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

This German site, Mac Life Online, is reporting that Nike is finally releasing its Nike+ Sportsband, which is a version of Nike+ without the iPod.

• Nike+ Sportband wird unabhängig vom iPod :: Mac Life Online :: Die Seite der Mac Life

There is nothing about this product on Nike’s website, so we are really just going on the word of this one site in Germany. Of course, a year and a half ago, information from Nike was leaked about this product:

• Slew of new Nike+ gear leaked – Engadget

It was called Speed+ back then and looked very different than the current picture:

Since then, the Amp+ has been released, proving the leak to be at least partially correct, so the Nike+ Sportband doesn’t seem like too much of a long shot.

Here is another photo of the Nike+ Sportsband that shows its USB connector.

I used to dream of a Nike+ product that didn’t depend on my iPod, but now I am so angry at Nike that I don’t care. They have insulted my intelligence, my body and me for the last time. If this is anything like the other Nike products, the Sportsband will be yet another cheap product that will have no support, break within months and be a waste of money. Wait until Apple comes out with their Lifestyle Companion and pass Nike on by.

Here is an interesting entry from the Diet Blog:

• Diet Blog: 5 Amazing Things You Can Learn from a Toddler

Here is a simplified list of what you can learn from a toddler.

1. They are in motion all day long.
2. They stop eating when they are full.
3. They love to see themselves naked.
4. They are very flexible!
5. They get their sleep.

I haven’t had enough experience with toddlers to know if any of this is true. Do toddlers really love to see themselves naked? Do they get enough sleep of their own volition or is it forced upon them by their parents? I’m always wary of simple little five item lists like this. I could just as easily think of five things to avoid:

1. They hate vegetables.
2. They can’t focus on one task for longer than five minutes.
3. They are very picky eaters.
4. They are obsessed with sugar and candy.
5. They complain when they have to go to bed.

When it comes to taking eating cues from toddlers, what do you think?

Wendy Bumgardner, at About.com, has created a few logs for you to track your walks (or runs). You can download them here:

• About.com: Track Your Walks with Walking Logs, Walking Journals and Calendars

I find that if I keep track of my exercise, I feel good about myself when I do better by running further or faster. I also enjoy looking over a month and seeing how many times I’ve exercised. It’s a small feeling of pride that makes me want to keep up the good work.

If you have been uninspired to exercise lately, set a goal that you can achieve and then keep track of your progress. Wendy’s walking logs are the perfect way to keep inspired to exercise.

If you are one of the many people who have bought a Starling Fitness Yearly Journal, then you know that the quote of the month is about beauty. If not, you can see the quote here:

Beauty isn’t something on the outside. It’s your insides that count! You gotta eat green stuff to make sure you’re pretty on the inside.

Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata, Animal Crossing: Wild World, 2005

Do you have a plan to eat the healthy foods that will help you be beautiful on the inside as well as the outside? Adding five servings of vegetables to your diet every day not only will give you the essential vitamins and minerals that you need, they will give you a feeling of fullness. You’ll be less likely to binge on unhealthy foods with a tummy full of healthy veggies.

If you would like to order your own Starling Fitness Yearly Journal, you can do so here:

• Starling Fitness » Order Your Starling Fitness Yearly Journal

If you order it now, you can choose the month you want it to start and it will last you a year from that date. You won’t have to throw away any unused days from the first of the year. You can start fresh now.

In an exclusive interview with Richard Simmons, Claus E. von Zastrow finds out about Richard Simmons’ desire to increase physical education in the public schools. You can hear the interview here:

• LFA: An Exclusive Interview with Richard Simmons about His Campaign for P.E. in Schools

Here is a transcript of the highlights of the interview:

I started to see a big difference in my emails and my letters. So many told us that parents were worried about their kids, that parents didn’t know how to motivate their kids at home to exercise, because a majority of the parents aren’t motivated to exercise. Some of them had no idea what P.E. their kids were taking. And I said, ‘This is a major problem.’ This was a year and a half ago.

