Starling Fitness: Daily writings on Fitness, Diet, and Health

TLC has a show called “Honey We’re Killing the Kids.” If you haven’t see the show, you can see their website here:

• TLC :: Honey We’re Killing the Kids

I haven’t seen the show, so I don’t know how realistic it is. Here is a guide of how to encourage activity with your children. They’ve broken up the activities into age groups, which help. I find the list a little simplistic, but it’s a good start if you feel totally lost with your children.

• TLC :: Honey We’re Killing the Kids :: Family Activity Guide

I have a hard time with most recommendations regarding childhood obesity. Sometimes eating is a control issue and children are just exercising their will on the only thing they feel they have control over. I feel like you can’t force a child to eat healthy. They have to do it on their own and the only way you can get them to do that is to provide a good example: “Do you want to be strong like Daddy?” or “Do you want to be pretty like Mommy?” Younger children will answer yes to that question every time. If Mommy and Daddy are eating healthy, then the children will automatically mimic that behavior.

Child obesity has more to do with the parents than the children.

Anica Mercado started out her weblog entry with the following phrase:

“This weekend entailed a roughly six hour drive to our first away game.”

I saw the picture of football players and thought to myself, “She must be a cheerleader.” It was so beyond my cognition to think that she could actually be playing on a football team herself. Man, just when I think I’m totally forward thinking, my prejudices smack me in the face with a Whiffle bat.

• A Blog for Fat Athletes: From Anica: Sweat, Bruises, and Far-Away Dreams

After playing a couple of games, she has dreams as big as any football player has had:

“I’ve also been sitting here and thinking about my dreams. I’m a big dreamer. So, baring my soul to you all, I will divulge one of my bigger dreams: I want to play football in college. If I’m really, really shooting, I want to be the first woman in the NFL.”

She immediately follows her declaration with a dismissal…

“Now, I’m not stupid, I know that those are very, very unlikely. Like I said though, I shoot high.”

Why does it have to be very, very unlikely? I think the NFL should play like softball, where you have to have a minimum of 45% women on the field. If we integrated sports that way, then we could prove how well women can do in sports. Why do we have separate women and men’s leagues? We should require each team to play with half women and let each team be equally balanced. I think they’d be surprised at how strong us girls are.

Good luck, Anica! May you be the first woman in the NFL!

Mark, at A Passion for Running, has fully tested the new running skirts. He has included pictures and a video of him donning the bright pink running skirt and matching jogging bra. Is he insane?

Probably…

More importantly, he did it for charity. Urging his readers to make donations to thier favorite charities, he promised to wear and review the running skirts for everyone’s enjoyment.

You can read his review here:

• A Passion for Running » a manly man’s review of his pink running skirt

You can see the video of him in the skirt here:

• A Passion for Running » Mark “Feels Like a Woman”

If you would like to purchase a running skirt, you can do so here:

• Running Skirts for Women in Hot New Colors Women’s Fitness Running Gear

After reading his review, I know that I wouldn’t like the running skirt. There is only a panty underneath, so there is nothing to protect my inner thighs from chafing. That’s a lot less of an issue now than it used to be, but I’m still very sensitive about my exercise clothing. Mark looks cute, though.

I videotaped myself exercising the other day. I talked to the camera, letting you be my workout buddy. There are so many times when I have no one to talk to when I’m exercising, so I thought talking to the camera might be interesting. After going through thirty minutes of video, this minute and a half is all that I’m willing to share with you.

For a great inspirational story about walking, read tingilinde’s entry about walking here:

• tingilinde: 2987

The tips about walking are excellent and so many that I don’t want to print them all here. Click over to tingilinde to read them all.

I started out walking when I weighed 235 pounds, and even now, a brisk walk is enough to get my heart pumping and me feeling happy and active. There are so many benefits to walking and running that it’s very difficult to put them into words, but tingilinde has done a good job.

Via: Betsy Devine: Luna bars, movie whiplash, and more inspirations

Fear is such a personal thing. For one person, learning to surf is scary. For another, being able to walk out to the mailbox and get the mail is. I can’t look into a magic computer screen and see each of your fears. All I can do is urge you to do something scary.

I can think of a ton of things that used to scare me:

• Running a race.
• Writing down EVERYTHING that I eat, even when I’m bingeing.
• Exercising every day.
• Eating healthy in front of my family and friends.
• Saying no to desserts or other food that wasn’t in my plan.
• Being a “picky eater.”
• Hurting myself by exercising.

I could keep on writing, but these are my fears, not yours. Make a list of your biggest diet and exercise fears.

Today…

Seriously, right now, this very second make a quick list of what you’re scared of. Choose something on that list and do it now. I was scared of being thought of as a “picky eater.” Now, I have no fear of that because I was brave enough to say that I didn’t want to eat unhealthy food. It took me a long time to learn how to be POLITE and ask for what I needed, but I finally got past that fear. Today is your day to learn how to cross one of those fears off your list.

Each time you cross off a fear, you get closer to getting to goal weight and living a healthy lifestyle without effort.

They don’t promise that you’ll be thinner, just a vague threat that the rest of the world will be…

You can see all the ads here:

• ….HOW ADVERTISING SPOILED ME….

The Fitness Company is based in Germany. They’re clever advertisements, but I don’t appreciate the sentiment that the rest of the world will suddenly change to the Size Zero Mentality.

Tell me about your body.

What do you love about it?

What would you miss if you lost it?

How strong are you? How fast are you? What can you do that no one else can?

The Question of the Week is meant to be an Inner Workout for you. Find some time during the week and allow yourself to write the answers to the questions posted. You can write them on paper, on a word processor or here in the comments section. Whatever works for you as long as you do it.

Keep writing until you find out something about yourself that you didn’t know before. I’ve also heard that it works to keep writing until you cry, but that doesn’t really work for me. Whatever works for you. Just keep writing until it feels right.

Self-image is a personal thing. Dave Werner wanted to share the stories he received about body image with the world. Here is a video describing his work:

Here are the responses to the body image question:

Real Images Project Responses

You can see Dave’s portfolio here:

Dave Werner’s Portfolio 2006

Via: Big Fat Blog: Reflect/Respect

I did a simple search on YouTube and found a few exercise videos. It made me happy just to see these short films.

Exercising with Claire, Peck & Katy:

These three kids spend their afternoon exercising with an exercise video. They are giggling more than they are sweating, but it looks like such fun. Peck is behind the camera most of the time while Claire and Katy try to keep up with the video.

Exercise Ball:

Scott shows you how to do a simple crunch using an exercise ball and then gets a little silly.

Morning Exercise:

A truly inspiring video showing a floor exercise done by an amazing gymnast.

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