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

I saw this quotations today and I wanted to scream, “Yes!”

It reads:

I’ve grown to realize the joy that comes from little victories is preferable to the fun that comes from ease and the pursuit of pleasure.

• Lawana Blackwell

Little victories! They are SO much powerful than I ever realized. The power of a to-do list is astonishing to me. If I add a goal to my to-do list, I have SUCH a good feeling when I check it off! Even the fun things I do every day, like reading a book for 30 minutes feels better when I get to check it off my list.

I can’t stress how important how LITTLE the victories should be. For example, I have a goal to write or work on my fiction book for FIVE MINUTES every day. Just five minutes. You would think that I would get NOTHING done if I only worked on it five minutes a day, but after only seven months, I’m almost done with my first draft. I didn’t have that HUGE delay when I usually do (about the time I have to be mean to my characters), because I put my face in front of the computer and wrote for five minutes a day. Sometimes I was counting down the minutes and only wrote two or three sentences, but most days, I did more. That TINY victory every day has yielded me HUGE results.

You want to eat healthy and exercise? I suggest that you start keeping a to-do list. Every day, you write the same goals, but make them TINY. Make them positive. Instead of writing, “Don’t eat junk food or sugar,” write “Eat five fruits and vegetables each day.” The second goal is far easier to achieve because you’re ADDING food to your diet instead of removing it. It’s positive and it will have the same effect.

Give yourself tons of little victories every day and your mood will elevate, you will achieve more and you will know success instead of failure.

I was thinking about this saying today it it kind of made me realize how unhelpful it is.

It reads:

It’s hard to soar with the eagles when you’re surrounded by turkeys.

The idea is that if I want to be thin, I need to hang out with people who are thin. I need to join running clubs and befriend slim women at the gym to be my workout buddies. I need to hang out with my thin friends who always order salad at the group lunches.

I did just that. I was always on the lookout for someone to workout with. I joined a running club and chugged behind them alone or was the charity case that someone would hang back with. I sincerely asked my thin friends how they ate or simply ordered what they did at lunch, whether I liked it or not.

Here’s the shocker: IT NEVER WORKED.

I hung out with the eagles and guess what I learned. They are DIFFERENT than I am. Doing their workouts was easier for them than it was for me. When I asked them what to eat, they said to eat less by ordering salad. They had ZERO advice on what to do to stop overexercising and injuring myself. They had ZERO advice on how to stop eating once I started. They not only were useless, they did not understand. They could not comprehend the idea that I could not stop eating. Just stop doing that was the only advice they could give me.

It wasn’t until I came into Overeater’s Anonymous that I realized I had been going about this the wrong way. Step One of the program was essentially admitting to myself this one sad, but true fact.

I AM NOT AN EAGLE.

I might have been an eagle at one time, but my body and brain chemistry have been so altered by the bingeing and over-exercise that I am no longer an eagle. In fact, considering how young I was when all of this started, I may have never been an eagle. I was probably born a turkey. Here’s another truth:

Turkeys don’t learn how to fly from eagles. They learn from other turkeys.

Turkey bodies and eagle bodies are so different. Turkeys learn to fly from watching other turkeys fly. They do NOT learn how to fly from eagles. It just doesn’t happen. They’re both birds, just like all of us are human, but turkeys and eagles are so different that they can hardly learn from each other. If you’re a binge eater and you need to learn how to stop eating compulsively, you are NOT going to learn from those naturally slim people. The ONLY way to learn how to not eat compulsively is from other turkeys, recovering compulsive eaters.

I am not an eagle. I will never be an eagle, but that doesn’t mean I can’t fly.

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.

Eagle Quote image via: The Nutrition Ninja – What it takes to be a CHAMPION Wild Turkeys Fly via: Wild turkeys fly! capecodtimes – YouTube Animated GIF made using: Make A Gif

I saw this motivational poster on Discipline of Motivation and I put it on my phone wallpaper so I could see it every day.

