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

Ghrelin is a hormone that makes you more hungry, more focused on food and willing to eat more. This article from CBS mentions it:

• The Hunger Hormone, Controlling Ghrelin May Be Key To Curing Obesity - CBS News

We observed one illustration of ghrelin’s power. A mouse was injected with the hormone. Just 15 minutes later, he was absolutely wild for food, even though he’d already eaten enough to be full.

This article from New Scientist explains it:

• Stomach hormone turns hungry people into junkies - health - 06 May 2008 - New Scientist

The hormone also made food more memorable. Volunteers better recalled the food pictures after they got the hormone, and an area of the brain involved in memory lit up when subjects viewed images of food.

Several pharmaceutical companies already have their sights set on ghrelin, as drugs that block the hormone may quell hunger and fight obesity.

I’m not so sure the pharmaceutical companies are setting their sites on ghrelin just to help us. What if they were double-dealing? What if drug companies sell us pills to block the hormone and at the same time, sell the hormone to fast food companies? The minute you take a bite of your hamburger, your appetite for food increases until you cannot stop eating.

That is the premise set up by io9, a science-fiction blog:

• Hormone Tampering: Fast Food Joints Add Hormone to Food That Makes You Want to Eat More

Since ghrelin isn’t regulated, a fast food restaurant that wanted to sell more food could easily turn it into an additive in their hamburgers or donuts, essentially “addicting” people to their food. Or making them hungrier so that they buy more.

My paranoid mind convinces me that something like this could already be happening. When I eat whole foods from the grocery store, my appetite is satiated far quicker than when I eat processed food. What is it about processed food that makes me want to eat more? Is it more digestible? Has it been specially formulated to taste good?

It’s not like grocery food would be safe either. Fresh meat, cheeses and vegetables could be infused with ghrelin, causing that insatiable hunger as well. In the future, we might have to go back to raising and killing our own food if we want to be healthy.

Mixed Messages from Supermarket Tabloids by Laura Moncur from Flickr

I was at the grocery store on Monday and this is what I saw at the checkout counter. Two different tabloids screeching two different messages at me:

Life & Style:

Refusing to eat: Why these stars look so scary skinny:
Katie Holmes: Katie’s weight loss could keep her from getting pregnant.
Nicole Richie: Is Nicole going too far with her diet?
Nicky Hilton: Nicky is in total denial.

OK Weekly:

Steal Brit’s New Diet
Britney lost 15 lbs in just 4 weeks!
No Pills, No Lipo

If you find yourself vacillating between dieting and feeling like it’s all hopeless, take a look around you. The entire world can’t make a decision between whether being thin is good or bad. It’s almost enough to make you want to give up, but remember this:

• This isn’t about approval
• This isn’t about the rest of the world
• This is about YOU and your health

Don’t let the rest of the world tell you that you’re too fat or too skinny. Make a decision on your own based on how you feel and how your body is reacting to your current weight.

Wendy Bumgardner has an entry on how to save the planet by walking:

• Ways to Use Walking for the Planet

She has many recommendations, most of which seem like they were added to pad the list. The most important one she talked about, however was walking instead of driving.

I’m a big fan of this one, but it takes some planning to pull it off.

Wendy recommends that you can replace your workout with one 3 mile walk. That’s a 1.5 mile walk to wherever you’re going and a 1.5 mile back. The first step is to look at your house on Mapquest:

• Mapquest

Adjust the zoom level until you’re at the zoom level where the legend is 800 m and 2400 ft. That’s a good zoom for you to work with.

Print up that map. A mile and a half is 7920 feet, so using the legend on the printed map, draw a circle that is 3 miles in diameter around your house like this. I used the old house I grew up in as an example:

After you have your circle drawn, find out what is within that 1.5 mile radius. It’s difficult to tell what is there from just the map, so this will take some planning and thought. There are a couple of parks I could walk to, the grocery store on 4000 West and the Home Depot on 5600 West.

Make a list of everything that is within that circle. Any time you need to go to anything within the circle, walk instead of driving.

You can do the same thing around your place of employment. You can achieve a 3.0 mile walk within an hour, but only if you walk quickly and don’t spend a lot of time at your destination. Next time you need to run an errand at your lunch break, see if the destination is within your circle. If it is, get in a workout AND save gasoline.

When I lived on White Cherry Way, I was a kid. I didn’t have a choice. My only choices were walking or riding my bike if I wanted to go somewhere. I knew all the places that I could easily get to, which wasn’t very many in the suburbs. Now that I live downtown, I have hundreds of places within my 1.5 mile radius. The funny thing is, when I drew the circle around my current house, I realized that there are a bunch of places that I could walk to that I never go to because they are west of my home. It opened up at least twenty more options for me by just printing out the map and drawing the circle.

