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

I got a Nike Imara Heart Rate Monitor for Christmas last year, but I haven’t done a review for it. Want to know why?

I don’t like to give bad reviews.

I only write one entry a day on Starling Fitness. I’d rather not waste the entry talking about things that don’t live up to my expectations.

Yet, it’s almost a year later and I’m finally writing a review. What changed?

Nothing. The reason why I hate my Nike Imara is the same. It doesn’t work with my treadmill. I can exercise on my bike and have no problems. I can play DDR and have no problems. I can weight train and no problems. I can even run on a treadmill at the gym with no problems, but it constantly runs into interference on my treadmill at home. The treadmill is my favorite exercise device, so when I realized that my brand new spiffy heart rate monitor didn’t work with it, I hated it.

That didn’t stop me from wearing it, though. It’s a watch that looks good enough that I can wear it every day. I wore it to CES and used it to measure my heart rate when I tested the exercise toys there. I used it every time I played DDR or rode my bike. I stubbornly even wear it every time I run on my treadmill with the pathetic hope that, “Maybe this time it will work…”

I love how it tracks my calories and how much time I exercise in the low, medium and high ranges. I love that it’s water resistant up to 50M, so if I’m lazy, I don’t even have to take it off when I shower. In fact, I’ve been wearing my Nike Imara almost constantly ever since I got it. That is unheard of for me, since I used to change watches like jewelry.

That’s when I realized that I love my Nike Imara.

It still doesn’t work whenever I run on my treadmill, but it has been a watch that’s a good friend for almost a year now. It’s so rare for me to find a watch that I enjoy that when I finally found one, it took me 10 months to realize that I actually loved it.

Features:

• Time and Date on the same screen – The date shows the day of the week and the date (not the year or month).

• Dual Time – If I hold down a button, the watch switches to a second time zone.

• Watch Light – I feel silly for mentioning this, but you would not believe that number of women’s watches that DON’T have a light. Do they think I’m not allowed out after dark? I use my watch to tell time in the middle of the night because I’m so blind I can’t see the clock five inches away from my face. A watch light is essential to me and lack of it is a deal breaker.

• Chronograph (Stopwatch) – Displays workout time and will show calories, heart rate or heart rate percentage (toggle with the start button).

• Interval Timer – Also called a countdown timer. I love this feature on other watches, but I hate it on this one because the beep is so quiet that I usually miss it.

• Data – It will store the data from your last workout until you clear it on the chronograph.

• Alarm – Works like any other watch, except the beep is so soft that you’ll probably miss it.

I have talked extensively in the past about active video games like DDR where you can workout and have fun. Here is another video game to add to that category. I reviewed it for general playability on the Gadgets Page and you can see the review here:

• The Gadgets Page » First Glance: Dance Factory for the PS/2

The difference between Dance Factory and DDR is that you can dance to ANY CD that you want. This is especially important when you are working out every day. It is really easy to get sick of the DDR songs. Each DDR game might have 60-70 songs, but they are only two minutes a piece. One hour-long workout a day for a week and you’ve heard all those songs at least four times each. With Dance Factory, you can dance every day to a different CD. That’s an essential feature when you are using it for workouts and it’s the reason I bought a Playstation 2. This game isn’t available on Xbox or the PC.

One cautionary note: DO NOT BELIEVE THE CALORIE OR DISTANCE STATS. I said it in the other review, but it’s worth repeating. You might think that it would be very accurate because you can tell the game your weight, but it is not. When I compared the calorie count from the game with my heart rate monitor, they were vastly different. Additionally, during a workout, it stated that I had jogged the distance of over 7K. There’s no way that I worked that hard. I’ve run a 5K. The workout that I did with Dance Factory was nothing compared with that. If you don’t have a heart rate monitor that calculates your calorie expenditure, just gauge your workout based on time and perceived exertion, because the fitness meters are VERY generous.

This brings me to a final note. You should keep track of your calorie expenditure with a good heart rate monitor. They are the most accurate. I will be reviewing the one I use tomorrow to give you an idea of what to look for. I’ll also tell you why I haven’t reviewed this heart rate monitor until now, even though I got the watch for Christmas last year.

What if your scale said this every day? What if you couldn’t measure how many pounds or kilos or stone you weighed? What if the only gauge of yourself is how you feel about yourself? How would you know if you are beautiful?

Guess what? That’s how life is. That number on the scale means NOTHING!!