It reads:

Life doesn’t have to be perfect to be wonderful.

It is actually a quote from Annette Funicello.

• Goodreads: Annette Funicello

Here are a few more images of the quote that I thought were pretty:

I always thought my striving for perfection was the reason I was successful. It took me a LONG time to realize that I was successful DESPITE my desire for perfection. Perfection got in the way of everything. If I made one little mistake, perfection was the excuse that let me binge. If it seemed to hard, perfection made me procrastinate until I could do nothing. Getting rid of perfectionism is difficult and I find it popping up in my life almost every single day.

So knowing that life doesn’t have to be perfect to be wonderful is a blessing.

I remember reading The Mysteries of Uldolpho. I remember underlining quotes and adding them to The Quotations Page. Unfortunately, I never USED this quote the way I should have.

The FULL quote reads:

And since, in our passage through this world, painful circumstances occur more frequently than pleasing ones, and since our sense of evil is, I fear, more acute than our sense of good, we become the victims of our feelings, unless we can in some degree command them.

• Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho, 1764

Learning how to command my feelings is the ONLY thing that has changed my failure to get to a healthy weight to success. It’s not some new diet plan. It’s not a different exercise routine. It was learning how to harness my feelings. Learning how to diffuse my feelings. Learning how to command my feelings.

Does that mean that I will never again be a victim to my feelings?

No, but now I can keep those feelings of victimization to a minimum while I work on commanding them. Now I can do something to deal with them instead of eating to hide them. If I hadn’t been taught how to manage these feelings when they come up, I would still have my head in the food. I would still be struggling.

Inner workouts are FAR more important that physical workouts. Learn how to manage your emotions and eating healthy will be easier.

I love this quote that I read today:

It reads:

Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire.

• Reggie Leach

The hardest part in that quote is that “setting yourself on fire” thing. How do you do it? For me, the way to keep going, the way to keep setting myself on fire every single day is very simple.

It’s a list.

I have a list of things to do every day. Some of the items are work related, so that I get things done and make some money. Some of the items are health related, so I finish my journey to a healthy weight. Some of the items are self-care, so that I don’t go insane. I really think the self-care items are the things that make it easier for me to eat healthy.

Here is my list of self-care items:

• Write one page in my journal
• Exercise 20 mins
• Meditate 15 mins
• Be outside in the sun for 20 mins
• Read 30 mins
• Practice French

Something about reading for fun or learning a new language really adds to my feeling of well-being, so I’ve added them to the list. All of these things make me sane enough that I can eat healthy every day.

If you want to set yourself on fire, think about what you need for self-care and put them on a list every day. Every day, check off those items as you do them. Every day, when you are feeling crappy and don’t want to do them, do them anyway. They are supposed to make you feel good. You’re going to feel crappy before you do them, so feeling crappy isn’t an excuse.

Don’t depend on spontaneous combustion to get yourself going. Set yourself on fire every day.

This quote from The Quotations Page brings up a very good point:

It reads:

Have no fear of perfection – you’ll never reach it.

• Salvador Dali

I had a hard time releasing the desire for perfection when it came time to do step six and become willing to release all my defects of character. The biggest reason I clung to it (and keep clutching it back), is because perfectionism is one of those character defects that fools me.

The desire to be perfect can be VERY beneficial. It is what has made me successful. It has made me achieve things that even I thought I couldn’t achieve. It has given me a career.

But in the end, the desire for perfection is also quite crippling. It’s why I procrastinated on so many projects. I knew I couldn’t be perfect, so I would delay starting them and do them at the last minute. If it failed, I could blame it on my lack of time to complete the project.

It was crippling in other ways, like the times I wouldn’t leave the house because my underwear didn’t match my outfit. I LITERALLY did a load of laundry rather than wear the wrong color underwear with my clothes.

You see, the desire for perfection is never enough. No matter how perfect you try to be, just like Salvador Dali said, you can never achieve it. Not only that, the goal posts keep moving. Once you achieve one level of perceived perfection, it doesn’t give you the acclaim you were looking for, so you step it up a notch.

