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

This advertisement from Nike pisses me off:

It reads:

My butt is big and round like the letter C and ten thousand lunges has made it rounder but not smaller and that’s just fine. It’s a space heater for my side of the bed. It’s my embassador to those who walk behind me. It’s a border collie that herds skinny women away from the best deals at clothing sales. My butt is big and that’s just fine and those who might scorn it are invited to kiss it.

Just do it.

NikeWomen.com

I just sat there looking at the ad for five minutes as my brain locked up.

I looked at the picture of the absolutely PERFECT woman in their ad and tried to fathom how ANYONE at Nike thought her butt was big.

What the BLEEP is the matter with you, Nike?! Her butt is NOT big! It’s obvious that the folks at Nike haven’t seen a normal woman in SO long that they actually believe that this model’s butt was “big and round.”

This isn’t the first time I’ve realized that Nike is absolutely out of touch with reality. I wrote about it FIVE years ago (to the day):

• Starling Fitness 08-31-2006 » Why I’m Angry At Nike

I had gone into the Nike store in Las Vegas to purchase some of their overpriced iPod clothing, but the XL shirt was the size of a XS at a normal store.

The fact that they don’t carry a size for me when I’m fifty pounds lighter, just tells me that they aren’t an athletic clothing company. They’re a fashion clothing company just like Kenneth Cole. They don’t want “fatties” like me wearing their clothes and giving them a bad name.

Despite the look on my face, I was near tears when I had Mike click this picture of me. Despite all the weight I’ve lost, I’m still not thin enough for Nike. Well, they can take their 70-dollar shirts and stuff ‘em. I’m going to give my money to a company that deserves it.

I can’t believe they haven’t gotten the message yet. I still use my Nike+ every once and a while, and back in 2006, it single-handedly got me running. EVERYTHING else about the company, however, has made me want to bite, scratch and burn down the place. F-you, Nike! Her butt is NOT big!

Advert via: For Women In Shape! | The Fitness Low Down

Update 09-01-11: Apparently, the ad above is NOT from Nike. It was created by someone else, using the Nike wording from THIS ad:

Of course, the butt shown in the Nike ad is SMALLER and less rounded than the beautiful girl in the photoshopped ad, so I stand by EVERY word I say. What the BLEEP is the matter with Nike?!

Oh, and if you are self-conscious about any other part of your body, here is a bunch of other ads to make you feel like you’re not good enough:

This one reads:

I have thunder thighs, and that’s a compliment because they are strong and toned and muscular and though they are unwelcome in the petite section, they are cheered on in marathons. Fifty years from now, I’ll bounce a grandchild on my thunder thighs and then I’ll go out for a run.

Just do it.

NikeWomen.com

This one isn’t nearly so denigrating:

My knees are tomboys. They get bruised and cut every time I play soccer. I’m proud of them and wear my dresses short. My mother worries I will never marry with knees like that, but I know there’s someone out there who will say to me: I love you and I love your knees. I want the four of us to grow old together.

Just do it.

NikeWomen.com

The ad actually gets it right. Instead of pretending that the perfect legs shown are imperfect in some way, this ad actually is an AFTER picture. Nike actually did it right on this ad. It reads:

My legs were once two hairy sticks that weren’t very good at jump rope, but by the time I reached the age of algebra, they had come into their own and now in spin class, they are revered. Envied for their strength. Honored for their beauty. Hairless for the most part, except that place the razor misses just behind the ankles.

Just do it.

NikeWomen.com

Of course, then they got it wrong again with this one. Those shoulders do NOT look like a man’s. It reads:

My shoulders aren’t dainty or proportional to my hips. Some say they are like a man’s . I say leave men out of it. They are mine. I made them in a swimming pool then I went to yoga and made my arms.

Just do it.

NikeWomen.com

Correct Nike Ad Images via:

• Nike Confirms “My Butt Is Big” Ad Is A Fake | The Frisky

• New Nike Women Print Ad–”My Butt is Big”

I saw this on Hulu this morning:

Even though Demi Lovato looks lovely and PERFECT, some people were commenting on how she looked in a negative way. Demi was having NONE of it and turned to Twitter to answer:

I’ve gained weight. Get over it. That’s what happens when you get out of treatment for AN EATING DISORDER.

