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

Over the years, I have learned to feed a headache.

If I get a headache, I immediately feed myself, before I even think about taking a pain reliever. Food is my first instinct.

The saddest part of this ritual is that most of time it doesn’t even work. I would say that 90% of my headaches are caused by sinus allergies. Most of the time, I get a headache, eat and then wait an hour in pain until I finally give up and take a Sudafed.

This is all because I don’t like to take pills.

My grandma was the kind of woman who thought pills were the answer to everything. I remember at a very young age deciding that I wasn’t going to be like that when I grew up. I didn’t want to have bottles and bottles of pills. I was going to find ways to get rid of my pain without Tylenol 3, Darvocet and carisoprodol. If I couldn’t then I was just going to have to be in pain.

I found ways to deal with my pain without pills. Sadly, it was with food instead.

So, I’m breaking myself of my habit of feeding my headaches. When I get them, I am consciously staying away from food and taking a Sudafed instead. It’s a difficult habit for me to break because about 10% of my headaches are actually caused by me needing to eat. I’m slowly learning to tell the difference. Until then, this is going to be an interesting journey.

The official times for the 5K haven’t been posted yet, but here’s a low resolution video that Mike took. I’m the one in the long-sleeved gray shirt.

I started and stopped my stopwatch correctly this time, and it said it took me 37:15 minutes to complete the race, which is 3 whole minutes longer than my best time.

It just goes to show you that you can’t cheat physics. If you want a good finish time, you have to put in the training time. There’s no way around it.

Update 06-04-06 11:42 am: The results are up online now. My official results are:

Race: Salt Lake 5K 2006
Name: Laura Moncur
City: Salt Lake City, UT
Bib Number: 20366
Sex: Female
Age: 37
Time: 37:16
Pace: 12:00
Place in Age Division: 79 out of 139
Place Overall: 1478 out of 2321
Place in Sex Division: 775 out of 1425

Ironically, this race would have earned me an A in my jogging class so long ago, but it’s not good enough for me. I’m racing again this August. We’ll have to see if I do better when I train.

I just want to give a great big hug to Mechanical Bunny for representing the plus sizes just as much as the other sizes on their website. Not only do they have the Plus Size section, they have the plus size models mixed in with the other clothes and accessories.

• Mechanical Bunny: Goth Punk Mod EGL Hippy Plus Size Clothing

When you think about it, it makes sense. You don’t really need a size 0 butt to model gothic hair scarves and other accessories. I just want to give Mechanical Bunny a some credit for being inclusive in their choice of models.

Thanks!

When I was a kid, my two biggest heroes were Nell Carter and Miss Piggy.

Seriously. This isn’t a joke.

My personality is 20% Nell Carter and 30% Miss Piggy. I have a little bit of Jo from the Facts of Life in there, but anything that isn’t me, is probably Nell Carter or Miss Piggy. Both of them were strong and independent women who KNEW they were divas. They knew it with all capital letters. It didn’t matter that Miss Piggy was a pig. She was a diva and she demanded the spotlight every week on the Muppet Show.

It didn’t matter that Nell Carter weighed over 200 pounds. She was the star of Gimme A Break! It should have been called the Nell Carter show, she was such a diva.

Miss Piggy will live as long as Frank Oz can still talk, but Nell Carter died in 2003. She died of heart failure complicated by diabetes and obesity. When the fat acceptance people say that fat doesn’t kill you, I know they’re wrong because we lost Nell Carter far too soon.

For some reason, my childlike mind made the connection between fat and strength. Since Miss Piggy and Nell Carter were such strong women, I assumed that all fat women are strong. When I started losing weight, I felt like I was losing my strength. I’m just as tough today as I was when I weighed 235, but now I can kick your butt and run away fast as lightning if I need too.

I need new role models…

After two weeks out of town, it feels good to be back home. There is a lot to be said for routine. The minute I stepped into our house, I suddenly lost all urge to overeat. After two weeks of eating poorly, I no longer had any desire to go to restaurants. All I wanted to do was hide in my house and eat fruits and veggies.

Of course, that feeling didn’t last longer than a day, but I’ll never forget how comforting it felt to walk in the door and suddenly enjoy the comfort of eating healthy again.

I piled the green apples and clementines into the grocery basket. We were going to Disneyland and I planned on stocking the cooler with lots of healthy food. The carrots bagged into individual servings along with the apples and clementines, they were going to accompany me into the park, offering me healthy snacks when I felt hungry between meals. I had planned it all.

Mike and I were bringing up the suitcases up from the basement.

“By the way, how are you planning on taking those huge bags of produce into California?”

