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

This postcard from PostSecret showed up last Sunday.

It reads:

I am the fat man who wears speedos in public.
I don’t care what you think.
I do it because it makes me feel sexy.

All I can say is, “RIGHT ON, BROTHER!” I haven’t worn a bikini since I was six years old because I am scared of what the world would think. It looks like I have some more Inner Workouts to do.

PostSecret‘s beneficiary is the National Hopeline Network. It is a 24-hour hotline (1 (800) SUICIDE) for anyone who is thinking about suicide or knows someone who is considering it.

After a lengthy quest all throughout the city, Mike and I finally found a Wii Fit. I set it up and it told me that I was fat (I knew that already) and made my poor little Mii character a short and pudgy icon after weighing me. I had no idea that the Wii Balance Board was also a scale, but it doubles in that capacity. When compared to my high-tech digital scale in the bathroom, it reads quite accurately.

The first time we played with the Wii Fit, I forgot to wear my heart rate monitor, but I did get a good sweat on. The most fun Balance game to play was the Soccer Heading. You can see a video of it here:

We had plenty of laughs while I tried to dodge the soccer cleats and panda heads. I will be working out with Wii Fit for the next couple of weeks and give you more feedback about how many calories I burn while playing and how effective a workout it is.

My friend emailed me this video. The subject of the video was, “So U Think U Can Dance?” and her comment was, “One word… hottie!” I think she was being sarcastic. I clicked on the video and this is what I saw: a half naked man dancing in front of the camera. You can see it here:

Unlike most people, I didn’t laugh and turn it off ten seconds into it. I watched through the whole thing and you know what I realized,

Damn, that guy’s a pretty good dancer!

I’m not being sarcastic. He dances pretty well.

The longer I watched, the less I noticed his doughy body and the more attractive he became. What was cringe-worthy at the beginning of the video became an impressive array of booty-shaking.

Let me tell you, ATTITUDE IS EVERYTHING!

When was the last time I was confident enough to dance in front of a mirror, much less a CAMERA?! This guy has cajones and he’s not afraid to show them!

Next time you’re feeling self conscious about the way you look, remember this guy. Hold yourself up straight, put on that attitude that you are the most beautiful one in the room and you’ll look one hundred times better than if you slink in and hope no one notices.

This is a 1968 advertisement for Rexall Drugs’ Super Plenamin vitamins. If you look closely at the label, you can see that they were “selected for use by the U.S. Olympic Team.” It feels almost sacrilegious to say anything negative about vitamins. We need them to stay healthy, right? We’ll get rickets and stuff if we don’t take our vitamins, won’t we?

Well, I don’t know too much about that. I’ve heard nutritionists say that if you eat a healthy well-balanced diet, that you shouldn’t need vitamins. I’ve also heard them say that they won’t hurt you if you take them just in case. Case in point:

• Ask the Dietitian – by Joanne Larsen MS RD LD – Supplements – Vitamin

What I DO know is that the sale of vitamins is a business. Not only do legitimate companies like Rexall tap into the vitamin business, multi-level marketing (MLM) and social marketing companies have noticed how much money they can make. From a business standpoint, you can’t lose. You can say that vitamin supplements can improve your health and no one will argue with you. They cure scurvy and stuff, right?

It’s easy for me to look at that old bottle of Plenamins and think to myself, “Those pills didn’t do anything.” The bottle looks so old that they look like snake oil. Rexall is STILL selling Plenamins, though.

When I look at this bottle of Plenamins Plus from Rexall, it looks like something I would take every day after I brush my teeth. They’re from a big company like Rexall Drug, so they help me, right?

I’m almost to the point that I want to experiment. What if I STOP taking a multi-vitamin? How long before I develop rickets or scurvy? What if I make sure I eat a well-balanced diet? Am I safe then? How long until I realize that I was just peeing out expensive urine?

Via: Found in Mom’s Basement: Bottle of Super Plenamins vitamins from 1968

This comic from Joy of Tech made me feel just as angry at those fat kids as I was at the skinny kids that made fun of me when I was little. When I was a kid, they used to call me Chug-A-Lug. I wrote about it here:

• Starling Fitness » Chug-A-Lug

It’s funny to me how much it hurt when I was a child to be made fun of because of my weight. Of course, if they hadn’t made fun of me because of my weight, they would have found something else to torment me with. They would have called me stupid or loud or made fun of my hair because it was brown, whatever.

Are fat kids the new norm? I don’t know. As an adult, we can’t see that world. We can never again step into that small hell that children inflict on each other. I’m sure kids are made fun of because they are thin. I remember kids calling a girl in grade school String Bean. She didn’t like that name anymore than I liked being called Chug-A-Lug. Children have taunted and teased each other for far longer than this supposed obesity epidemic.

I saw this advertisement on Facebook the other day and it made me crinkle my brow. It says:

Drop 20lb for summer
Try Life Support Diet and lose up to 20 pounds in 6 weeks. Recommended by Oprah.