Guess what, I’m healthy and happy, and if you’re hating on my weight you obviously aren’t. 🙂 #UNBROKEN

The next time someone tells you that you are too fat, remember Demi Lovato. She looks absolutely lovely and some crackpots were calling HER fat. There is no pleasing some people and they will ALWAYS be jerks. As long as you are at a healthy weight, leave the haters behind, just like Demi did!

I saw this Egg Man animation a couple of days ago and it made me truly think about eggs:

The whole reason we eat cereal for breakfast instead of eggs is because of one crackpot (okay, maybe two or three): Sylvester Graham. He was a dietary reformer in the 19th century. He wasn’t the first vegetarian or even the first prominent one, but he was America’s first vegetarian reformer. He believed vegetarianism was a cure for alcoholism and sexual urges (do we really NEED a cure for sexual urges? Isn’t that the OPPOSITE of what Viagra is for?). He was a strong proponent of the temperance movement and invented the graham cracker as a digestive biscuit. Graham was trying to find a healthy alternative to white bread, which is a problem in itself, but instead of turning to meat and eggs, he clung to his vegetarianism in an effort to stave off sexual depravity.

Sylvester Graham inspired another crackpot, John Harvey Kellogg and his entrepreneurial brother, Will Keith Kellogg. John Harvey was so intent on the cure of sexual urges and a vegetarian diet that he suggested that men who would not stop masturbating should endure circumcision WITHOUT anesthesia. His brother created Corn Flakes and served them to the unlucky souls who were sick enough to be in the Battle Creek Sanitarium. Charles W. Post was one of those unlucky souls and after a little snooping in their kitchens, stole their recipe for dry cereal and started a company of his own under his own name.

The whole reason I was raised on Captain Crunch and Fruity Pebbles is because of Temperance. The faulty reasoning that sex is bad AND eating less meat would make people not want to have sex (which might be the case, who knows) has shaped my body and my life. Instead of eating eggs and bacon for breakfast, I ate Fruit Loops.

How about we re-evalutate EVERYTHING that we’ve been told for over 100 years? We know that sex isn’t bad. Maybe vegetarianism isn’t good. Maybe Eggman is trying to tell us that we need to stop eating food made by a man who never consummated his marriage and used electricity to jolt urges out of the body. The more I learn about the origins of some foods and dietary ideas, the less valid they seem to me.

When Mike and I visited Galveston, Texas a while back, we rented a surrey for an hour and rode it up and down the coastline. It was hot and sweaty fun and ever since, I have wanted to BUY a surrey to ride around my own neighborhood.

Just the other day, I saw this video on YouTube and it reminded me of the fun ride I had with Mike.

Of course, Mike and I weren’t drunk, so our ride was a little less rambunctious, but it was still great fun.

The next time you’re trying to figure out what to do with your weekend, check out the touristy areas of your town. Perhaps, there is a surrey rental company there for you. I highly recommend it for a fun and healthy activity.

I’ve just discovered Sean Croxton and Underground Wellness. His videos are entertaining and have demonstrated exactly what has been brewing in my mind. For example, here is his video from April 2009 called, “Sugar Is A Drug.”

At the 3:30 mark, he talks about how crappy you feel when you first start eating low carb. It’s true. My energy level dropped. I wanted to binge on any kind of food I saw and many more that I could imagine. I snapped at Mike, the dog and even my sick cat. I felt tired and I just didn’t want to do anything except nap and eat. After it passed, however, I felt MUCH better.

I had experienced that effect before. I had tried the Atkins diet several times and quit before I got past that sugar withdrawal stage. There were other times when I tried Atkins and never got past that stage because I was eating the Atkins Nutritional Bars. I don’t care what they say on the package, those bars acted like pure sugar in my body and I never got past the bonking stage when I ate them.

The reason I liked Sean and this video so much is because at the 3:55 mark, he explains why it’s not a good idea to eat a little sugar when you get to that stage:

You’re going to have MAJOR sugar cravings, but think about this: If you had a friend, who’s addicted to heroin, or crack, or somethin’ like that, and they wanna get off it. You send ’em to rehab, and, you know, a day or two into it, they start jonesin’ for crack. You don’t go, well, “Alright, man. Imma take care o’ this. Here’s a little crack.” NO YOU DON’T SAY THAT! So you have to DEAL with it! You gotta DEAL with those sugar cravings because THEY WILL PASS!

