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

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…

What motivates you to eat healthy?

What motivates you to exercise regularly?

Give me a list of five to ten things that make you want to pass by the unhealthy food and get on that treadmill every day.

The Question of the Week is meant to be an Inner Workout for you. Find some time during the week and allow yourself to write the answers to the questions posted. You can write them on paper, on a word processor or here in the comments section. Whatever works for you as long as you do it.

Keep writing until you find out something about yourself that you didn’t know before. I’ve also heard that it works to keep writing until you cry, but that doesn’t really work for me. Whatever works for you. Just keep writing until it feels right.

This story at BBC News says that when you focus on what your muscle is doing, you exert more energy than when you just perform the move.

• BBC NEWS | Health | ‘Mind control’ over muscle power

Here is how the scientists tested their theory:

The team wired their subjects up to weight machines which monitored levels of electrical activity in their biceps and asked them to think in two different ways while exercising.

The more electrical activity measured – the more the muscle is doing.

When subjects were asked to focus on what their muscles were doing and how they were working there were significantly higher levels of electrical activity.

But when they were asked to visualise lifting the weight, electrical activity was lower.

If you focus on the muscle, it will work harder. If you focus on hitting a ball correctly, it will direct the ball better. This is one reason why running on the treadmill with the television distracting me might not be as good as exercise as when I’m outside running. I have nothing else to focus on but my muscles.

Via: Meriblog: Meri Williams’ Weblog » links for 2006-03-31

As part of video-blogging week, Michael Verdi posted this video about running.

• MICHAEL VERDI » Running

His daughter just joined Track, so he thought he would start running again. Much to his surprise, it was a little harder than he remembered.

These bowls from Mesu are sized for portion control. They range in sizes from 1/2 cup to 2 cups and after using them for a couple of months, you should be easily able to estimate portions when you’re at a restaurant.

• Popgadget: Personal Tech for Women – Mesu Portion Control Bowls

It took me months before I was able to estimate a 1/2 cup of rice or noodles. Even now, I break out the measuring cups so verify that my eyes haven’t made the portions “grow.” If you have been lax about measuring your portions lately, maybe it’s time to have a refresher course for a week or so.

Peter Jackson, the brilliant director behind the Lord of the Rings, has lost a lot of weight. Based on some estimates, he has lost 70 pounds. The news people clamored for an answer. How had he lost the weight?

• Peter Jackson sheds weight – Yahoo! News UK

• What’s the Peter Jackson Weight Loss Secret? Introducing the Skull Island Diet

• IFILM – Viral Video: Comic-Con 2005: Jack Black on Peter Jackson’s Weight Loss –

Yogurt and muesli.

That’s it… He stopped eating fast food and traded it for yogurt and muesli.

Sometimes the answers to our problems are so simple that we can’t see them. He simplified his eating, ate often and worked like a dog on his next film, King Kong. Sometimes having something that you are dedicated to can help the rest of your life in ways that you never imagined. You don’t need a fancy DIET. You need a passion.

What’s your passion? Find it today and use it to help you get to your healthy weight.

Via: Shortpacked!

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.

This photo of Christina Milian was an entry in the Photoshop contest, Worth 1000. The picture is done so well, however, that I wouldn’t be surprised if it showed up in a woman’s magazine. Of course, the author of the article would be “concerned” for Christina’s health and have an entire sidebar about corseting.

Next time you look at the pictures in women’s magazines, remember that with digital photo editing, artists today can make almost anything look real. Don’t believe everything you read or even see. Eating good food and exercising is about getting our bodies healthy, not living up to some ideal that may or may not even exist in reality.

To see the full size photo and the rest of the entries for that contest, click here: Worth1000.com | Photoshop Contests | Celebrity Sideshow 7

After a hiatus, I popped in Yourself! Fitness into my old Xbox and did an intense 60 minute workout. I thought it would be easy on me because I’ve been weight training on my own for the last two months, but Maya was able to give me a challenging workout and I felt it in muscle soreness the next day.

I was wondering what is going on with Yourself! Fitness and responDESIGN because it has been well over a year since they have produced anything new. Are they going to release a new version for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3? Are they working on a more realistic Maya with changeable outfits? How about a sensor that can read the signal from your heart rate monitor and adjust the program accordingly? Even a version where we stretch more than just our quads and hamstrings would be nice.

After looking at their website, I was shocked to see that not much had changed. They still have a rabid fan base in the forums asking questions just like mine, but no one is there in an official capacity answering them. In fact, it took a lot of digging for me to even find any answers of any sort. Here’s what I found:

According to a press release buried deep in responDESIGN’s website, the original Yourself! Fitness will work on Xbox 360: Press Release: Yourself! Fitness compatible with Xbox 360: Only fitness game for all audiences among 200 titles

That’s it. No announcements about anything new in the works. Not even an easy way to link to their press release because of their broken Flash-based website. So, they are abandoning their fanbase in the forums AND not even bothering to advance their product. That’s a shame because the original Yourself! Fitness was a great starting point and I was excited to see what the future held. Too bad it looks like the future brought a sad sizzle instead of a burning fire of innovation.

See other entries about Yourself! Fitness:

• Starling Fitness » Yourself! Fitness for the Xbox

• Starling Fitness » Silver Status on Yourself! Fitness

• Starling Fitness » Yourself! Fitness for Playstation 2

• Starling Fitness » Gold Status on Yourself! Fitness

• Starling Fitness » Workout 35 on Yourself! Fitness

It seems that no matter who you are, there are people who take things to an extreme. WaiterRant talked about his experience at the health food store the other day.

• waiterrant.net » Soy People

Waiter works at an upscale Italian restaurant, serving high calorie food all day long. There, he meets with food extremists on the other side of the spectrum from the people he encountered at the health food store.

“You know, this may be a health food store but many of the customers look pasty, thin, and weak – the very opposite of healthy. Some of them look like they’re five minutes from fertilizing one of those local organic farms.”

Remember, eating is about enjoyment AND health.