Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Have some spare time? Pick a movie!

Are you done studying for today and you don’t know what to do? Well than maybe you can go watch a movie. If you don’t know what to watch than luckily for you the 85th Oscar ceremony was held last Sunday. An Oscar, also known as an Academy Award is the most prestigious award there is to win in the film industry. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences relies on a jury which consists of 5,783 voters as of 2012, so it will probably give you a good idea of which movies out there are worth watching. The Ceremony was held in the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. This year’s show was presented by Seth MacFarlane whom you may know from the cartoon Family Guy. Striking this year was the special guest appearance from first lady Michelle Obama. She presented the award for best picture, live from the White House. The award was won by Ben Afflecks movie Argo. If you want to watch the trailer of this movie click here.

Michelle Obama, a slippery, a song about boobs and even a Dutch winner. This year the Oscars where a phenomenon again. But which nominees ended up walking away with the price, and are worth your time? Here a short review of the winners of the evening:
1. Best Picture: “Argo.”
2. Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis, “Lincoln.”
3. Actress: Jennifer Lawrence, “Silver Linings Playbook.”
4. Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz, “Django Unchained.”
5. Supporting Actress: Anne Hathaway, “Les Miserables.”
6. Directing: Ang Lee, “Life of Pi.”
7. Foreign Language Film: “Amour.”
8. Adapted Screenplay: Chris Terrio, “Argo.”
9. Original Screenplay: Quentin Tarantino, “Django Unchained.”
10. Animated Feature Film: “Brave.”
11. Production Design: “Lincoln.”
12. Cinematography: “Life of Pi.”
13. Sound Mixing: “Les Miserables.”
14. Sound Editing (tie): “Skyfall,” ”Zero Dark Thirty.”
15. Original Score: “Life of Pi,” Mychael Danna.
16. Original Song: “Skyfall” from “Skyfall,” Adele Adkins and Paul Epworth.
17. Costume: “Anna Karenina.”
18. Documentary Feature: “Searching for Sugar Man.”
19. Documentary (short subject): “Inocente.”
20. Film Editing: “Argo.”
21. Makeup and Hairstyling: “Les Miserables.”
22. Animated Short Film: “Paperman.”
23. Live Action Short Film: “Curfew.”
24. Visual Effects: “Life of Pi.”
More information about these movies and actors/actresses are found here.


Monday, February 11, 2013

Addicted to food



    How to fix it when your stomach is calling you all the time



It’s Friday afternoon, the end of an exhausting week of school, work or other activities that you rather don’t want to do. You’ve planned to see your friends tonight for a night out and are walking in the mall because the most important thing on your mind right now is : get some nice new clothes, because I need to look good tonight. When you are on your way to your favourite clothing shop, you pass the snack corner. For a second you think.. Okay stop it from here!




In the situation described above, your mind receives an impulse: your body senses tell you, that you are hungry. Even though it is not your intention to eat, you eat. The above mentioned scenario is how most people are often tempted to eat fast food products. We can conclude that fast food is a temptation, because it’s so easy and delicious. Our approach to enlighten you about this extraordinary phenomenon is to first lay out the facts and afterwards the methods to avoid addiction to specific food types.

Obesity is a worldwide topic of the day nowadays. Don’t worry, we don’t want to get stuck in the social debate about obesity, we are only here to help you out how to ignore signals you get from your stomach when you are passing ‘delicious food’ stores. However we’d like to tell you a little bit more about obesity. People eat since they began to exist, so that’s simple isn’t it. But where did it go wrong? There are many theories about that, some people point their fingers towards the big fast food suppliers; some say it can be seen as a cultural trend. We think it went wrong when commercials became more important than relevant information. People see food all day long, 24/7, everywhere. But as we are not scientists or cultural researchers, we won’t judge whose mistake it is because in the end you are responsible for your own eating habits. Now about the facts, we can see a shift in populations where obesity is prevalent, obesity was first associated only with people from higher income groups but also in the low-and middle-income groups obesity is very common. A disturbing fact is also that children getting more and more body mass and create a basis for obesity. Especially children from 9-14 years old are likely to eat more ‘bad’ food and gain more mass than they should.

Nevertheless, what your reason for visiting this blog is, we would like to give you some advice about regulating your impulses and changing your eating habits. A good way to start your journey to a healthy eating pattern is to create an image of yourself with a healthy body and all the benefits you receive from it without comparing yourself with other people. It’s very important that you focus on yourself and your own body, because even when you tend to compare yourself with somebody else, it’s all false information because each body is different. Maybe now you think that you are not appropriate to become healthy and you want to stick to your old habits, please don’t! The secret of a healthy body lies in the fact that it’s all just a matter of breaking your habitable routine and start a new one.
For example, when you are used to eat a bag of chips when you return from school, just replace the bag of chips for a fruit salad. Believe us, we don’t want to punish you with stupid diet programs or whatever but it’s all about the routine.
Try to stay away from fast food or fattening products on weekdays and reward yourself with a snack on Saturday. In this way you keep it achievable and fun to yourself and people around you don’t see you as a total freak.

At last, when you pass that snack corner you will think about your new routine and even forget about the clothing shop because all you want to do is hurry up and go home, because there is a delicious healthy fruit salad waiting for you!