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

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.

This photo reminded me of the phrase, “You are what you eat.”

One of the commenters said, “I am glad my tummy is not transparent.”

But the more I thought of it, the more I realized that while our stomachs are not transparent, it is quite obvious to everyone around us what we are eating. Orson Welles said it best:

Gluttony is not a secret vice.

Whether my abdomen is transparent or not, everyone around me can see what I’ve been eating for my entire life. It’s plastered on my body in the form of bulges and fat. I may not be an ant with a see-through gut, but the idea that I can hide my years of eating is gone.

Photo via: Tasting The Rainbow: The Ants Whose Multi-coloured Abdomens Show Exactly What They’ve Been Eating » Design You Trust – Design and Beyond!

The other day, we were all at Craft Lake City. Mixed in among the art was a booth for GeekyCookies. Staring at me were Star Trek cookies and Pacman cookies. They even had Browncoat Brownies. Mike made a joke about how each time we go to the planet we have to eat a red shirt cookie and we all laughed. Then Mike bought a Pacman cookie.

“Now you know what it feels like when someone eats you, Pacman!” he said while biting into the sugar cookie.

I haven’t wanted a sugar cookie for AGES, but Pacman tempted me. Why?

Part of the reason is the artificial scarcity. It’s not every day that I could eat a Pacman cookie. Sure, it’s just a sugar cookie, but it’s a sugar cookies shaped like Pacman (or a Star Trek shirt or a Invincibility Star). It doesn’t taste any differently than a normal sugar cookie, but it seems rare because it’s something I don’t see every day.

I found myself reacting the same way when I saw these Donut Kitties.

They are just donuts, but I wanted to eat one just because they are so darn cute!

The next time you’re tempted to eat something that you wouldn’t normally eat, stop and think why. Is it just because the food is cute? Is it because you think that you may never get a chance to eat something like this again? Take the time to really analyze how you are feeling and don’t let the appearance of food affect your judgement.

Related article: Starling Fitness » Patriotic Food Can Screw Up Your Eating

I originally downloaded Lose it! last May when I first started going low carb. I don’t think I used it for more than one or two days before abandoning it for two months.

The main reason I stopped using it was because their food list is kind of limited. I couldn’t find myzithria cheese (no matter how I spelled it) or a taco salad without the shell. There are other apps with far greater food lists and I used them.

The one thing those other apps don’t have, however, is support.

I’m not talking technical support. Quite honestly, Lose It! is so easy to use, I haven’t had to contact tech support. I use both the website and the iPhone app and they work seamlessly together (Hello, WW! Are you listening?! Your app sux!).

I’m talking about weight loss support. There are TONS of people using Lose It and if you make some of them your friends (and set up your privacy settings), they can see your workouts, your weight losses and your food log. They can give you kudos for getting out there and exercising. They be a shoulder to cry on if you show a gain on the scale. They can even be an inspiration to you when you see that they exercised their butts off when you sat on the couch yesterday.

It’s everything that WW promised me about their meetings, but I never got. That’s a bit of a lie. I had one friend at WW and seeing her every week was the only thing that kept me going that last year. I’ve kept in touch with her via email, but I really do miss seeing her in person every week. All the people on Lose It! have filled that void for me.

There are so many people using Lose It! that I have been able to find a whole group of friends that are eating low carb. It has been refreshing to have a group of people who eat the same way I do without the constant lecturing about the “benefits” of whole grains and fruit.

Lose It! isn’t a program for people following low carb. It tracks calories, but it also allows you to watch other macronutrients, so I have it tracking calories AND carbs. Lose It! isn’t about dictating a diet to you, it’s just a tool that allows you to formulate a diet of your own that works specifically for you.

I absolutely LOVE Lose It!’s reports. I can analyze my nutrients so that I am sure that I’m eating a high fat, moderate protein and low carb diet. I’ve never been able to do that analysis before, so it gives me a piece of mind to know that I’m on the right track. There are many other reports for exercise trends, favorite foods, and calorie expenditures that give a visual reminder to keep on track or change course. I adore how they crunch my data for me so I don’t have to pull out a spreadsheet.

And the badges! I love getting little prizes for working toward goals and Lose It! badges are PERFECT for that. I’ve earned a couple of small badges, but seeing all the things I could earn on other people’s profiles makes me want to work harder. One of my friends had earned these badges and I am on a mission to earn them as well.

