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

If you bought a Wii Fit when they first came out, you’re probably a little sick of them calling you OBESE every freakin’ day. It’s probably gathering dust shoved under your couch…

Oh wait, that’s me…

Well, dust off your Wii Balance Board because Jillian Michaels (of Biggest Loser fame) has a workout game for you! It’s called Jillian Michaels Fitness Ultimatum 2009 and it will be available TOMORROW!

Jillian is the really tough trainer from The Biggest Loser and she’s the one that I like the best. Sure, she makes me angry when she berates her team members, but then again, sometimes they don’t do their homework and totally deserve it.

I really bonded with Jillian the second season of the Biggest Loser, so when they replaced her with a Barbie Doll in the third season, I refused to watch. Every year I SAY I’m not going to watch, but that year, I really didn’t. When Jillian came riding back last year on her black motorcycle and brought members of the Black Team to victory, I was so happy. Suffice it to say that I’m pretty stoked about this game!

Here are some screen shots:

So, if your Wii Balance Board is hiding under the couch, pull it out, get Jillian’s game and get ready to sweat!

Zen Habits has a pretty cool article about beating the sugar habit:

• Beat the Sugar Habit: 3 Steps to Cut Sweets (Mostly) Out of Your Life | Zen Habits

Steps one and two waste your time telling you WHY you need to cut sugar out of your diet. Anyone willing to read an entry on how to “Beat the Sugar Habit” already knows why they don’t want to eat sugar anymore. The best advice comes at the third step, “Just Live the Daily Journey one Choice at a Time.” They have a list of ways to make good choices in your diet:

• Choose to eat more natural foods.
• Find the hidden sources of sugars and remove them.
• If it’s not near you, you can’t eat it.
• Make each meal balanced to control your blood sugar and insulin response.
• Eat sugar from its natural packaging – like fruit (as it is packed with fiber, water, vitamins and minerals) and other complex sources like vegetables.
• Base your larger intake of carbohydrates around workouts and other activity.
• Choose to burn fat, not store it.
• Get out and exercise.
• More fish please.
• Learn it’s OK to say “No”.
• Get rid of your mental attachment to sugar and food – once a week with a short fast (like only eating dinner for a day once a week).
• Control and manage your stress.
• Go to bed early and get your sleep.
• Don’t ever get down on yourself.
• Enjoy Life.

Oh, enjoy life… THAT’S why it’s so hard for me to stop eating sugar. I haven’t been enjoying LIFE enough. I do agree with a lot of the things that were said in this article, but sometimes it’s a little more complicated than that. I DO NOT recommend that you “Get rid of your mental attachment to food” by fasting once a week. I strongly believe that the act of fasting causes bingeing. There’s some good advice in that article if you’re willing to sift through it.

The basis of all of this is eating or NOT eating sugar is our choice. Every piece of food that I put in my mouth is my choice. That alone is a very powerful thought to keep you motivated toward healthy eating.

I absolutely LOVE this Nike commercial!

The voice of the woman says:

I don’t need to fill a stadium, or cause one to erupt with joy. I don’t need to hear 60,000 people chant my name. I’ll never have a fan club, get a signing bonus, or even sign an autograph, but can you honestly tell me, I’m not an athlete?

Next time you’re feeling like skipping your workout, come back here and watch this commercial again. It will get you on the treadmill, exercise bike, or out of the house to exercise, even if you were feeling unmotivated a mere one minute and one second earlier.

I’ve decided that the key to happiness is low expectations.

Laura Moncur, Merriton, 06-04-08

When I wrote that chapter in Merriton, I had no idea I might also be talking about my own weight loss journey.

I have found that when I keep my expectations LOW, I last longer and stay happier. When so many self-help gurus tell me that I need to stay positive and aim for the sky, it seems very counter intuitive to me to keep my expectations low.

Let’s take my weekly experience at the scale, for example. When my expectations are low, I MEAN LOW. Expecting to lose more than 0.5 lb. a week is too high. If I plan on losing 0.5 lb. or less, I end up ecstatic when I lose 0.6 pounds.

On the other hand, if I have been shooting for the sky and I find that I’ve only lost 0.6 lb., I tend to get discouraged. I feel like “this isn’t working.” Sometimes, I even end up bingeing because I didn’t reach my goal. Even if my goal was as “low” as 1.0 lb. a week.