Sexy is mostly attitude. Attitude and hygiene, actually. If you take care of yourself and you care about yourself, the sexy comes through no matter how heavy you are on the scale.

The scale is only a tool to measure progess. If you FEEL sexy, you will attract others. Work on your head as much as your body because when you get to goal weight, if you don’t feel sexy, you won’t look sexy, no matter how tight your butt is.

If you are planning on wearing a skimpy and sexy Halloween costume, you have less than a month to get to your goal weight.

With less than a month to wear a sexy Halloween costume, how is that going to affect your decision?

If your body was exactly how you wanted it to be, which Halloween costume would you wear?

What is stopping you from wearing that costume right now?

When you are trying to hide your weight, what costumes do you prefer? Are they self-deprecating?

Don’t let your current weight stop you from wearing the costume of your dreams at the Halloween party this year. You deserve to wear whatever costume you want, despite what commercial costume companies create. If you want to be super sexy this year, create your own costume. If you start now, there is still time.

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.

Infomercials used to be the staple of late-night television, but it seems like I can watch infomercials twenty-four hours a day. With so many channels on television, there is ALWAYS an informercial playing. Most of the time they are selling weight loss pills, equipment or some cream that is supposed to make your cellulite go away. Can you believe them? According to Dateline NBC, don’t waste your money.

• Infomercials: From the inside out – Dateline NBC – MSNBC.com

What Dateline found is what I’ve suspected all along:

“The Federal Trade Commission has launched an on-going crackdown targeting ads after the FTC found deceptive weight loss ads running ‘rampant’ and more than half of all weight loss ads studied contained at least one false claim.”

If they are willing to have one false claim, how can you trust all their others?

Dateline NBC made pills out of Nestle Quik and tried to see if they could get an infomercial made. They not only did, but the infomercial company even found a dermatologist willing to stand by it for a mere $5000. They also had people on the infomercial giving testimonials, but they were just actors who had been paid $50 each. In the end, no one even noticed that the pills were made out of Nestle Quik during the filming.

Next time you’re tempted to try the new diet pills, remember this Dateline undercover investigation. You could be paying $30 a bottle for Nestle Quik.

Via: Consumer Health Digest, September 26, 2006

Betsy Devine weighed in on Happiness and why she thinks the Netherlands lead the pack in happiness. She bases it all on bicycles:

• Betsy Devine: Funny Ha-Ha or Funny Peculiar? : Happiness is a Dutch bicycle

She has a full list of why she thinks riding your bicycle everywhere would increase your happiness:

• Exercise makes people’s bodies feel good.
• Exercise lifts people’s spirits.
• Bikers are not anonymous the way drivers are; hence their traffic interactions are much more civil.
• Riding a bike instead of a Hummer to work is just one example of the general Dutch aversion to flaunting wealth–the struggle to keep up with (or better) your neighbors creates much unhappiness in many cultures.
• Almost running over clueless American tourists who will go home and blog about you gets your pulses racing.

I agree with her. I’ve enjoyed riding my bicycle around my town. When I was riding it to work was the best time I had working for other people. There is something about the physical activity with a definite purpose that really makes me content. I would much rather ride my bike to work than go for a ride in the mountains. The ride to work accomplishes more than just a pretty ride.

Laura,

I have the cardio and strength and love them. They are perfect for me to take when I am traveling. I would love to have the yoga and core but since they are no longer available at McDonalds, how can I get them?

Thanks,
Valerie

Valerie,

All of those workouts and more are available with Yourself! Fitness. It runs on PC, Playstation and Xbox. If you are using your DVDs on a laptop when you travel, it would be an easy transition to get the PC version. Here is a link to it on Amazon:

Yourself! Fitness on Amazon

Good Luck,
Laura Moncur
Starling Fitness

Hi Laura,

Thanks for the information but I need the DVD’s. Unfortunately, I don’t have a lap top but do have a compact DVD player that I use when I travel. Any idea where to get the DVDs?

Thanks,
Valerie

Valerie,

You’re in luck! It looks like people are selling them on eBay:

Yourself! Fitness on Ebay

Good Luck,
Laura Moncur

Thank you, Laura!!!! I just bought what I needed on eBay!

Valerie

Over the summer, I forgot that The Biggest Loser is the show that takes 30 minutes to weigh 13 people. The repetition and the way they drag things out to last two hours really got to me this time because I was watching it live last night. I used to tape them on my VCR and watch them last year, so I could fast forward through the neverending weighing when things got too much. This time, I was stuck with watching every grueling minute.

