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

After trying to work with the software from FitCentric and failing miserably (incompatible with iFit machines, even though the website says they might work), I loaded my new laptop with i2Workout. Since my old laptop died, I haven’t been using i2Workout, but now that I have a new one, I can easily create a workout and run it on my laptop hooked up to my treadmill.

I pulled up this workout dated 07-11-04. I remembered this workout to be really tough, but I’m so much stronger now, I thought it might be a good interval training for me that wouldn’t be too hard. I loaded it up, connected my laptop to the treadmill and started the run.

This workout kicked my butt!

I was so surprised and a little discouraged that I’m not as strong as I thought I was. It’s two years later, and this workout is still difficult to me. I remembered that my goal was to be able to do this workout without slowing down the high intervals. I was able to do the entire workout without slowing it down, but I’m still a little disappointed. I thought I was so much stronger than I was two years ago, but the truth of the matter is, I’m just barely getting to to the point where I wanted to be so long ago.

This is a reality check for me and I’m so glad that I’m using i2Workout on my treadmill again. I’m so lazy that I usually won’t do an interval workout. This workout will help me grow and maybe get me going a little stronger over the next two years than I have grown in the previous.

If you have an iFit treadmill and are using i2Workout, you can download this workout here:

• i2Workout: Interval Training 07-11-04: i2Workout uses .txt files, so just right click, choose “Save Link As…” and use it with i2Workout. Happy Running!

There were so many gadgets at CES that I really felt overwhelmed with all of it. I was grateful to try out so many things that were previously just good ideas and pictures on the computer screen. There were lots of things that looked interesting to me and I really wanted to buy them. The truth of the matter is that when it comes down to exercise, motivation is the most important thing.

If a new toy like the gadgets that I played with at CES are something that will motivate you to exercise, then the investment is worth it. It’s difficult to tell how long these gadgets will continue to motivate you if you don’t have the motivation to keep fit on your own, though. Just like other exercise equipment that sits in the house and gathers dust, it won’t do you any good unless you use it.

In the end, if you are truly dedicated to your fitness, all you really need are a pair of tennis shoes. There are as many ways to get fit as there are people on this planet. Find your favorite and stick to it. No matter how much money you spend, you can’t get fit unless you’re willing to sweat. So, get out there and start sweating!

This is the time of year where people make New Year’s Resolutions. Based on the traffic levels, it looks like a lot of people have resolved to lose weight this year. It’s a common resolution. How can we make it last longer than January 2^nd, though?

I’d like to say I knew the answers, but I really don’t. I don’t do too much with New Year’s Resolutions. Last year, I posted my resolutions for everyone to see on Pick Me! I didn’t make two of the three, but knowing that they were there, holding me accountable, made me work on them a lot more over the year than if I had just thought about them casually at midnight.

I joined Weight Watchers on January 17, 2002, but my joining had nothing to do with a resolution. I was sick of being overweight. I was finally to the point where I loved my body and I wanted to take good care of it so it would last a long time. I wanted to be able to climb stairs without huffing and puffing. I wanted to finish a 5K race in better than 40 minutes. I wanted to spend a day without severe stomach pain. I was so ready for Weight Watchers when it came into my life. It had nothing to do with resolutions and everything to do with quality of life.

So, what can I tell you about New Year’s Resolutions? Not much…

• Make Them Measureable: Rather than resolving to lose weight, choose a goal that is easier to measure. Do you want to be at your goal weight by next year? Then write it out in easy to read sentences, “I will weigh 130 pounds next January.” Resolving to “lose weight” can be achieved by losing one pound, but I doubt that was your intention when you chose that goal.

• Make Them Realistic: Don’t commit to it unless you KNOW you can do it. Making unrealistic resolutions is just creating an excuse to hate yourself. If you know you would have to starve yourself all year long just to make it to your goal, then it’s not a good goal for you. You need something that is doable and fits in with your life.

• Tell the Freakin’ World: If you tell your sister and your mom and your dad and your girlfriend and that vindictive woman at your work about your resolutions, you’re more likely to succeed. Just knowing that the witch at the front desk is going to ask you about your progress can be enough sometimes.

