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

I don’t know where this image originally came from, but I saw it on Facebook and immediately loved it.

It reads:

Did you ever realize how much your body loves you? It’s always trying to keep you alive.

It’s making sure you breathe while you sleep, stopping cuts from bleeding, fixing broken bones, finding ways to beat the illness that might get you.

Your body literally love you so much…

It’s time you start loving it back.

It’s true. For an atheist like me, the miracle of a body that takes such good care of me is the closest thing I can imagine for a loving God. Imagine that your body is your higher power, doing its best to take care of your health and well-being. Its sole intent is to keep you living and thriving. EVERYTHING that it does is to keep you alive. If you are at a loss for imagining a higher power, you have your miraculous body right there to take its form.

I love this motivational poster from Gymaholic.

It reads:

The only bad workout you had is the one you didn’t do.

This is so true. Consistency is FAR more important than anything else. You don’t have to kill yourself in the gym. You just need to get your butt in there EVERY day. Weeks of easy workouts are better than one intense workout and weeks of avoiding the gym because that’s where the pain happens.

SHOW UP.

All you have to do is show up every day. If that means walking on the treadmill at 2 mph for twenty minutes, then that is MUCH better than not showing up. Doing anything is better than doing nothing.

I saw this motivational poster on Facebook the other day and it really spoke to me.

It reads:

If you are losing your balance in a yoga pose, reach higher. It will steady you. This is true, not just in your practice, but everywhere in your life!

This advice has helped me when I’m trying to hold a pose in yoga. I feel my body elongate and the pose has more length to balance, making it easier.

In life, I have constantly and vigorously reached higher. I don’t know if it has helped me or not. Sometimes it seems that when I relax and let things happen naturally, they work out better than when I’m constantly striving. Perhaps I just don’t know how to properly “reach higher” in life. Maybe it has less to do with pushing myself and more to do with making myself a better person.

This commercial for the Apple watch is quiet, calm and shows EXACTLY what it’s like to have an Apple watch for your fitness goals.

It is always there, counting every movement and step, right down to bedtime when you do a few jumping jacks to close out your circle.

More than that, it tells me of my text messages and phone calls, even when I’ve left my phone in the other room. The Apple watch has become so important to me that I have done strange things like accidentally left my phone at home because I don’t carry it around with me everywhere I go anymore. I also had a bizarre anxiety when I left my watch in the car while I kayaked, swam and road in the motor boat last weekend. I would have gotten lots of credit for all that activity, but I didn’t want it to get hurt by the water. It’s resistant, but not waterproof, and FAR too precious to lose.

The Apple watch went from a fun toy to a desperately needed item in my daily routine within a month. I am so grateful for it and it was worth every penny I saved to buy it.

I found this quote yesterday and it really seemed like a sad thing.

It reads:

Tao. Some of us look for the Way in opium and some in God, some of us in whiskey and some in love. It is all the same Way and it leads nowhither.

• W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil, 1925

It’s true that people look for Tao in many places where it is not. You will not find The Way in opium or other drugs. You will not find The Way in religion. You will not find The Way in alcohol. You will not find The Way with sex.

And I certainly did not find The Way in food.

Tao is an INNER JOURNEY. It is a mastery of our emotions and thoughts. It is a way of looking at life that allows you to see EVERYTHING at once, which is extremely difficult. Drugs, alcohol, sex and food only mask it and give us the illusion that we can see everything, until the end when they kill us. Religion gets a little closer, but so many religions are just tribal hatred with a pretty face.

I am not there yet. I have not found The Way, but I am certainly closer than I was when I used food to dull my senses and emotions. Instead of controlling and mastering my emotions, food just took them away. That sounded like a good thing to me at the time until I was drugged all day long, eating constantly and unable to do anything but eat.

I have been practicing yoga for the last two months. I’ve been watching some videos on YouTube to get started:

• Yoga With Adriene – YouTube

I have been doing the same few poses every day for two months and I’m getting pretty good at them. Today, I was feeling a little bored, so I decided to try Eagle pose and I was SHOCKED.

Image via: Eagle Pose – We Are Yoga

I suck at it.

Every time I try a new pose, I am a rank amateur. I am a beginner. Just because I have been able to hold Downward Facing Dog without my arms shaking and losing my balance, doesn’t mean I am good at Eagle Pose. Every pose is a beginning.

Honestly, that’s how life is. Every new thing we try is a beginning and we are rank amateurs.

The funny thing is, I didn’t get frustrated like I did when I was first starting yoga. I got excited. I had gotten a little bored with the poses that I had worked on lately, but this Eagle pose thing was HARD, and somehow, that was a GOOD thing. When I first started yoga, I was VERY frustrated with the fact that I couldn’t hold most poses for more than five seconds. I had to keep starting over to get my full 20 seconds of hold. Today, however, I had a tiny jolt of adrenaline from it. Here was something that I couldn’t do and I knew that if I kept trying for a couple of months, I COULD do it. I just needed to keep trying. It was beautiful.

