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

Last year, I wrote a weekly plan to get you on track for a healthy and active life. If you followed the plan last week, then here is the link to this week’s plan:

• Starling Fitness » New Year’s Resolutions: Week 4

The Short Version:

• Reduce your daily caloric average by another 100 calories. Write down EVERYTHING you eat including measurements and calories.
• Avoid the feeling of deprivation by finding non-food activities to nurture yourself EVERY day.
• Eat four or five servings of vegetables every day.
• Save enough calories to eat two servings of dairy products each day.
• Increase your mileage. Walk 1.25 miles five days this week. You are allowed to increase your speed to the point of sweating, but if you are sore the next day you MUST go slow again.
• Give yourself kudos for coming this far.

This postcard from PostSecret reminds me of how desperate we can all become when we are trying to lose weight.

It reads:

I want to use cocaine again so I can lose this extra weight.

There have been times when I have felt like I have no control over what I eat and I desperately want to lose weight. I’ve never been desperate enough to risk addiction to cocaine, but then again, I’ve never even had access to the stuff. Honestly, I can’t say that I would have been able to stay away from it if I could only lose weight. I was that desperate.

Sometimes it feels like we are willing to do anything EXCEPT eat healthy and exercise. When I follow the WW program, I lose weight. There are plateaus at times, but as long as I stay on the program, my weight goes down. Why would I be willing to risk my life rather than eat healthy? It makes no sense to me.

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.

This postcard from PostSecret feels different to me now than when I was a teenager.

It reads:

Everyday after lunch with my coworkers, I go to the third floor bathroom and make myself throw it all up.

Years ago, I would have read this and felt so superior to this person with an “eating disorder.” You see, I didn’t think I had an eating disorder. Sure, I ate massive quantities of food for hours in a gorged binge, but I NEVER made myself throw it up.

See? No problems here, right?

It took me YEARS to realize that bingeing, even if I don’t purge afterwards, is an eating disorder. Now, I only wish I could conquer the binge monster.

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.

I LOVE this commercial for the new Weight Watchers plan:

I’ve always felt at war with the part of myself that wants to eat EVERYTHING. Seeing hunger personified by that furry orange thing was so motivating to me. It was like Weight Watchers gave a body to the demon that has haunted me my entire life. With that fluffy and orange body, it is so much easier to see the constant desire to binge as a pathetic monster that needs to be ignored and shunned.

Via: Funnymoods: Weight Watchers has a new program and it’s called Momentum

When I saw this ad, it brought back a ton of memories:

This particular ad came from a magazine run in 1990, but they ran this ad for a long time, starting in the late 1980’s. I used to look at this ad and wonder who Cristina Ferrare was. I looked at the before and after picture and was TOTALLY fooled by the different style of clothing hiding the fact that she didn’t lose very much weight.

I never even considered that using Slim Fast might be BAD for me.

When I was a senior in high school, I spent one month eating nothing but Slim Fast. I lost five pounds, but the month-long “fast” ended with a box of Twinkies from the discount bakery store. I still have that weight loss journal today. Days upon days of keeping track of how many Slim Fast shakes I had and then one day where I wrote, “Ate a whole box of Twinkies,” with a big frownie face.

Slim Fast might not cause binges in everyone, but for me, denying myself FOOD made me want to eat all the more.

Ad via: Found in Mom’s Basement: 1990 ad for Slim Fast featuring Cristina Ferrare

This ad for Pepsi shows how food advertisers will say ANYTHING to get you to buy them:

It reads:

Wonderful what a figure can do for a dress.

Those are mighty handsome creations they’re showing in today’s finest dress shop windows and in the stunning pages of our current fashion magazines.

But what fashion editor or window trimmer would even dream of showing them on anything but the typically slender figures of today?

Wonderful what a figure can do for a dress! But just as wonderful what the modern trend to lighter food and drink is doing for the modern figure.

That is the trend with which Pepsi-Cola has kept pace. Reduced in calories, today’s Pepsi is never heavy, never too sweet.

It is the modern, the light refreshment. Refresh without filling. Have a Pepsi.

This ad isn’t a lone rogue out there in the advertising world. Pepsi ran a LONG line of ads like this. You can see them here:

• Found in Mom’s Basement: Vintage ad campaign: Pepsi-Cola, 1950s, Part I

• Found in Mom’s Basement: Vintage ad campaign: Pepsi-Cola, 1950s, Part II

Considering how many calories Pepsi has, I have no idea how they even considered promoting it as “light refreshment.” I wonder, did anyone actually believe them?

Update 11-25-09: Here is another Pepsi is Light Refreshment ad:

• vintage_ads on LiveJournal

If you have made a New Year’s Resolution, this podcast from Fat 2 Fit Radio is truly inspirational.

• Fat 2 Fit Radio » Blog Archive » Fat 2 Fit Show #51 – The Most Important Show of the Year

If you have been feeling a little low because you might have fallen off your New Year’s Resolution wagon, listen to this podcast and DO what they say. Have your goals, WRITE THEM DOWN and make sure that they are achievable.

Last year, I wrote a weekly plan to get you on track for a healthy and active life. If you followed the plan last week, then here is the link to this week’s plan:

• Starling Fitness » New Year’s Resolutions: Week 3

The Short Version:

• Reduce your daily caloric average by 100 calories. Write down EVERYTHING you eat including measurements and calories.
• Avoid the feeling of deprivation by finding non-food activities to nurture yourself.
• Eat three or four servings of vegetables every day.
• Save enough calories to eat one serving of dairy products each day.
• Increase your mileage. Walk 1.0 miles five days this week. You are allowed to increase your speed to the point of sweating, but if you are sore the next day you MUST go slow again.
• Give yourself kudos for coming this far.

If you like to log your runs outside, you might want to look into Trailrunner.

• TrailRunner – Mac OS X route planning and journaling for iPhone, Nike+ SportBand, Garmin ForeRunner GPS

It’s a software program that works with the iPhone, Nike+, and the Garmin ForeRunner to log and map your workouts. Since I use the Nike+ on all my runs, I used it to download all my runs for the last two and a half years. Of course, the Nike+ doesn’t have a GPS, so it can’t show any maps of those runs. If I download iTrail, on my iPhone, however, it will log my runs AND map them on the screen.

Personally, I like the desktop application that works with my iPhone. It’s like they took the online capabilities of RunKeeper and let ME control them on my desktop instead of making me log onto a website.

The biggest problem with both TrailRunner AND Runkeeper is the lack of interactivity. The killer feature of Nike+ is that I can compete with other people. There are thousands of people online at Nike’s website that I can run races against. When I’m trying to rack up the miles on my Nike+, I do it to kick somebody’s butt. That feature of the Nike+ makes all of these other applications pale in comparison.

I have been downloading Podrunner onto my iPod for a LONG time and I’m surprised that I have never talked about it here. You don’t have to subscribe using iTunes. You can download the latest podcast here:

• Podrunner: – Free Workout Music
• Podrunner on iTunes

Running is much easier when I have the right music. Podrunner always gives me music with a thumping bass that makes keeping active easy. I hate it when I have my iPod on shuffle and a slow, mellow song comes on, so a mix like Podrunner lets me exercise without having to worry about skipping songs. I just start it playing and I have an hour of run-friendly music to keep me company.