Tonight, when you hear the countdown to 2006, remember your resolutions and make a wish. Let’s make them last all year long this year!

For a couple hundred dollars, PR Newswire will print whatever you want them to. That explains this bit of propaganda from the National Dairy Council.

• Happy News – Study shows benefits of dairy products – PR Newswire

All this reporting would be great news, if it were true. However, the study that they were referring to is available for all of us to read. No matter how much they get it wrong, the findings of the scientists at Purdue University were the exact opposite of what was reported:

• Dairy products do not lead to alterations in body weight or fat mass in young women in a 1-y intervention — Gunther et al. 81 (4): 751 — American Journal of Clinical Nutrition

This study took 155 women and placed them on various diets for one year: low dairy, medium dairy and high dairy consumption. Despite the varying levels of dairy, there was no change in body weight or fat percentage.

No matter what the National Dairy Council tells you, milk doesn’t magically make you skinnier. No matter how many times they misquote the research, we finally have the ability to find out the truth about nutrition. Dairy may be an important part of a healthy diet, but it isn’t a magic diet drink any more than any other diet hype you might see.

If you work in an office, I’m sure you will understand this dilemma. Since last Monday, the breakroom has been filled with treats. The nice lady who says hello in that sweet voice brought each employee an individually wrapped gift of her famous gingerbread. A huge plate of various treats was abandoned at the front desk. That skinny wench who always has a candy dish on her desk has added a never-empty platter of chocolate chip cookies. Plus, on Friday, there’s the potluck.

How can you hope to keep eating healthy when all of this is surrounding you?

How To Survive Christmas in the Office:

• Plan, Plan, Plan: If you eat a healthy breakfast, bring a healthy lunch and plan for a light dinner, you can easily allocate approximately 300 calories for treats. That gives you the freedom to try the yummy things that come your way.

• Imagine The Office As a Huge Garbage Can: Remember when I said that you should regift or throw away any treats that you cannot have in your house? You can also bring them to the office. The 20-somethings in the mail room alone could wipe out all the treats that have been haunting you in your house. Plus, if the office is a huge garbage can, you don’t want to eat anything that was left in the breakroom, right? It would be like eating out of the garbage.

• Treat Potluck Differently: The last two years, I treated the potluck Christmas lunch a little differently. I brought a vegetable platter and another healthy dish that I enjoy eating. I only ate what I brought. No one even noticed that I didn’t eat any of their food. They were all too interested in their own plates. I just sat down and ate what I would have normally eaten for lunch and no one was any the wiser. If someone asked if I tried the best of the treats, I replied truthfully, “I didn’t get any of that. I’ll have to go back for some.” I never went back, but by then, the casual banter had moved onto the latest office gossip.

• Avoid The Temptation: When the breakroom is filled with treats and goodies, sometimes it’s easier to avoid the room than to keep from indulging. Throw on your coat and take a walk outside for your break. The cold air is invigorating and the exercise will remind you why you eat healthy in the first place.

• Exercise A Little More: If your plan allows for 300 calories for goodies, think about how many extra treats you could eat if you did an extra half hour on the bike. I don’t recommend this as an all-year practice, but a little more exercise at this time of the year can mean the difference between enjoying the holiday or feeling deprived.

Sometimes I felt like the entire office was trying to get me to “fall off the wagon.” That’s not really the case. So much of our celebrations revolve around food that some people don’t know how to have a good time without it. All they are trying to do is bring a little cheer into the office. It’s your responsibility to accept the cheer without eating the food. You can do it!

You see them almost every day. Maybe they wave at you when you get into your car in the morning. Maybe you talk over the latest on those warm summer evenings. You know their first names and they offer to take care of your dog when you go on vacation. And… they bring huge plates of yummy treats to you for Christmas.

How To Handle Neighbor Treats:

• Accept Them Graciously: They are just trying to say thank you for being a good neighbor. They don’t need to know that you haven’t eaten chocolate for three months. Graciously thank them for the present and be glad that they spelled your name right.

• Decide What You Want: Do they look good? Do you even want to keep them? If you do, separate out your portion from the rest of the family’s portion.

• Regift Them: If you don’t want them, send them to someone else. There is no shame in regifting. When they ask if you baked them, tell them no, but you hope they like them.