Just replacing one errand a day by walking instead of driving can not only help you save money on gas but make you healthier. Print up a map of your neighborhood and do it today!

I used to read Dear Abby every day. Despite her never-changing hairstyle from 1956, I agreed with her advice over and over. Even when I dyed my hair black and wore combat boots, I still believed in Dear Abby’s advice.

The only problem is that Dear Abby wasn’t real. Sure, there was a real person, Pauline Esther Friedman Phillips, who was the writer until Alzheimer’s took her abilities away from her. But the woman behind that never-aging face wasn’t real.

I’m real. My face changes. When I’ve been bingeing, my face changes dramatically.

I’ve decided that I don’t want to be like Dear Abby. I want you to be able to see exactly what I look like every day. From now on, Starling Fitness will have a little photo of me by each entry I wrote, just like Dear Abby did, but I’m not going to use the same photo over and over again. I’m going to take a new photo every day. Warts and all.

I created my yearly journal for 2008 and I realized that I liked it so much that I wanted all of you to be able to have one as well. Here is a video describing what it’s like:

This book has a page for each week of the year to track your calories, exercise and how many healthy foods you’re eating.

If you follow Weight Watchers or track your calories the old fashioned way, this form makes things very easy. It has been available for download since June and if you want to make a book like this for yourself, you can do it with this Excel spreadsheet:

• Starling Fitness » Weight Watchers Form

If you’re not spreadsheet savvy, you can buy this journal from Starling Fitness.

The journal includes the following:

• Non-descript black cover
• Directions on how to use this book
• One sheet of stickers (for those weeks that you do an EXCELLENT job!)
• 12 monthly pages (to document your measurements, paste your monthly photo and write your monthly evaluation)
• 54 dated weekly pages
• Binder (it easily opens and closes so you can remove pages without ripping them out)

The absolute coolest thing about it is you don’t have to wait until January 1st to use it. I will print it up with starting the month you specify, so you can use it immediately.

You can choose the comb-binding like shown in the video, or you can choose 3-Hole Punched for use with a Daytimer or other binder that takes 5 1/2″ X 8 1/2″ forms.

Order a Starling Fitness Yearly Journal (Comb Bound): $15.00 including shipping (within the U.S.)

Which month should your journal start?

Update 01-29-08: Here are some photos of the 3-Hole Punched Journal so you know what to expect. They also have the same non-descript black cover and are bound with three plastic rings that make it just as easy to remove the pages.

You can also remove the rings and put the pages into your Daytimer or other 3-hole binder.

Order a Starling Fitness Yearly Journal (3-Hole Punched): 5 1/2″ X 8 1/2″ for use with a Daytimer or other planner: $15.00 including shipping (within the U.S.)

Which month should your journal start?

These journals are hand-made every month and are shipped on the 25th of each month. Be sure to order by the 24th of the month to make sure you will receive yours before the start of the next month. Journals are shipped using the U.S. Postal Service and arrive within five days.

Update 11-15-07: I’ve had some questions about the binders and where they are available. They are ZipBind Easy Editing spines made by GBC. They come in black and clear, in 1/2 inch and 3/8 inch sizes. They are CombBind compatible, so you need a comb-binding punch machine to use them. The UPC on the 1/2 inch size is 033816065772. They’re AWESOME!

I found them at Office Max and that’s the only place in Salt Lake City I’ve been able to find them. This website carries them, but I’ve never bought anything from them before:

• Office Quarters: From $12.78 - GBC ZipBind Binding Spines GBC 4100500 GBC4100500 GBC 4100502

If you buy these binders from Office Quarters, come back here and tell me whether they’re a good company (how quickly they delivered, whether you actually got the product, etc.).

Last week, I wrote an entry about food snobbery and a lot of people disagreed. Honestly, I was pretty rude in that entry and I probably shouldn’t have accused anyone of being a snob. Of all the comments on my blog and Kate’s, the only one that stung was this one from Melissa on Kate’s blog:

I have a huge beef with people who write health blogs without credentials.

You know what? SO DO I. That’s why the comment stung.

All the other comments about how food is not just food had valid points and were interesting, but Melissa’s was the only one that felt like a pin sticking me in the butt.

What gives me the right to write a health and fitness blog?

I have a double major degree in Mathematics and Education, neither of which have anything to do with health, nutrition or exercise physiology.