Perfection can never make you feel good for a long time. It’s just like binge-eating. Being perfect might make you feel a little good right now, but it wears off in a half-hour and then you have to deal with the consequences of your binge. You need even MORE food or perfection next time. It’s just as harmful to me as binge-eating was and once I realized that, it was easy to become willing to release that defect of character.

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.

This quote really spoke to me today:

It reads:

It’s not that some people have willpower and some don’t. It’s that some people are ready to change and others are not.

• James Gordon, M.D.

That day when I sat on the couch, eating all day and couldn’t stop, I KNEW there was a problem with me. I told the story of what happened when I talked to Mike about it.

• Starling Fitness – Refeeding: A Treatment for Obesity?

At that point, I knew that everything about the way I was doing things was OBVIOUSLY wrong because I wasn’t able to lose weight. I wasn’t even able to stop eating. I KNEW I had to change, I just didn’t know how to change or even how I needed to change.

Thankfully, Overeater’s Anonymous taught me how to change and in what ways I needed to change and honestly, it had little to do food and mostly to do with my attitude, my character defects and my emotional life. I felt completely lost in October of 2013 and now, my life has a direction that I never thought it would. I am so grateful to OA for helping me get my life AND my body back!

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 saw this quote today and it really spoke to me.

It reads:

Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble.

• Samuel Johnson

I’ve talked about this before here:

* Starling Fitness – Whitney Houston Workout Routine

When I was a teenager, I would look at the articles in Seventeen magazine and do the exercises and makeup that were written about there and wonder why I didn’t look like the models. That’s because I was trying to imitate women who I could not possibly resemble. I am not Whitney Houston and I never can be. Only Whitney Houston can be Whitney Houston.

The same thing happens today. Here is an example from OK! magazine called, What I Ate Today, featuring Jayma Mays.

If I ate what she ate, will I look like her? Never. If I ate what the expert says I should eat, would I look like her? Nope. No one can be Jayma Mays but Jayma Mays. Once I realized this, all those women’s magazines lost a lot of their appeal to me. I used to read them avidly, hoping for the magic answer.

Here’s the magic answer: You can never be that, and that’s okay because you can be YOU and that’s even better.

Once I realized that, so much of the absurdity in my life evaporated and was replaced by sanity and productive activity. Don’t waste your time trying to imitate those you cannot resemble, and you will can have that sanity as well.

I saw this quote today and it really made sense to me.

It reads:

You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you.

• James Lane Allen

Whatever you are thinking about mostly will be what happens. If you are thinking about how fat you are, then you will be fat. If you are thinking about helping other people and working to make the world a better place, then you will find yourself doing that. Focusing on helping others is one of the best ways to get your mind off food. Keep your thoughts on helping others and you will be happier and thinner as a result.

I found this picture in my grandmother’s photos.

I don’t know who the two girls are. Neither one is her or any of her sisters. I know what they looked like. So they must be friends of my grandma.

But maybe they’re not. Maybe they are the rich girls in town and have a bike that is cooler than she has ever seen. They might have a really cool bike, but she had a brownie camera and she got a picture of them.

Friendship or envy, it doesn’t matter so many years after the fact. It is almost certain that everyone in this photograph and even the photographer is dead.

Sometimes that’s how I feel about all the things that used to bother me enough to make me eat. It’s like that quote from Fight Club:

On a long enough timeline. The survival rate for everyone drops to zero.

• Chuck Palahniuk

When I used to use food as a drug, I would eat when someone was mean or difficult. If there was tension or if my feelings got hurt, I would turn to the food. Now, (thanks to Overeater’s Anonymous), I have other tools to use when those feelings show up. Instead of eating, I can use one of the many tools in my toolbox to figure out how to deal with the problem instead of just covering it up with food.

So, in the end, it doesn’t matter if that photo was taken in friendship or envy. All I can see are my grandma’s friends on a bike.

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.