I love how they reward you for exercising regularly and tracking your food consistently. It’s so inspiring to me!

Once I’ve earned those badges, I can order a t-shirt with one of them on it. When I get that Die Hard badge, I’m definitely getting a t-shirt. Oh, and the Goal Achieved badge, too. In fact, I’ll have to order a t-shirt for the Exercise King badge, as well. I can’t wait until I can do that!

Of course, if you’re shy about sharing your information, Lose It! has privacy settings that allow you complete secrecy. Your friends can only see what you allow them to see, and the rest of the world is blind. Or the entire world can be blind to you. You have that option and I love Lose It! for it.

In the end, I have been extremely happy with Lose It! If you feel like your diet is getting a little stale, log onto their site and see if it helps you as much as it has helped me.

• Website: Lose it!
• iPhone App: Lose It! – iPhone
• Android App: Lose It! – Android
• Book in Paperback: Lose It!: The Personalized Weight Loss Revolution at Amazon.com
• Book at the Kindle Store: Lose It!: The Personalized Weight Loss Revolution at Amazon.com

Update 09-20-11: I’ve found two more badges that I’d like to earn: The Pool Shark and Om badges.

Of course, neither of them have gotten me to swim or do yoga yet, but they are even more badges that I can work toward.

I watched the movie Fat Head on Netflix the other day. It is a satirical look at Morgan Spurlock’s Supersize Me. Tom Naughton spent a month eating nothing but fast food and he LOST weight and his blood levels improved. He did it by limiting his carbs. It’s not all about Supersize Me, though. It talks about why low carb works when low fat really doesnt. It really helped me realize why I was STARVING on Weight Watchers all those years. This clip is kind of goofy and the animation is something out of a bad comedy routine, but it DOES explain why I was so hungry all the time:

The movie trends a little on the conspiracy theory side. I don’t believe the government is trying to make us fat. I don’t believe the food industry is trying to make us fat. I think they are all just trying their best to recommend the healthiest diet, but they didn’t have all the information. They could have chosen low fat or low carb and they chose the wrong one to recommend.

If you are feeling hungry all the time, even though you’re supposedly eating enough calories, watch Fathead. It might give you some ideas to tweak your diet in a manner that will keep you feeling fuller AND losing weight.

These patriotic cookies look tempting and delicious, but they give me pause. We are coming up on Independence Day and the grocery store is full of red, white and blue pastries and candies, tempting us at every turn. If you offered me these cookies, my first instinct is to take one (or maybe two because those stars are so very little). If you asked me if I wanted a normal sugar cookie, I can pretty much say no without any reservations, but the red, white and blue cookies are a definite temptation.

When I think about it, though, how are these cookies different from normal sugar cookies? They AREN’T.

The only reason the patriotic cookies are attractive to me is because they aren’t always available. How often am I offered cookies? Quite often, actually, so I don’t really feel like I’m missing out if I don’t eat one. Patriotic cookies, on the other hand, only come once a year. Even though they taste EXACTLY the same as normal cookies, they seem rare.

This is called Artificial Scarcity. Do not let artificial scarcity screw up your eating!

Do patriotic M&M’s taste any different than normal M&M’s? NO! Just because they are only available this time of the year, doesn’t mean that they are any more delicious. Creating red, white and blue packages of M&M’s (or Easter colors or Halloween colors), doesn’t change the fact that all that sugar and chocolate can derail your goals. They do it as a marketing ploy and, honestly, it works really well on most people. Don’t let it derail you.

Yesterday, Mike and I got our first weekly delivery of veggies from Petersen Family Farms. We signed up for their farm cooperative in January, so we have been eagerly awaiting veggies from them for months. After such a cold winter and spring, they are just now harvesting some for us.

Having a weekly shipment of veggies brought to us lets us try new things and urges us to eat more vegetables. You’d think that going to the grocery store and buying a couple heads of fresh lettuce and beet greens would be incentive enough, but when we picked up this box of produce, it was different. We met the guy who grew them, so it made me want to eat them instead of letting them go to waste.

If you have been having trouble getting more veggies into your diet, try visiting a local farm, farmer’s market or signing up for a farm coop. It won’t provide you with fresh veggies all year long, but during these glorious months of summer, you’ll have great tasting veggies.

