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

There are many times that companies brag about their own advertisements with such phrases as, “As Advertised On TV” or “Advertised In These High Quality Magazines.” Most people just shrug and move on, but what if a vitamin is listed in the PDR? Isn’t that an honor?

Envia would like you to think so, but MLM Watch knows the truth:

• Advertising Hype for Eniva’s VIBE

When used by itself, the name “PDR” usually refers to the book that lists prescription drugs. There are, however, at least 15 other PDRs. Eniva’s listing is in the PDR for Nonprescription Drugs, Dietary Supplements, and Herbs, pictured above, which is not widely used. Listing in this book is not an “honor” or endorsement. The book’s foreword states that “by making this material available, the publisher [Thomson PDR] is not advocating the use of any products described herein.” All product information is supplied by the manufacturer. Thomson does not select what products are listed by choosing those it thinks are best. The only requirement for listing is payment of a fee.

Next time you see a nutritional supplement or weight loss aid advertisement, remember that everything they are saying is trying to convince you to buy their product. If their product was really that good, people would be breaking down their door to get it and they wouldn’t have to convince anyone.

SLB Plus is a regular reader and runner on Runner+. Recently, he wrote a blog entry about the Virtual Partner feature on his Garmin 305.

• Quadrathon: The VP of 3P

He has been training with his Garmin 305 for a while:

My 305, you have got to love this thing, I have had mine nearly a year have piled on over 1000 miles on it and it’s never let me down. It has a feature rich menu of options which I won’t go into in depth as I know a lot of you have one but the VP [Virtual Partner] is one I have only started using recently and at the moment only on my road bike while on the trainer.

The Virtual Partner is a motivational feature that lets you “race” a little guy. I don’t know exactly how the pace of your VP is chosen, but if you run faster than him, you get to “beat” him.

Personally, I find things like this VERY motivating. Running on Runner+ helped keep me motivated because I could see who was ahead of me that day and try to run further than that person. The VP feature on the Garmin 305 is like a race every day.

When I tested the Garmin 305 at CES 2006, I was unimpressed.

The huge and bulky machine dwarfed my Nike Imara Heart Rate Monitor. Back then it cost nearly $400, but now you can find it for as low as $215. You can also purchase a bicycle cadence sensor so it will tell how you are doing if you are exercising on your bike. To add icing on the cake, you can buy a foot pod, so if you are a treadmill runner (like I am), the 305 can keep track of your distance on the treadmill.

SLB Plus talked about his love for his Garmin 305 before:

• Quadrathon: Back in the flow…

The more I hear him talk about his 305, the more I think that I might have been too quick to judge the bulky watch as an overpriced gadget. It might be time to start to seriously consider the Garmin 305 as a useful training device.

Click here to see Garmin’s Website:

• Garmin – Forerunner 305

Joy Bauer is the nutritionist for the Today Show’s Joy Fit Club. Here is a success story:

Kelly Shear lost a total of 121 pounds, leaving her at a size 6. Joy Bauer goes through and explains how Kelly is eating differently now. Kelly has become a member of The Joy Fit Club. The funny thing about this club is that you can only join if you’ve already lost your weight.

Twice a month, TODAY inducts a new member into nutritionist Joy’s Bauer’s Fit Club. These are determined people who have lost and kept off 100 pounds or more through diet and exercise.

It’s not like Joy Bauer necessarily helped these people get slim, but she gets to take credit for their accomplishments. When watching the video, I could tell that Joy had absolutely NOTHING to do with Kelly’s weight loss. The newscater asked, “Joy, what did you learn from Kelly’s experience?” As she was asking this question, this look flew across Joy’s face for a micro-second.

She was obviously not too pleased with how the newscaster worded that phrase. Joy corrected her, saying, “Based on Kelly’s success?” She then spouted the three normal things: food journal, post inspirational pics and photos and don’t beat yourself up.

I guess the thing that bothers me so much is that Joy Bauer offers nothing unless you buy her books. When I scoured her site, there was nothing to tell me what program I should follow or how to get started.

Kelly Shear’s success IS laudable and she should be applauded, but I doubt that Joy Bauer had anything to do with it.

Each week, I will give you step by step instructions on how to get into a swimsuit this summer. If you’re short on time, scroll down to the end and read “The Short Version” to get your weekly tips.

If you haven’t been following along with the program, it’s not too late to join in. Go back and do week 1 and 2’s assignments this week and you’ll only be a week behind.

• Starling Fitness » Get Into That Swimsuit This Summer: Week 1

• Starling Fitness » Get Into That Swimsuit This Summer: Week 2

If you HAVE been following along, your job last week was to wear your swimsuit around the house for an hour each day, totaling seven hours for last week. This week, you only need to wear your swimsuit and sarong for only about three hours. There’s only one catch.