The next time I realize that I am a rank amateur at something in the “real” world, I’m going to remember this. I’m going to recall that jolt of excitement that says, “This is HARD! And that’s a GOOD thing!”

This quote from Thomas Jefferson reminded me of what overeating was like:

It reads:

Do not bite at the bait of pleasure till you know there is no hook beneath it.

• Thomas Jefferson

For me, overeating ALWAYS has a hook beneath it. If I have a meal when I eat too much, I am sincerely tempted to eat too much the next meal and the meal after that. I can eat almost any kind of food without being tempted to binge, but if I eat a LARGE meal, I always have repercussions.

The bait of pleasure always has a hook. It’s not about the pleasure. It’s about WHY I want the pleasure of overeating. Whether I’m nervous, angry or happy, those emotions are the REASON I want to overeat. If I can deal with those emotions in a healthy way, then the food loses its appeal.

I am short. At 5’2″, most people tower over me. I can’t reach things on top shelves. Sometimes I need to ask my husband to get something from a high spot. Sometimes I need to get a step out of the closet to reach them.

I never berate myself for being short.

I never feel guilty when I have to get a step out of the closet to reach things.

I never get angry at myself when I have to ask Mike to get something that is high.

I can’t change the fact that I’m short.

The same is true about my eating disorder.

I have binge eating disorder. I have no control over food and when I start a binge, I cannot stop it. There are certain foods that are really dangerous to me because when I eat them, they make me want to binge for days afterwards. I can never eat like a “normal” person again.

Sometimes I need to ask for help when I want to binge. Sometimes I can’t stay away from food on my own and I need to call my sponsor or a friend. Sometimes I need to get myself away from the food. Sometimes I need to go back to basics and work on the steps.

I do not berate myself for overeating.

I never get angry at myself for needing to work my Overeater’s Anonymous program in order to keep myself from bingeing.

I never feel guilty when I need to ask for help to stay away from food.

I can’t change the fact that I have an eating disorder.

Overeater’s Anonymous does not endorse anything on this entry or blog. I speak only of my personal experience and not for OA as a whole.

I love this list of healthy and easy snacks from Fit Personality. So many times I get BORED with my food and then that leads to a binge. Having lists like this helps me.

Here is the list:

• Frozen grapes
• Blueberry greek yogurt
• Boom Chicka Pop
• Dried fruit medley
• Clementines
• Naked Juice
• Raw almonds
• Peanut butter and fruit slices
• Larabars
• Peaches and cottage cheese
• Edamame
• Watermelon chunks
• Carrots and guacamole
• Apple chips
• Strawberries and balsamic vinegar
• V8 Juice
• Celery and peanut butter
• Protein smoothie
• Pistachios
• Cinnamon Rice Cakes
• Cherry tomatoes
• Raspberries and lime
• Bell peppers
• Frozen mango
• Hard boiled egg
• Cauliflower and hummus
• Greek frozen yogurt cups
• Fruit kabobs
• Tomatoes and feta cheese
• Chocolate almond milk
• Peanuts and raisins
• Dry whole grain cereal
• Blackberries
• Cinnamon pears
• Roasted chickpeas
• Laughing Cow wedges
• Almond butter and toast
• Banana slices and chocolate
• Oatmeal balls
• Pomegranate
• 100% fruit pops

It’s very important to keep the variety of your food constantly changing in order to prevent dopamine burnout. This is all explained in my entry here:

• Starling Fitness – Fitness, diet, and health weblog » How Sugar Affects The Brain

Speaking of healthy foods, let’s say you’re hungry and decide to eat a balanced meal. You do and dopamine levels spike in the reward hot spots. But if you eat that same dish many days in a row, dopamine levels will spike less and less, eventually leveling out.

That’s because, when it comes to food, the brain evolved to pay special attention to new or different tastes. Why? Two reasons: first, to detect food that has gone bad, and second, because the more variety we have in our diet, the more likely we are to get all the nutrients we need. To keep that variety up, we need to be able to recognize a new food and, more importantly, we need to want to keep eating new foods, and that’s why the dopamine levels off when a food becomes boring.

Keep changing your meals and snacks and you won’t have that leveling out of your dopamine. That’s why I love lists of interesting foods I could have for snacks!

Via: Funeral For My Fat, fit-personality: Get your snack on y’all.

I saw this quote and I felt I should say something about it.

It reads:

Of all the self-fulfilling prophecies in our culture, the assumption that aging means decline and poor health is probably the deadliest.

• Marilyn Ferguson

I started this weight loss journey when I was a child. I tried to lose weight for years. I was never able to keep it off for a month, much less a year. I didn’t come to Overeater’s Anonymous until I was 44 years old. I am now 46 years old and I am closer to a healthy weight than I have ever been in my life.

Don’t let the idea of middle age, menopause or anything else get in the way of your success. You can do this, no matter what your age. Don’t let this fat kill you just because you think you can’t do it. Don’t be a victim of that self-fulfilling prophecy.

Overeater’s Anonymous does not endorse anything on this entry or blog. I speak only of my personal experience and not for OA as a whole.