Then we made friends with congressman Wong. We flew to Washington, and I was in a suit. I looked like I was going to a bar mitzvah. Wong dropped a bill there and it metamorphosed into the Fit Kids Act, which is instead of saying to the schools, ‘You’ve got to get P.E. back in the schools,’ we’re saying, as a multiple measure we want you to add physical activity there.

Now, in 2008, it’s all about who’s going to win the presidential election. So, right now, they aren’t looking at putting P.E. back into the school systems. That’s why now, my next grouping of press will be done to reach out to the remaining presidential candidates and tell them that they’ve got to start talking about P.E. in our school systems. No one should be walking into the Oval Office unless they have a plan to get our kids healthy and fit.

This has got to be a priority, because here’s the thing. What happens if [the bill] is not authorized before we get the next president. It’s just sits there. Now we’re talking almost a year. Another year of no physical activity for our children. It’s another year of where they’re being taken to the doctors and the healthcare is going through the roof. The whole thing is, to me, shocking.

You take the kids and ask them what they want to do and they are watching High School Musical, they want to dance, they own the music charts. When I go to schools, I teach cardio, strength training and toning and they love it. I play their music, their beat, and they love it. And I know after they finish teaching, that child has had a complete workout and maybe never a workout like that in their lives. The kids are in the school more than they are anyplace else, and that’s where they should get their physical activity.

We used to want to make sure that every kid was well-rounded and now we’re finding that they’re just rounded. When you take away all the other things that make up the personality of a child, you’re taking away their well-roundedness, to be able to have social skills with other kids. And to just play and have a little fun on a day that is filled with pressure.

Coming from one of those kids who did workout with Richard Simmons every day, I think physical activity should be taught in the schools in such a way that it can be done at home. I didn’t learn anything in grade school and junior high physical education that I could use at home. There was so much focus on team sports, which are useless when you are at home alone, that there was no time left over for teaching me how to run races or dance at home. I don’t think physical education in schools is the answer, but I love Richard Simmons so much that I wanted to let his voice be heard here.

Ever since Nike+ came out, I wished that Nike had less to do with it and Apple had more to do with it. The bulky flash website that was so slow to download had Nike’s fingerprints all over it and I wished for something solely run by Apple.

Then Apple came out with the iPhone and my iPod Nano felt like a superfluous accessory that I only used when I went running. I can’t use my Nike+ with my iPhone, so I have kept my Nano just to log my runs. I have been wishing for the Nike+ to work with my iPhone.

If I had been wishing that Apple would create their own system, I would have had my wish granted. Apple has filed SIX patents on a “Lifestyle Companion”.

Not only will it communicate with a sensor on your shoe, but it also communicates with exercise machines so that if I run five miles on a treadmill, it doesn’t have to approximate with the sensor, it can get the information directly from the treadmill. It also can track your eating and nutrition.

You can find out the details here:

• iPhone. Your Lifestyle Companion » Unwired View

Suddenly, all my hatred for Nike is allowed to run free. Their XL workout gear that will only fit those who are underweight, their slow and cumbersome website, and their overpriced sensor replacements for the Nike+ can all take a walk off a cliff. It might be years before these patents become a product for me, but I’m willing to wait. When Apple does things, they do them right.

Via: The Joy of Tech comic… laughter is the best tech support.

Most runners have experienced positive feelings from running. I know I have. It’s not every run, in fact, it usually only happens about every other week, but sometimes I finish a run and feel better than when I started, despite the effort.

Even though the reports of runner’s high date back dozens of years, scientists have never been able to prove that something physiological was benefiting the mind until now.

• Treatment Online – Study Proves Runner’s High More Than a Myth

Dr. Boecker developed a less painful way to test his hypothesis that runner’s high is caused by opioids. In his study, which appeared in the February issue of Cerebral Cortex, Dr. Boecker injected runners with radioactive isotopes that bind to opioids. Then he PET scanned subjects before and after a two-hour run, finding elevated levels of opioids in the frontolimbic regions of the brain that regulate mood. Opioid levels directly correlated with self-reports of the intensity of euphoria, establishing a clear link from running to opioid release to feeling good.