The degree in Mathematics and my past work in a pharmacology research lab allow me to read technical journals, reports and statistics without getting muddled. I understand statistics and I understand how to lie with them. Too many companies out there are trying to lie with their statistics. Fortunately, I can see right through the lies and look at the numbers with clean eyes.

The degree in Education taught me how to write with clarity and teach subjects I know. After dealing with my eating issues for years, I’ve learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t. I’ve tried so many things that I can spot bullshit a mile away. My education degree helps me share what knowledge I do have with a clarity that most scholars lose over the years.

All that just sounds like bullshit to me.

Yeah, pulling out my degrees that have been pretty much useless my whole career sounds like bullshit to me, too.

Honestly, I started Starling Fitness because all my talk about my own eating issues was taking over my personal blog and I just wanted to separate them. That’s how it started, but it has grown into something bigger. Sometimes it feels way bigger than I can handle, so I need to keep reminding everyone.

• I’m not a doctor.
• I’m not a nutritionist.
• I’m not a exercise physiologist.
• I’m not even skinny.
• I sometimes still end up bingeing to deal with my issues and that might never change for me.

All I can do is be honest with you about what I am so you won’t think I’m something that I’m not.

So, what gives you the right to write about health and fitness?

That’s the beauty of this medium. What gives me the right? I have a computer and I can put two words together. That’s the only right I need to start a weblog about health and fitness. Whether you read my words is your choice.

To the several thousand people who do read my words every day, THANK YOU. One of the things that took me back to Weight Watchers to deal with my bingeing AGAIN is the thought of not writing for you anymore. If I have ever helped you, please know that you’ve helped me threefold in return.

I love to create forms. Every time I start a new project, I usually fire up Microsoft Excel to create a form for it. I don’t know why. I think it might be genetic because when I taught my biological father to use Excel, he loved it as much as I did.

So, I started Weight Watchers on Monday and by Tuesday, I was creating a form for myself. In the past, I used to keep track of my points on my Palm, but Weight Watchers made the creator of the software stop, and it’s kind of buggy, so I decided to keep track on paper. The Quick Track that Weight Watchers gave me, however, will not fit in my journal, so I made a weekly sheet that would be easy to carry and when I was done with the week, I can put it in my handwritten journal with the rest of my pages.

You can download it here:

• Weight Watchers Weekly Tracking 5 1/2″ X 8 1/2″ - Requires Microsoft Excel

A special thank you to regular reader, Kelly, for creating a version of this form that fits in a smaller planner:

• Weight Watchers Weekly Tracking 3 3/4″ x 6 3/4″ - Requires Microsoft Excel

There is room to check off all the good health guidelines and even check off your multi-vitamin, which is strangely missing from the Quick Track now. There is room each day to write down everything you eat, track your fitness goals, and the Flex Points.

Of course, this form is for the Flex Plan. I’ve never tried the Core Plan, so you’re on your own with that one.

Hope this helps someone besides me!

Update 11-19-07: If you like these forms, but aren’t really spreadsheet savvy, I can print up a year’s worth for you and send it to you for $15. For more information, see here:

• Starling Fitness » Order Your Starling Fitness Yearly Journal

Update 03-03-08: A special thank you to Kelly for creating a version of this form that will fit into your 3 3/4″ x 6 3/4″ planner from Daytimer or Coach.

I got this exercise from Martha Beck’s book Four Day Win and changed it up a little for myself.

• Make sure you’re feeling in a pretty good mood. Are you hungry? If so, make sure you go eat something a little decadent. It doesn’t have to be a large portion, but right now, go eat something that you have been denying yourself.

• Make a quick list of your happiest memories. Just get a clean notebook and on the first page write all the happy times in your life. One memory per line, list them out. Keep writing until you can’t think of any more. If you have less than five, you’re probably not in a good enough mood to do this exercise, so try again a different time. Shoot for a list of fifty or so memories.

• Each day, when you’re feeling most comfortable and happiest, go back to the notebook. Take one page per memory and write out the full memory in as much detail as you can. Use all five senses to write your memories. What did the air smell like? How did his lips taste? What color was the sky? How did it feel against your skin? What music was playing at that moment? Sight and smell are the most powerful memory joggers, so make sure you at least cover those two senses.

• After a month or so, you will have a book full of happy memories that you can use as a resource when you’re feeling like bingeing. When you can feel a binge coming on, give yourself a few minutes and read through some of your favorite happy memories.

This exercise has been really powerful for me and I have only been doing it for a couple of weeks.