I clicked over to the site and it was for Life Support Herbal and Hoodia diet pills. Here is a screenshot of their site.

Now, the advertisement said that a diet was recommended by Oprah, but all they showed is that O Magazine had written a little blurb about hoodia saying that it “may” help you lose weight. In fact, all their “Featured in” mentions had NOTHING to do with Life Support Herbal and their product. They only mentioned hoodia.

Firstly, the cactus, hoodia gordonii, has not been proven to help you lose weight. The Wikipedia entry on Hoodia gordonii sums it up perfectly:

There is no published scientific evidence that Hoodia works as an appetite suppressant in humans. The safety and/or effectiveness of Hoodia Gordonii as a dietary supplement must thus be considered as unsubstantiated.

While the cactus hasn’t been proven to help you lose weight, there is absolutely NO proof that some pill that says it contains hoodia could help you lose weight. Just because a news program talked about hoodia doesn’t mean it’s a miracle drug. Just because O Magazine wrote an article about hoodia doesn’t mean that it’s recommended by Oprah.

Secondly, Life Support Diet? Really? You’re going to name yourself Life Support? When I read their name, I immediately thought of my grandma after her stroke on life support. They fed her through a tube that ran through her nose, down her throat and into her stomach. When it was obvious that she was never going to recover, they took her OFF the life support diet. It’s not really an image of health and vitality to go on a life support diet.

There are tiny ads for weight loss pills like these EVERYWHERE on the Internet, even on Starling Fitness. Just based on the fact that I write about health and fitness, ads for products like these show up on my site. Don’t believe them.

It has been a while since I released a new Starling Fitness Walking Video. I filmed this rainy video back in August, but I have procrastinated the editing until now. The day I filmed this video, I was so happy to be able to walk around the park in the rain, recording it for my future workouts.

I’ve worked out with this video a few times and it’s great for walking and running on the treadmill. It’s not so great for working out on the exercise bike unless you don’t mind imagining dodging geese, children and walkers on your bike. The times when I was passing people made me want to slow down a bit.

Here is a glimpse of what the video looks like:

Here is the distance according to Google Maps:

Estimated Distance: 1.84 miles
Estimated Speed: 2.5 mph
Time: 43 minutes

I’m offering this workout DVD for $5 plus shipping.

Order Starling Fitness Walking Videos Here

You can see the route I walked here:

Video Description:

It looks like rain outside, but the day is too beautiful to stay indoors. How about a quick walk at Liberty Park? Dodge the geese as they are being fed. Watch the romantic couple in the paddle boat on the pond. Listen to the children calling out on the playground equipment. The blue skies are threatened by big clouds, but you still keep walking. You enjoy the camaraderie of others as you pass them exercising.

The sound of the birds at Tracy Aviary make you want to go inside, but you have a workout to do, so you keep on walking. The tiny rain drops start to collect on your glasses, but that doesn’t stop you or the children splashing in the fountain. The smell of water in the air makes you want to walk even more. Who knew a walk in the rain could be so much fun?!

Order Starling Fitness Walking Videos Here

Being able to hike to a beautiful place like this is the reason I exercise. Back when I first started exercising, I would have never been able to do something like what I did last Friday, but now I have the video to prove it.

Enjoy this little vacation courtesy of my treadmill and weight bench (oh yeah, and my camera).

Whenever I hear from people about how they have tried to lose weight, they first mention all the ways they have tried to lose weight. “I tried Atkins, Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, Overeater’s Anonymous…” Next time you think that losing weight is impossible because you’ve tried “everything,” watch this video.

It is possible for you to eat healthy, get to your goal weight and be strong again. Just because you have failed before, doesn’t mean you won’t get there this time. You can do this!

While I was watching yesterday’s Michael Pollan video, he mentioned a new eating disorder, Orthorexia. It was a term created by Steven Bratman, author of the book Health Food Junkies: Orthorexia Nervosa. Here is more information on it:

• Orthorexia nervosa – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Steven Bratman coined the term in 1997 from the Greek orthos, “correct or right”, and orexis for “appetite”. Literally “correct appetite”, the word is modeled on anorexia, “without appetite”, as used in definition of the condition anorexia nervosa. Bratman describes orthorexia as an unhealthy obsession (as in obsessive-compulsive disorder) with what the sufferer considers to be healthy eating. The subject may avoid certain foods, such as those containing fats, preservatives, or animal products, and suffer malnutrition. Bratman asserts that “emaciation is common among followers of health food diets.”

Michael Pollan described the perfect way of looking at unhealthy food when you are faced with it. Throughout history, cultures have had “banquet food,” which is food that is served only for special occasions. He said that it’s alright to eat banquet food as long as we don’t celebrate every day. Our food culture now has made all of our special occasion food available EVERY day. Eat healthy every day and save the banquet food for the banquets.