I miss running. I haven’t run for the last couple of months because I’ve been playing DDR instead. I love playing the dancing game, but reading this article reminded me of how awesome a good run can be, even if it only happens every couple of weeks.

Weight Watchers sells a bracelet for counting points for about twenty bucks. It’s not too pretty, but it features a movable charm that allows you to keep track of how many points you’ve eaten. The only problem with the bracelet is that anyone who has attended Weight Watchers would recognize those cheap pearls and black beads from a mile away. It practically screams, “I’m on Weight Watchers!!”

Sutherland Studios, however, has step-by-step instructions on how to make a similar bracelet.

• Sutherland Studios – Free Row Counter Bracelet Instructions

They suggest that you could use the bracelet to keep track of rows of knitting or crochet, but this would be genius for discretely keeping track of your Weight Watcher points. Since you are making it yourself, you can put the number of beads for YOUR points limit. The second string, with additional charms, could keep track of your veggies, dairy, oils and water. I imagine five green beads for veggies, six green beads for water, two white beads for dairy and two clear beads for oils.

Because you make it yourself, choosing your own beads, no one would be able to tell that it was for keeping track of Weight Watcher points. You could just privately move over the stretchy bead when you eat your meal unnoticed.

If you make a bracelet such as this, post a message in the comments linking to yours and show off your talents!

Via: Craftzine.com blog: Row Counter Bracelet

I was reading the retro advertisement blog, Found in Mom’s Basement, and I saw this ad for Spam from 1975. I was six years old in 1975. I loved Spam. Looking at the picture of Spam and eggs reminded me of how much I loved Spam.

Now, I don’t really consider Spam food. Just like styrofoam or crayons, sure you can chew and swallow it, but it’s now categorized in the “Not Food” category. When did that happen?

Nutrition facts. I’m pretty sure I classified Spam as “Not Food” when I could actually see how much fat and how little meat there was in that can. Logically, that makes sense, right? It must have been when I saw the nutrition facts.

The truth is, the nutrition facts for Spam look pretty bad. According to NutritionData, Spam has almost twice the calories and fat than regular ham.

When we were kids, Spam was considered the coolest food. Just look at the ad showing it used in so many different situations. Although my parents never barbequed it or put it on pizza, I’ve eaten spam in casseroles, with eggs and on sandwiches. We always had a can of it in the cupboard, just in case.

All of this has me thinking. If Spam was a perfectly cromulent food in 1975, what food of today is going to be the Spam of tomorrow? Flax seed cereal? Cabbage soup? Whole foods in general? Whatever the food fad of today, there is certainly going to be a backlash for it later.

Our definition of food is constantly changing and it’s hard to keep up. Poor Spam just got caught in the crossfire between marketing and nutrition.

Once again, Tom Mangan shows us why it’s important to keep physically fit: so you can hike the beautiful trails of Murietta Falls and enjoy the splendor.

• Two Heel Drive: Murietta Falls Report

Here is his description of how to get there:

For those unfamiliar with the pleasures of hiking to Murietta Falls: It’s about six miles one way from the Lichen Bark Picnic Area at Del Valle Regional Park near Livermore. Getting there entails one epic climb on from the parking lot to Rocky Ridge, then going downhill to Williams Gulch, then slogging up for another epic climb on the Big Burn (steep, yes, but also one of the prettiest stretches of single-track trail in the East Bay.) After that you go back down a few hundred feet in a mile to the Falls, including a harrowing bit of iffy footing just before you reach the base.

Then you go back the way you came. A side trip along the Rocky Ridge Trail adds about a mile each way, but you avoid a really steep patch of trail and get some great scenery.

You can see all his photos here:

• 02-25-08-Murietta Falls – a photoset on Flickr