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

Read Part 1 of “I Don’t Bite My Fingernails Anymore”

Just in case you thought that my grandmother didn’t have as many hangups about fingernail biting as she did about fat little girls, I present you with this faded photograph. This is me in 1973. Unlike many of the photographs taken of me, I remember the day this one was taken. My grandma had taken me to a REAL photographer to have my picture taken. That purple-striped shirt was brand new because I had gotten too “fat” for my other clothes.

The photographer put a box in front of me and placed a baby blanket on it. I remember thinking that I wasn’t a baby anymore, so I shouldn’t have a baby blanket in my picture, but I didn’t say anything. He placed my arms on the box and I remember looking at my fingernails. I was so proud that I had been able to stop biting them for long enough for them to grow for the picture.

I was four years old.

Tune in tomorrow to read the conclusion of “I Don’t Bite My Fingernails Anymore.”

My grandmother was obsessed about my weight. It was as if my body was somehow hers and any extra fat cells were a failure on her part. My first memory of her is an argument she had with my mother about my girth and what she thought they should do about it.

Second only to my weight, she hated that I bit my fingernails. It disgusted her that my fingers were always in my mouth and she thought that I would never be a proper lady if I didn’t learn how to stop biting my nails and cuticles.

Eight years ago, I became a real estate agent. I donned the full real estate uniform, including the artificial nails. I wore artificial nails for about three or four years. I had those perfect hands that my grandma always wanted me to have and all I had to do was pay 20 bucks every two weeks for them.

When I quit real estate, I removed the real estate uniform, including the artificial nails. A funny thing happened, though. My real nails grew.

My real nails grew like they had never grown before. I would trim them and look down a week later and they were long again. If a nail broke, I would trim them all the same length to match and within a week or two, I had talons again. I wasn’t manicuring. I wasn’t painting, but after four years of having the hands that my grandma said that I SHOULD have. I had them. WITHOUT EFFORT.

Even now, I look down at my hands and my unmanicured nails are longer than I could have ever achieved before.

I don’t bite my fingernails anymore.

Tune in tomorrow to read Part 2 of “I Don’t Bite My Fingernails Anymore.”

Nike has finally fixed its online ordering so you can order the iPod Tune Your Run shoe pod and iPod controller without buying the very expensive shoes that may or may not hurt your feet

• NIKE+ : Tune Your Run $29

The pod is still designed to go into a special slot in the Nike shoes and won’t be easy to use with the shoes that really work for your run, but I’m sure there is some way to make it work. For $29, it’s a lot less expensive than some of the Polar alternatives.

For More Information:

• Starling Fitness » Tune Your Run With Nike and iPod

Scott Adams is the artist responsible for Dilbert. He also regularly writes a blog. This entry talks about a massage he received from a very large woman in Reno.

• The Dilbert Blog: Petting the Cat

Before explaining his uncomfortable massage, he explained that he wasn’t making fun of the woman because she was fat.

Let me be clear that I do not approve of making fun of overweight people. Those that mock the hefty are delusional because they believe in the superstition of will power. They believe that some people have a lot of this non-existent will-power substance whereas overweight people have less of it.

I believe that will power is an illusion. Overweight people simply get more enjoyment from food than thin people do, at least relative to their other pleasure options. If I liked food more than I like playing tennis, I’d be the size of a house. Will power never enters into it.

Some people are larger than others. Deal with it.

He has a point. It seems that people who are offended by overweight people tend to believe that being overweight is some sort of moral failing. Then again, the human body has such a wide variation that some people are just physically larger than others. We just need to accept this.

Being fat is NOT a moral issue. It might not even be an aesthetic issue. Being fat just is. It’s not bad and it’s not good. It’s just a fact.

Being fat isn’t set in stone either. The beauty of our bodies is that we can sculpt them. We can change the shape. We can test our bodies with diets and exercise and observe the results. Each of us is a beautiful science experiment.

MSN has an online slideshow of a map of the United States showing the obesity rates from 1985 to 2004. You can see it by clicking on the map below:

The problem that I have is that this information is presented as fact when the map was created using questionable data:

• In 1998, the CDC changed the BMI numbers corresponding to obesity. With a change in accounting, suddenly the United States became “fatter.”

• The CDC is based on self-reported height and weight collected through telephone surveys rather than actually weighing people. Not only is this data based on heresay, it is only a measurement of people willing to answer telephone surveys.

In actuality, this map tells me nothing. Is Utah less fat than Texas? I don’t know and I can’t depend on MSN to give me a legitimate answer if they consider the phone surveys from CDC to be “good enough.”

It appears that the major media is really spreading the idea of the Obesity Epidemic. I’m not buying it. I want to eat healthy and exercise so I can live a long time and look good, but I don’t think anyone has been “scared straight” when it comes to eating healthy.

Via: Boing Boing: Animated map of American obesity 1985-2004

Bingeing isn’t always about exerting control over my life. Sometimes it’s about comfort. Sometimes it’s about protection. I have found other ways to give myself protection and comfort, but I have been pretty clueless about the fact that I binge when my life feels out of control.