One caveat: I’m a writer, so writing is the way I relate to the world, but there are MANY ways to do this exercise. You can use pictures from the past and create a scrapbook. You can draw your favorite memories and use the pictures to reminisce. You can take film clips that remind you of your favorite memories and make a video of your favorite times of your own life. You can even just go through a box of old belongings and mementos that you have saved over the years.

We humans are so diverse in our abilities, however you can do this Happy Memories exercise is wonderful as long as it works for you.

If you have ever had trouble with binge-eating, you need to buy this book today. Seriously, stop reading this review and buy The Four Day Win by Martha Beck. I have been dealing with my bingeing for years and this book has the best thing for me ever since I realized I had a problem.

Unlike most diet books, she starts at the beginning. Most diet books jump right into what you should eat and how you should exercise. They spend most of their pages on recipes and exercise descriptions. Not so with The Four Day Win. She spends most of the book helping you heal your brain and body from all the dieting damage you have been doing over the years.

Damage? Yeah, the psychological damage of starving yourself every time you go on a diet. THAT damage.

Remember Margaret Cho’s F**K It Diet? Martha Beck has taken it to the next level to help you heal that child within yourself who has been starved over and over.

Remember how I told you that you shouldn’t get rid of all your favorite food in the house like EVERY other fitness expert tells you that you should do? Martha tells you why that it is so important to keep lots of your favorite foods in the house.

Remember how I told you that you could eat anything you want? Martha gives you even more ways to heal yourself so that when you eat, you are able to keep yourself healthy.

This book is EVERYTHING that I knew instinctively about my own bingeing, plus a bunch of ways to make myself able to eat healthy. If you have ever had trouble with bingeing, buy this book right now.

Yesterday, I provided journal pages to download and use for writing your Inner Workouts and keep track of your healthy eating and exercise. In the Daily Tracking Section, I had a spot to check off my Healthy and Happy List. It took me awhile, but I have a list of things that keep me healthy and happy. The more of these things that I can do, the better my life runs and the happier I am. I wanted to explain each one here:

Exercise: Exercising every day not only helps me be healthy, it boosts my mood. After only a month of regular exercising, I realized that I needed to put it on my list.

Eat Healthy: When I eat healthy, I feel a sense of pride in myself, so it boosts my mood. Mostly, it’s on the list so that I’ll be healthy and strong.

Clean Something: I have a hard time being happy in a cluttered and messy house. All I have to do is tackle one household chore a day to substantially improve my mood.

Sleep 8 Hours: This number might be different for you, but I need at least eight hours of sleep every night to function. It’s really hard for me to be upbeat and happy when I’m struggling to stay awake.

Create Something: Allowing myself a little time every day to be creative is really important to me. All it takes is a small craft project or a few rows of crochet to make me happier.

Journal: I already talked yesterday about how regular journaling keeps me happy and less likely to binge. I find it ironic that there is a check mark in the actual journal. If I don’t journal, then I usually don’t fill out my Healthy and Happy List. It seems like if I don’t journal, everything falls apart.

Work: Work is an important part of life. If I don’t work, I don’t make money, but if life is ALL work, then I end up feeling deprived and unappreciated, even though it was me who pushed myself so hard. I need to make sure I do some work every day, but not so much that I don’t get to check off the other boxes on my list.

Play: I love to play video games. I love to read trashy sci-fi novels. I love to play with my pets. I love to watch movies. I love to watch television. I put all entertainment on such a low priority, though that I end up having binges if I don’t incorporate a little bit of play into my life at all times. I need to give myself permission to enjoy a movie or video game a little bit every day to prevent those strange days when all I do is sit on the couch and watch Star Trek: The Next Generation reruns.

Social: Sending personal emails, calling on the telephone and actually seeing friends in person are all social things. Sometimes I neglect the most important people in my life and other times, I plan so many social things that I’m sick of people. I need to find a balance to keep myself happy. That’s why social is on the list. If I do a little bit every day, I won’t neglect and I won’t get “peopled-out.”

Read: I love to read books, but that is categorized in the Play section for me. This is more work related. I need to keep up on the latest technology, fitness and travel information to do my job correctly, so I have a ton of weblogs that I read. If I am able to read them, I feel more control of my work life and it makes me happy.

This list probably has little to do with YOUR personal happiness. That’s why the journal pages are in Excel format instead of Adobe Acrobat. You can change the journal pages to match what you need every day to keep you happy. Take a few minutes and really think about what makes you happy. Make a list add it to your personalized journal pages.