I felt like standing up and shouting, “Amen!” at him when he said that. I don’t know about the other things he says about the supplement and the other causes of sugar cravings. I have NO idea if that is based on science or not, but I DO know that the withdrawal symptoms go away and I felt MUCH better after they did.

If you’re feeling like you couldn’t possibly cut your carbohydrates down to 20g a day, don’t give up hope. If you think it’s crazy talk to excise sugar, flour, potatoes and even some fruit out of your diet because we all have been told that moderation is the key, don’t disregard it. There is no such thing as moderation when it comes to poison. You wouldn’t recommend moderation when it comes to electrical shocks, either. Sometimes moderation is NOT the key and carbohydrates are a glaring example of that.

If I am only making a few slices of bacon, my George Foreman Grill is the absolute BEST way to do it. Since I’ve started eating low carb, I’ve found the joy of eating bacon again. I can put the grill on high heat, put three or four strips of bacon on the grill and set the timer for ten minutes. When I’m done, most of the grease has drained into the pan under the grill and the bacon only needs a dab of a paper towel to be perfect. It’s ideal: no turning, no draining the grease and no grease splatters all over the stove.

However easy the bacon is to cook on the George Foreman grill, I was still reluctant to write this entry. Here is a tip to make cooking bacon easy, clean and fast, and yet, I was unwilling to post that picture of my own grill stacked high with bacon. Why?

Because bacon has been considered an evil for my entire life.

High in fat and calories, bacon was a guilty pleasure for me. It was avoided when I was “on program” and a binge-worthy desire when I was off. Now that I’m eating low carb, bacon can be an every day breakfast. I can’t even write the words that I should write: bacon is a HEALTHY breakfast.

I’ve lost TWENTY pounds since I started eating low carb in June. That’s TWICE as much as I lost all last year while I was starving on Weight Watchers. That kind of reduction in weight is considered a GOOD thing for my health, and I did it by eating plenty of bacon.

So, YES! Bacon IS a healthy breakfast.

I should feel no shame in writing that, yet it goes against everything I have been told for my entire life. Of course, everything they told me ended with me starving and paradoxically obese, so maybe it’s alright to just do my best to put all that old “wisdom” out of my mind.

If you want to easily cook bacon, here are a selection of George Foreman Grills at Amazon. My favorite is the first one (pictured at the right) and lucky you, it’s MUCH cheaper now than when I bought it several years ago.

• George Foreman GRP90WGR Next Grilleration Electric Nonstick Grill with 5 Removable Plates
• George Foreman Next Grilleration 4-Burger Grills with Removable Plates
• George Foreman GR20B Family-Size 60-Square-Inch Nonstick Grill
• George Foreman GR10B 36 Square Inch Nonstick Countertop Grill, Black

For my whole life, they told me that I needed to have self-confidence to succeed. All those teachers and leaders urged me to love myself in order to see progress. I never once loved myself. I never once had self-confidence. I have seen enough success in my life to realize that maybe self-confidence isn’t nearly as important as they say.

Then I read this article:

• Caroming the Combination: The Paradox of Self-Confidence

It’s about playing billiards and pool and truly has nothing to do with me, but the title attracted me, so I read it. The author suggests that most of us can calculate with a pretty high degree of probability how well we are going to do. We KNOW whether we suck or not, but when we are doing it, we delude ourselves for that briefest of moments.

This isn’t superstition or some vague positive psychology. I’m saying that it is a simple matter of not allowing distracting thoughts during the execution. “I might miss this shot,” is one of the worst thoughts that you could possibly have during a shot. If that enters the mind, you probably will miss the shot.

Using the delusion of self-confidence while we are trying to do great things is a method of clearing our minds of distractions. THAT is something that I do all the time. When I’m bowling, I know how poorly I’m doing, but when I throw that ball, I am pretending that I’m a pro-bowler on ESPN THE OCHO. When I’m logging my daily food intake, I know how likely I will be able to stay under my 20g of carbs, but when I’m choosing food, I pretend that I am a carnivore.

