled water and BYOB!