You have to wear your swimsuit while you clean your house.

It’s best to just plan a three hour stretch so you can do all the normal chores that you might be spreading out over the week for this project. The reason I want you to spend a few hours in your swimming suit cleaning house is because it’s an EXCELLENT test of how your suit will handle something active like swimming, snorkeling or boogie boarding.

Notice how your suit feels when you are doing the following activities:

• Bending down to pick up laundry.
• Splashing yourself with water when cleaning the tub.
• Reaching above your head to put away dishes.
• Getting on your knees to clean out from under the couch.
• Sweating as you push the vacuum.

Whatever you normally do while cleaning, do it wearing your swimsuit and sarong. This will show you how well it will handle the beach or pool. Does the sarong keep falling off? If it does, you either need to learn a new way to tie it, a handy way to keep it attached or a new one. Does any intimate part of your body fall out when you are reaching or bending? Then you probably chose a suit that’s too tight and you need to go back to week one’s exercise. Save the tight suit for when you are thinner, but get a suit that fits you NOW.

If you feel a little embarrassed doing the house cleaning in your swimming suit, pretend that you are an island maid in Hawaii. If you were visiting Hawaii and a maid showed up at your door in a swim suit and sarong, you probably wouldn’t be that surprised. Imagine that you are cleaning a Hawaiian bungalow and enjoy your three hours testing out your suit.

The Short Version:

• Wear your swimming suit while you clean your house this week (at least three hours).

• If any intimate part of your body falls out of the suit when you are cleaning, buy a bigger suit.

I was at the local health food restaurant the other day and I saw their sign that read, “Frittata of the Day.” I knew a frittata was some egg dish, but I didn’t really know anything else about it, so I decided to look it up. According to Wikipedia, a frittata is slightly different than an omelette.

A frittata is a type of Italian omelette that frequently features fillings such as meats, cheeses, and vegetables. Like a traditional French omelette, a frittata is prepared in a skillet. However, whereas an omelette is cooked on a stovetop and served folded, a frittata is first partially cooked on a stovetop but then finished under the grill (broiler) and served open-faced.

So all those years when I thought I was making an omelette, yeah, I was making an omelette. A frittata has an extra step in the broiler to brown the top. I love omelettes because they are so easy to make. Here’s my easiest recipe:

Ham and Cheese Omelette:

Ingredients:

• One egg
• 1 ounce of chopped ham (you can buy pre-chopped in the meat section)
• 1 ounce of cheddar cheese
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Non-stick spray

Directions:

• Spray a pan with non-stick spray.
• Break the egg into the pan, add ham, salt and pepper.
• Mix vigorously with a fork.
• Sprinkle cheese on top. Do not mix again after this step.
• Turn the burner on Medium heat, cover and cook for three to five minutes.
• When the omelette looks like the picture, carefully fold it in half and serve.

Calories: approximately 250
WW Points: 5

How does a teenager rebel in a sun-worshiping and ultra-athletic family? By refusing to exercise. I love Ms. Jen’s recollections of her family and how she recoiled from exercise in her teen years:

• My Day with Nokia’s Sports Tracker – Black Phoebe :: Ms. Jen

Ok, I grew up in a family that was sports obsessed, esp. my first stepdad – my mom’s second husband. My childhood, from ages 3 to 13, was spent with the stepdad, mom, and various other mom-related relatives who were pathologically compulsive about exercising at every darned opportunity.

Beach volleyball in the evenings? Check. Olympic style kayaking and canoeing? Check. Surfing? Check. Running? Check. Skiing? Check. Hiking with a pace meter and stop watch? Check!

By the time I was 8 years old, I was hiding when the folks were ready to go out for yet another bout of daily evening EXERCISE! Me hiding with my mom yelling at me that it was time to leave. My high school rebellion was to cultivate super-white, never see the sun skin. To do this in an ultra-athletic, sun-worshiping family was even more rebellious than teenage pregnancy or drug use. I kid you not. The cousins that got knocked-up and/or were smoking pot were excused as long as they were in competitive sports and winning.

When she was asked to review Nokia’s Sport Tracker with her shiny Nokia N82, she resisted, but eventually took it with her on errands… errands that she ran in her car:

I dropped off the dogs at my brother’s house, turned the GPS on, started the Sports Tracker app, took a photo and off I went. As I took the photos, I sent them up to my Flickr photostream via ShoZu, so that each of the photos sent to Flickr would be mapped automatically. When I finished the whole errand lap, I turned off the Sports Tracker and asked it to send the collected data to its mothership.

Amusingly, Sports Tracker wanted to know what type of exercise I was doing – Other, as it does not list car travel in LA as a form of exertion (ha!). The other amusing parts that ShoZu or Lifeblog could not perform for me was to inform me that I had traveled a total of 110 km in 3 hours 19 minutes and 34 seconds. My top speed was 130 km/h (hee hee hee) and my top altitude was 41 meters (Orange), the low was near the beach in Sunset / HB.