• Freeze Your Portion and Ration Them Out: Decide how many calories a day you can spend on treats and separate them into daily servings. Freeze any servings that will take you longer than a week to eat. This way, you can enjoy your Christmas present well into January.

• Worst Case Scenario – Throw Them Away: If you can’t regift them and you seem to be unable to ration your portion out, then throw them away. It’s better for them to go to waste than to go to your waist.

Because I have been eating healthy for so long, we rarely get neighbor treats anymore, but when we do, I look forward to giving myself a rare gift every once and a while. I have finally learned how to live with tempting foods and deal with them in a healthy manner. You can do it too!

When I was in junior high and high school, I begrudged every hour spent in gym class. I did my best to avoid the “real” gym classes and took the specialty classes like Dance, Jogging, Weight Training, and Swimming. I would complain to any adult willing to listen about the injustice of having to take gym classes. I was a straight A student, shouldn’t I be exempt from gym classes?

The answer I got was: Shut up and quit sloughing gym!

This is the answer that I should have gotten:

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I learned more about my body and muscles from Denise Austin than I did in gym class. Why is that? I took a weight training class in high school. Why didn’t I learn the difference between my hamstrings and quads there?

What should I have been learning in gym class? To this day, I’m a little unclear? Was I supposed to be learning the rules to the games that we were forced to play? They didn’t really give us any instruction on that. They just had us choose teams and everyone assumed that we knew the rules. Were we supposed to gaining strength, endurance and balance? If that were the case, why weren’t we tested on that. Even in the weight training class, all we had to do to get an A was attend every day and do one more repetition on our Max Test than we did when we started the class. Even I got an A in Weight Training.

Here’s what I would have liked to learn in gym class:

• Why physical fitness is just as important as intellectual training.

• The difference between strength, endurance and balance and why each one is important.

• All the major muscle groups: the technical names and the abbreviated or nicknames.

• How to stretch every muscle group in a variety of ways to prevent injury and ease muscle soreness.

• How to exercise every muscle group to increase strength.

• The difference between aerobic and anaerobic exercise and why each is important.

• How to find an exercise that you will enjoy and fits in with your lifestyle.

It would probably take several years to teach all this stuff and the class would never have to choose teams. I used to feel angry that I had to take gym class. I was a straight A student and I felt that sports had no place in our schools. I thought they siphoned off money away from academic pursuits. I had to sell advertisements and candy bars to help fund the Literary Magazine, but the football team was treated to pizza lunches all the time.

Looking at my own mortality and knowing that all the 100% on tests will not give me one more year of life has shown me that physical fitness IS just as important as intellectual pursuits. Now I’m even angrier that I got such poor training in gym classes. It’s a sorry state of education when a straight A student learns the major muscle groups from a television show about aerobics.

I was perusing the Weight Watchers website and I found this article about using your heart rate monitor to measure your Exercise Intensity Levels.

• WeightWatchers.com – Exercise Intensity Levels

The levels are surprisingly low. They use the typical calculation for Maximum Heart Rate:

Maximum Heart Rate = 220 – Age

They state you can calculate your activity levels based on the following:

• Light is about 40-54% Maximum Heart Rate.
• Moderate is 55-69% Maximum Heart Rate.
• Heavy is equal to or greater than 70% Maximum Heart Rate.

I used much more vigorous percentages in my estimates, so this bit of news has made things much easier for me.

For more information on the Weight Watchers Flex Points Program, please read the following entry:

• Starling Fitness » What You Need To Know About Weight Watchers

I finally got my hands on a copy of The No Fad Diet from the American Heart Association. It is probably the most realistic diet book you could purchase. It’s based on the trinity of thoughts: Think Smart, Eat Well, and Move More.

The great thing about this philosophy is that you can start anywhere in this cycle and it will affect your decisions about the other facets of health. If you start with Think Smart, you will start to eat healthier and exercise more. If you start with Move More, your head with get in a healthier spot and you’ll want to fuel yourself with better food. If you start with Eat Well, you’ll get the energy to get out there and move more and you’ll feel better. It’s like a cycle that perpetuates itself if you can just jump in there somewhere.

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