• Local Harvest / Farmers Markets / Family Farms / CSA / Organic Food

I have been going to Weight Watchers since 2001. For those of you counting, that’s TEN years. I had some progress at first, but I was in a CONSTANT state of hunger and wanted to binge ALL THE TIME. Last year, for my New Years Resolution, I decided that I was going to go to EVERY Weight Watcher meeting. I was never going to miss one meeting. I also got my willpower going when I decided I didn’t want to be like Lindsay Lohan or Charlie Sheen. I was going to keep my addiction under control.

And I did it. I went to every WW meeting and I followed the program for a year. My progress was minimal at best. I lost approximately ten pounds in that year, which is better than gaining that same amount, but it was a CONSTANT struggle to even have those minimal results.

If you are like me, then you are reading this and thinking, “She really didn’t give the program a chance. If she had done everything correctly, there is NO WAY that she only lost ten pounds. She MUST have cheated. It goes against the laws of thermodynamics to eat that little food and lose that little.”

Let me assure you right now that I followed the program to the letter for a year and saw such paltry results that I KNOW for a FACT that Weight Watchers does not work for me. It did when I first started it in 2001, but something has changed and I can no longer lose weight on that plan.

I had been playing with the concept of low carb for a while. It appealed to me because my lactose and gluten intolerance were severely aggravated by the WW plan. When I followed low carb, they understandably went away. You know what else went away? My constant hunger and desire to binge.

Another thing led me to believe that maybe Weight Watchers isn’t telling me the whole truth. Jennifer Hudson, the WW spokesperson, was quoted at a Vanity Fair party to say:

“I just made sure I stuck to my Weight Watchers…I also took the extra mile to delete the carbs. I didn’t eat any carbs until today. I made sure when I felt the need to eat something crunchy I ate nuts instead and stayed away from the carbs.”

So, here we are in 2011. I’m giving it a year of following the low carb diet just as faithfully as I did WW. I’m going to see if I have any better results on this diet than I did last year.

Quote via Jennifer Hudson: ‘I didn’t eat any carbs until today’ | Jennifer Hudson | Skinny VS Curvy

A LONG time ago (back in 2005), I wrote an entry about Margaret Cho’s “F**K It” Diet. She lost weight by having the audacity of throwing away food. I was so inspired by her willingness to let food go to waste at restaurants without bothering to take the food home in a doggie bag.

Unfortunately, most of the people who read that post skewered her for being wasteful. From comments calling the idea “pathetically privileged” to others screaming for take home boxes, it enraged almost everyone.

This comment from echo begs to differ, however:

For all of you out there who are worried about the waste of food in restaurants let me tell something that may ease your minds (and may gross you out as well). I have worked in restaurants of all sorts, including 5 star and I can guarantee you that Margaret’s leftover prime rib is not going to waste. Whenever a large portion of an entree or app. comes back to the kitchen the bus/wait/dish staff will devour it like a pack of hungry jackals. I’ve seen fights break out over who gets first dibs on leftover steak au poivre. So rest easy people, it’s all good!

The next time you’re at a restaurant and you know you will be tempted to eat more than you should if you take the leftovers home, remember echo’s comment. Your food won’t go to waste. It will be gobbled up in the back of the restaurant.

Weight Watchers started a brand new plan yesterday called PointsPlus. Rather than allow their precious plan information to leak a tad early, they opted to disable their iPhone app completely. For the last two days, I haven’t been able to use my Weight Watchers iPhone app to record my food. Rather than allow me to use the old program they have COMPLETELY disabled my program.

Sorry, Weight Watchers. I really love your meetings and my leader, but your corporate decisions have been so shortsighted that you consistently let me down. What is the matter with you folks at a corporate level? Why aren’t you more like the local leaders and staff?

I revamped my Edibles app on my iPhone and it’s logging my food and exercise just fine, by the way.

Here’s how to do it: How To Use Edibles with Weight Watchers PointsPlus

Update 12-02-10:

I have now downloaded the new app, but it requires me to “update my account” on their website. I’ve checked my address and looked at my status, but the entire website seems to have forgotten who I am and that I’ve been a member for YEARS.

An email to tech support resulted in an automated response with a promise of an answer within 24 hours. I am almost finishing my first week on the PointsPlus program and I’m seriously UNIMPRESSED with how they transitioned my iPhone app and eTools account.