Let me tell ya. I’ll be taping it next time.

Oh yeah, I had also forgotten about the blatant commercials. Jello? Yep there it is. The girl who was voted off is eating Jello at home to “limit her carbs.” One-A-Day vitamins was given a couple of minutes with Bob introducing them to his team. Plus, One-A-Day had paid for two commercials during the breaks: one for women and one for men.

More disturbing were the commercials (two) for surgical weight loss during the breaks. Here in Utah, they were for a local company that promotes gastric bypass surgery and lap band surgery quite heavily. Those surgeries go against everything taught on The Biggest Loser. I wonder if there were similar commercials in other areas.

On a lighter note, did anyone notice that everyone is wearing Timex watches? I’m a watch fanatic, so I notice those sorts of things. At first, I thought, “Hey, there’s that HRM Timex that Mike has.” The second time, I thought, “I’ve looked at that watch… almost bought it.” The third time, I thought, “Oh, I get it. Timex gave everyone watches. Smooth…” I have an OLD Timex HRM watch (the first one they made) that is still going strong, so I really don’t have a problem with them providing watches to everyone. Long after they have been voted off the show, those watches are going to be reading their heart rates and timing their workouts.

Will I still watch the show despite all the commercials and trumped up drama? Yeah, but next week, I’m fast forwarding through the weigh-in.

John Mayer is a singer and songwriter (Your Body Is A Wonderland). He has a Nike + and decided to wear it during a performance onstage to see how much exercise he gets while performing.

• johnmayer.com – NIKE PLUS VS. A GUY ON STAGE

He’s on tour promoting his new album, Continuum, and we all hear about how grueling touring it. According to the Nike+, it’s not the performance that is so wearing on the performers, though. It only recorded 0.54 miles and 75 calories burned during his performance.

“Calories: 75 – I gotta think this is a bit low. I do a lot of squeezing up there that’s not accounted for.”

He’s right about the Nike+. It doesn’t record any work you do with your arms or upper body while exercising. A heart rate monitor would do a better job of calculating calories burned in that case.

“This thing should come with a sensor to tell you how many days it lays under a pile of sweatshirts for.”

It actually DOES tell you how often it’s used, leaving you to fill in the gaps when it’s not used. It sounds like John was unimpressed with his Nike+, but it’s just a tool. Tools are only useful when they are used. Don’t let your Nike+ (or Yoga Ball, cardio step or any other physical fitness device) sit under a pile of sweatshirts. Get out there and use them!

I was looking for something to track my calories and exercise, but I found something entirely different: traineo.

• traineo | Weight Loss Community

This website is different than most. Sure, it allows you to write what you’ve done each day as far as calories consumed and exercise completed, but it doesn’t get into the nitty gritty. You literally just write the total calories you’ve eaten. There is no way to track what you had for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I guess they assume you track that elsewhere. The exercise section is a little more detailed, but not much. Personally, if I have to keep track elsewhere, why would I even bother with traineo. The only reason I would put my information there would so my motivators know how I’m doing.

The power with traineo is the Motivators. You choose people who are either part of traineo or not to motivate you. I don’t really know anyone personally who wants to concentrate on exercise and healthy eating, so the fact that I can ask a stranger who has similar goals as me to be my workout buddy is really cool.

When I searched for a motivator in my area, however, there was no one within 20 miles. Of course, this is the Internet. I don’t need someone in SLC, Utah to motivate me. They can be from anywhere. What I would have really liked is to find someone with my same age, weight and goal that I could be buddies with, but I can’t search by those fields. I can only organize my search by people who are online now, or ladies only or by name. I don’t care what their name is. I’m looking for another woman who is 5’2″ and weighs 187 like I do. I’m looking for someone who is going through exactly what I’m going through. I would also like to search by exercise regime. Maybe someone who runs the same mileage I do or someone who likes to play DDR.

Speaking of DDR, video games, like DDR, Yourself! Fitness and Eye Toy, are not on the exercise list, but sexual activity is. If anyone is doing enough sexual activity to count the calories burned, they don’t need traineo. They need a therapist.

All in all, traineo looks like it has potential to be a good way to find an exercise buddy, but it’s not quite ready for prime time yet. It needs more people and more functions to help me find a good motivator. If you already have motivators in your life, then using traineo will be easy for you, but then again, if you already have good motivators, then you don’t really need traineo.

Via: Seth’s Blog: Landing page of the week