The worst part of it is bingeing makes me feel MORE out of control.

Sure, I feel good when I’m bingeing because I am the one who gets to choose what I eat, not my grandma or the USDA. I get to pick the restaurant. I get to order whatever I want on the menu. When I’m bingeing, I feel a control over myself that is hard to describe.

Unfortunately, afterwards, I feel like my whole life is spiralling even more out of control. When I have to deal with the aftermath of a full stomach and pants that are too snug, my mood darkens and then I find myself bingeing again.

How can I consciously exert control over my life without resorting to food?

I don’t know…

Honestly, I really don’t know, but here are some of my ideas to prevent this type of bingeing in the future:

• Notice it: Most of the time, I don’t know why I am tempted to binge. Sometimes it’s actual hunger, believe it or not. Sometimes I’m thirsty. Sometimes I’m sad. Sometimes I feel threatened. Now, I have to add “Do I feel out of control in my life?” to the list. The list I have to go through before I binge is getting longer and longer as I discover all the reasons I turn to food inappropriately.

• Create a list: I need a list of things that I can do to exert control over my life. Some ideas: cleaning up the clutter, organizing my computer, cleaning out my email inbox, or creating simplicity in my home. It doesn’t need to be as labor intensive as all that, even. It could be as simple as being able to choose which movie I want to watch without having to think about the tastes of others.

• Exert Control on My Life Without Food: This is the part that’s hard. It’s easy to have a list of things to do. Eventually, it might even be easy to recognize that the reason I want to binge is because I’m feeling out of control in my life. The hard part is actually doing it. Consciously choosing to exert control on my life without resorting to bingeing is the choice that will make the difference between hovering near obesity and enjoying life at a healthy weight.

When I learned that bingeing was related to comfort, I lost about five pounds and they have never come back. When I learned that bingeing was related to protection, I lost about twenty pounds and they have never come back. Now that I am able to see that bingeing can also be about control, maybe I’ll be able to get my weight down to a healthy weight and never have to worry about it coming back.

Once again, Terry nails a food issue on the head. This entry, “Food as Power,” talks about some news events in which parents have starved their children:

• I See Invisible People » Food as power

For all those parents out there thinking about putting your overweight child on a diet, consider this:

“I’d be willing to bet that every fat person has been put on a diet by a parent at some time in their youth. Someone else decides what you’re allowed to eat, someone who withholds anything forbidden and doles out everything else on a schedule. Food becomes a battle, with the adult, who holds all the power, on one side and the child on the other. All control is taken from the child, leading to resentment and secret binges. The plan seldom works for this reason.”

Terry goes on to say that food is ultimately about power. Parental power over children. Familial power over siblings. Our power over ourselves.

“In all facets of our lives, food becomes a struggle for power. That’s not just for the overweight. It’s an issue for thin women, too. Food gets separated into categories of virtue and sin, and we monitor our intake as a measure of strength or weakness and fear it having power over us. Our weight is a visible sign of how much self-control we have.”

If you feel out of control in other aspects of your life, does it affect your eating? I’ve noticed that I binge more when my life feels out of control. Being able to eat whatever I want in large quantities seems to give me an illusion of control over the rest of my life. The same has been said for those fighting with anorexia. Refusing food gives them a sense of control in their lives.

So, the question for me is:

What can I do to exert control over my life that doesn’t involve food?

This is the office setup I want. A computer powered by me walking on my treadmill. Why can’t I buy this?!

Click here to see the full comic:

• PC and Pixel: 07-09-06

There were times when I tried to find exercise clothes to fit me and left store after store in tears. I kept thinking to myself, “Don’t they know that I need exercise clothes more than skinny people?” It was such an ordeal to find exercise clothes that when I finally found some that fit, I bought all they had. Now, you can find plus size exercise clothes in all the best brands from Greater Salt Lake Clothing Company.

• Greater Salt Lake Clothing Company

“The GSLCC offers the opportunity for all women to be active and to participate in sport and exercise. Plus size women are no longer held back by the lack of appropriate and attractive clothes THAT FIT. The GSLCC will continue to seek out genuine outdoor wear and specific sports wear for your active lifestyle.”

A great big shout out to GSLCC for bringing exercise clothes to us easily. They have online shopping, so anyone can get biking shorts, ski bibs and running tights from them.

Update 01-30-08: It seems that Greater Salt Lake Clothing Company has changed since July 2006. I wouldn’t recommend buying anything from them now and I’ve removed the link to their site.

That’s a shame, really. Is it possible to retract a “shout out?”

Negative self-talk has been my biggest problem lately. I have been consciously listening to the things that flow through my head and noticing which ones are positive and, worse, which ones are negative.

What is the worst thing you say to yourself on a regular basis?

What is the best thing you say to yourself on a regular basis?

If there was one thing you could have repeating to you over and over again without effort, what would it be?

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.