Self-Confidence is a delusion. The only people who truly have it are utterly insufferable. Those of us who use it as a method to avoid distractions, succeed far beyond our meager hopes for ourselves.

For a long time, I’ve know that running along those pine needle lined paths in the park are just as injury prone as running on asphalt. In fact, I talked about it SEVEN years ago in this blog entry:

• Starling Fitness » June 29, 2004 – The Perfect Run

They say that the ideal running environment is a trail run on pine needles, but “they” obviously don’t run as often or in as many places as I have. Where there are pine needles, there are pine trees. Where there are pine trees, I am going to trip on a fucking pinecone. It’s just how nature works. You can’t have the pine needles without the pinecones. No, the ideal running environment is not a trail run on pine needles; it’s the sixth floor at the Luxor Hotel.

It seems that now a exercise physiologist has come to same conclusion:

• For Runners, Soft Surface Can Be Just as Hard on the Body – NYTimes.com

Dr. Tanaka, a runner, once tried it himself. He was recovering from a knee injury, and an orthopedist told him to stay away from hard surfaces, like asphalt roads, and run instead on softer surfaces, like grass or dirt. So he ran on a dirt path runners had beaten into the grass along an asphalt bike path.

The result? “I twisted my ankle and aggravated my injury while running on the softer and irregular surface,” he said.

I stand by my assertion that the perfect run is the sixth floor of the Luxor Hotel. Soft carpeting, even flooring, and no pine cones to trip over. If only we could get the staff to pick up the room service trays earlier, it would be absolutely danger-free. Until then, I’ll have to dodge the leftover food and dishes.

If you think orange juice is a healthy way to get vitamin C, think again. According to Civil Eats, here is The Truth About Orange Juice in Boxes. Not from concentrate juice is held in huge vats for over a year. To keep it from spoiling, they remove the oxygen from the juice.

When the juice is stripped of oxygen it is also stripped of flavor providing chemicals. Juice companies therefore hire flavor and fragrance companies, the same ones that formulate perfumes for Dior and Calvin Klein, to engineer flavor packs to add back to the juice to make it taste fresh. Flavor packs aren’t listed as an ingredient on the label because technically they are derived from orange essence and oil.

Rather than drink a glass of franken-food, how about just eating an orange. Sure, they’re hard to peel and the spray juice all over your fingers, but you get the added benefit of fiber from the orange, plus the REAL flavor of an orange.

Via The Flavor Of Your OJ Is A Chemically-Induced Mirage – The Consumerist

My friend. Mindy, found this soda can in an old wall on her property. It’s a Weight Watchers Lemon-Lime No Sugar Soda can.

Somehow, seeing this made me remember what Weight Watchers has been all along: a business first. The leaders of Weight Watchers are dedicated teachers doing their best to help the members, but the entity of Weight Watchers is a business. They sell frozen dinners and ice cream treats. They lend their proprietary points system to other food companies. They no longer sell soda, but they do profit from the food they sell.

Why did I ever trust them?

This is the same company that brought me Slender Quenchers:

• Starling Fitness » Wendy McClure rescues old Weight Watchers recipe cards, circa 1974

Why should I trust them now when I wouldn’t put those old recipes anywhere near my lips?

After spending ten years on Weight Watchers with little to no progress, it’s hard not to feel bitter. I was hungry all the time and all I wanted to do was eat. I only lost weight when I was ravenous. They helped Jennifer Hudson lose weight by giving her the secret: stay away from carbs. Why didn’t they let me in on it? Why did they let me stagnate for so long?

I know it wasn’t my leader’s fault. She would have told me exactly what to do if she only knew. They didn’t tell her either.

Did they WANT me to stay fat so I would keep paying them? Why did they sell me frozen dinners with more than a day’s worth of carbs in one meal when they had their celebrity loser eat low carb?

I know it’s not healthy to stay so bitter about this, but I can’t help but blame them for the years that I struggled, starved and stagnated. It feels as if I were the one stuffed into that old wall on my friend’s property for all those years instead of that Weight Watchers Soda Can.