For some reason, the opposite of what all the gurus say is true for me. Instead of aiming for the sky, I do MUCH better when I aim for the ground. I’m pleasantly surprised when I actually hit something.

In the early nineties, I exercised a lot with Denise Austin. She was on ESPN back then and while I jumped and bounced during the commercial breaks, I saw this commercial ALOT:

To this day, I can hear that guy’s voice in the back of my head:

Hey baby! You gonna hog the court forever?

Ironically, this commercial NEVER made me want to hit tennis balls, but it did make me want to hit dorky guys with tennis rackets.

And they say video games cause violence…

Seeing this commercial again on YouTube made me so happy in a quiet way. I remember jumping and moving while this and commercials for NuSkin flashed by my eyes. I never fast forwarded through the commercials because I was supposed to be exercising during them.

I’ve never owned a pair of Reebok shoes and I feel a little guilty about that. Life IS short, so play hard, even if it’s not in a pair of Reebok shoes.

I want to have a conversation with the writer of this postcard from PostSecret.

It reads:

I eat all the ice cream so my kids don’t end up fat like me.

I don’t know how well that method might work. I DO know that my dad used to have binges. He would eat all the food in the house in the evening and come morning, we’d be hard pressed to find anything for breakfast. I learned to eat as much as I could when we had food just so I would get my share of it.

Is that the lesson that you were trying to teach your kids by eating all the ice cream?

PostSecret‘s beneficiary is the National Hopeline Network. It is a 24-hour hotline (1 (800) SUICIDE) for anyone who is thinking about suicide or knows someone who is considering it.

The snow has already blanketed the Wasatch Mountains, leaving hiking to be a cold and potentially dangerous pursuit here in Utah. Fortunately, Tom Mangan was nice enough to share his hike through the Sunol Wilderness in California.

• New hike video: Sunol Wilderness

A beautiful video showing the perpetual spring in California. THIS is why we exercise. So we can enjoy sites like this in real life. When you are pounding away on the treadmill this winter or biking your butt off at a spinning class, remember that THIS is why you’re doing it. Enjoy the mountains and the trails in the summer and train for them in the winter.

I just read about an advertising study that noticed that seeing thin women modeling a product makes you more likely to rate that product highly. Of course, you end up feeling insecure about yourself, but the marketing for the product is positive.

• Go figure: Skinny sells best

More importantly, seeing thin models also affects eating behavior:

Advertisers like to mess with your head and so do researchers, so here come the free cookies. The researchers tried to gauge the short-term link between seeing thin models and eating behaviour, and used the ploy of offering free Oreos as a thank-you to their study participants. Those who had just seen the thin models were almost four times as likely to refuse the cookies.

So, if you look through the latest issue of Elle magazine, is that good for you or bad for you? Your self-esteem might suffer, but your eating behaviors might improve.

Maybe these words from Jay Leno actually help in this case:

I think high self-esteem is overrated. A little low self-esteem is actually quite good…Maybe you’re not the best, so you should work a little harder.

Jay Leno (1950 – ), O Magazine, February 2003

Honestly, I think the whole self-esteem issue is moot. It doesn’t matter how you feel about yourself as long as you do what you need to do to be successful. Photos of thin models or not, the most important thing to keep you healthy is DOING what needs to be done to be healthy.

Via: Diet Blog: Women Prefer Products Pitched by Thin Models

SLB+ has been training for a big race. He did his first 20 mile run and logged it with 20 photos. You can see them all here:

• Quadrathon: 20 miles in 20 photos

Twenty miles was on the plan yesterday. It is the first 20mile distance that I’ll run, increasing steadily up to the final week before I start to taper and culminate in a 35 miler.

Next time you feel a little sluggish during your morning workout, remember SLB+’s 20 miles. If his shoes can take him that far, so can yours.

Despite my best efforts, I haven’t been able to stop watching The Biggest Loser. I have to admit that I get really motivated watching all those people working out.

If you missed it, this little video will catch you up:

I was just SHOCKED when Colleen lost seven pounds. That is just a HUGE amount to lose in a week. Unfortunately, her father had gained two pounds, so they voted to send him home. His leg injury just pushed him over the edge. You can see how he’s doing now here:

I don’t like to see any of the contestants being screamed at, but I have to admit that I do like to see the success that these people have. Of course, I’d like to see them ALL five years later to see how many keep the weight off.