I suddenly had a vision of the border of California. The border patrol doesn’t care if I’m an immigrant or not, but they don’t want me to bring any fruit or veggies into the state. I’ve surrendered bananas in the past, their brown and yellow skins passed from my car to the kiosk sheepishly.

“Crap…” I responded to Mike.

“Yeah, I wish I had thought of that at the grocery store.”

We crossed the border with an empty cooler, but my lack of produce wasn’t an excuse to eat unhealthy. I just stopped at a grocery store in California. The fruit tastes better there anyway.

I’ll eat my clementines when I get home…

I thought it was gone. I thought I was finished with bingeing. Sure, I hadn’t gone three months without a lapse, but my lapses were only lasting a couple of hours. This last binge has lasted days and I’m still struggling with it.

Part of the reason is that I’m sad right now. After going to a wonderful convention (SXSW), I came home to Salt Lake City and was immediately confronted by isolation and loneliness. So I’m dealing with that, but I am still sad.

The rest of the reason should be a good thing. My IBS is almost gone. I would consider myself cured if I wasn’t taking acidophilus pills every day. As long as I swallow one of those capsules from the refrigerator every day, I am completely free from my stomach symptoms I had before. That means I can eat massive quantities of food without any physical repercussions. My stomach will feel full, but I no longer feel like someone has stabbed me in the gut when I eat more than two cups of food.

That should be a good thing, right?

I’ve just been taking advantage of my new-found eating freedom. For the first time in six years, I can eat WHATEVER I want without pain. Everything that I have avoided for health reasons and to prevent stomach pain have been consumed in the last couple of weeks.

Suddenly, I feel like a fraud writing for this site because my eating is out of control. After so many years of restrictive eating, it feels wrong to go to a restaurant, eat an appetizer, my full entree AND dessert. It feels wrong, but nothing hurts inside, so I’m happy.

Yeah, I’m happy until I try to button my jeans.

So, now I have to take my own advice and ask myself the question, “What motivates me to eat healthy and exercise?”

My stomach feels great and I feel like I have no answer at all…

Mike was out of the house and I was struggling. I wanted to binge while he was gone and couldn’t see me. I sat down with my camera and had a 33-minute conversation. Here is the 1:48 minutes that are worth listening to.

I wish I could say that I’m completely over bingeing, but I’m not. It’s easier today than it was five years ago, and I’m hoping that it will be easier tomorrow than it is today.

I am still in my honeymoon phase since I got the weight bench and weights to do my workouts at home. I enjoy that I can just go downstairs and do the workout alone. I am doing the same workout as I did at 24 Hour Fitness and it takes me the same amount of time, except I don’t have to get in the car and drive to the gym.

The first few times I did the workout at home, I really over-did it. I used the same amount of weight that I did when I was at the gym, but those machines aren’t as efficient as free weights, so I ended up in severe pain after that workout. I had to lower my weight amounts by at least 15 pounds apiece in order to get a good workout without injuring myself.

I remember when I took weight training in high school. My friend was doing the exercises that her doctor had told her to do for her knees and the Muscle Brains would try to “help” us.

“You know, those machines might be safe, but they’re not as good as free weights. If you really want a good workout, you should be doing squats.”

I remember dismissing their advice because Karen was doing what her doctor told her to do and we were really just biding our time until we could slough this class and go to the Photography Lab. I realize they were just trying to be helpful, but at that time, I just wanted to be as far away from the weight training room as I could be.

Now, that advice is here, reminding me that I can get a good workout with just a bench and some free weights at home.

I had a low blood sugar incident yesterday and I am still feeling the effects of it. Sometimes I forget that I can be sensitive to sugar. Since I’ve started eating healthy, I’ve had few blood sugar problems, so I kind of forgot that I used to have sensitivity to huge sugary treats.

Ironically, the low blood sugar problems that I used to have on a regular basis weren’t enough to get me to eat healthy. It wasn’t until my stomach started bothering me that I thought I better get my eating under control. After yesterday, that kind of shocks me. Half my day was wasted with a unplanned nap and I still feel a little yucky this morning. I used to live with this on a regular basis and it wasn’t enough for me to start taking care of myself. How did I stand it?

Now that I eat healthy, I usually don’t have to worry about low blood sugar. I have been avoiding simple sugars, so they don’t set me off and I eat protein regularly, so I just don’t have those incidents anymore. Yesterday was set off by an apple and pecan bread pudding with carmel sauce. I had plenty of room for it in my diet, but I guess my body couldn’t handle that much sugar.

I forgot how crappy I used to feel all the time. This has been a vivid reminder of why I eat healthy 90% of the time.