I was more interested how Sports Tracker performed in walking conditions because it’s harder for GPS data to track a slow moving object. Additionally, it would be nice to know how it handled “urban canyons,” which are areas of the city that are surrounded by huge buildings, so it is more difficult to get a signal.

Even more interesting is Ms. Jen’s ability to continue rebelling against her family right down to the point of reviewing the Sports Tracker with her car instead of her feet. It makes me wonder about myself. What part of my own personality is just rebelling against my family? Has bingeing turned into just another way for me to rebel against my grandmother? I need to think about this for a bit…

Ward-O-Matic only gave us a glimpse of the Metropolitan Life’s Guide to Good Health that he found in his wanderings, but it’s a fun glimpse nonetheless.

Their helpful tips were barely passable as such:

• Get a doctor
• Don’t worry if your doctor orders a lot of tests
• Get a hobby
• Eat the right foods

Sadly, he didn’t scan in the whole pamphlet, but I would LOVE to see the thing in entirety.

Apparently, there were an entire series of Met Life Booklets. I just wish I could jump in and see the Food for your Family book!

It has been a long time since I’ve talked about Runner+ Challenges. I’ve stopped running completely. I couldn’t even tell you the last time I ran. I would have to look it up on Runner+, actually. I have been playing DDR five days a week for the last few months. It has been such a refreshing change of pace that for a couple of weeks, I forgot to host the weekly challenges, but they are back up and “running.”

If you exercise by running or walking, you can compete in the Starling Fitness Challenges on Runner+. All you need is an account at Runner+ (free) and you can log your miles there. If you have a Nike+iPod kit, then your runs will automatically be added, but the site will also allow you to add your runs manually. If you would like to compete against runners on your level, here are the links for next week’s challenges (starts Sunday):

Level 1 weekly challenge from Starling Fitness. This level runs between 0-10 miles a week.

• Challenge: Starling Fitness Level 1 (03-09-08) – RUNNER+

Level 2 weekly challenge from Starling Fitness. This level runs between 10-20 miles a week.

• Challenge: Starling Fitness Level 2 (03-09-08) – RUNNER+

Level 3 weekly challenge from Starling Fitness. This level runs between 20-30 miles a week.

• Challenge: Starling Fitness Level 3 (03-09-08) – RUNNER+

Level 4 weekly challenge from Starling Fitness. This level runs between 30-40 miles a week.

• Challenge: Starling Fitness Level 4 (03-09-08) – RUNNER+

Level 5 weekly challenge from Starling Fitness. This level runs between 40-50 miles a week.

• Challenge: Starling Fitness Level 5 (03-09-08) – RUNNER+

Level 6 weekly challenge from Starling Fitness. This level runs between 50-60 miles a week.

• Challenge: Starling Fitness Level 6 (03-09-08) – RUNNER+

Linda was a fat cat.

We knew she was getting sick because she started getting thin. In the end, she wasted away to a skeleton with fur.

When she was fat, we worried about her and put her on a restrictive diet. It never helped her get thin. It just made her a pest at feeding time.

When she finally died, I regretted every morsel of food I denied her. Why did we nearly starve her every day? It didn’t help make her thin?

She lived to be seventeen years old, which is a long, healthy life for a cat. The fat that she had back in 2001 didn’t make her less healthy. I should have just given her normal food and let her eat from a kibble dish like I did with Maggie.

Since September when Linda died, I’ve been thinking about this. What if it all is the same for me?

This clip from Penn and Teller’s television show called Bullsh!t! talks about the obesity epidemic and how it isn’t much of an epidemic.

Paul Campos, the author of the book The Obesity Myth, talks about the myths about what is going on.

Myth 1: Weight is a good proxy for health: You can’t tell what’s going on with a person’s organs just by looking at them.

Myth 2: If you take a fat person and turn them into a thin person, you will improve their health.

Myth 3: We know how to produce significant long term weight loss.

Glenn Alan Gaesser, author of the book Big Fat Lies, talks about the dangers of constant dieting:

It is far more dangerous to ones health to be chronically yo-yoing up and down in weight on one diet after another than it would be to be a stable weight. Even if that happens to be heavier than the charts say you should weigh. Fat people who exercise regularly are better off healthwise and have lower mortality rates than people who don’t.

These issues are real and they aren’t going away quickly. The biggest problem is that we are being judged by our government and the insurance industry based on our weight. They have the right to raise our insurance premiums if we gain weight and are even pushing for the right to deny payment for illnesses that they consider weight related. The best thing we can do is work our hardest to get within their recommended ranges until the insanity of this country subsides and a more realistic approach is adopted.