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

It’s Girl Scout Cookie Time. We got our boxes outside the grocery store, but you might have ordered a bunch when they only looked like harmless boxes on a piece of paper. Our ability to resist is easier when food is two-dimensional. If you haven’t purchased any Girl Scout Cookies and you want them, I think you should. Learning to live with tempting food in the house is another step toward a healthy life.

How To Indulge In Girl Scout Cookies Without Overdoing It:

• Open The Boxes Immediately: No matter how many boxes you have bought, open them all up right now.

• Divide Them Up: Calculate how many cookies you can eat for 100-150 calories and divide the boxes up. Put these individual servings into Ziploc baggies.

• Treat Yourself: Take one serving of cookies and put them into your treat cupboard.

• Freeze The Rest: Put the rest back into the individual boxes so you can remember the exact calorie and fat content. Put the boxes in the freezer.

• Limit Access: Only allow one serving of cookies to be unfrozen at a time.

If you follow this process, you’ll be able to enjoy Girl Scout Cookie Time without over-indulging. You can do this, so prove it to yourself!

Glen at Videogame Workout just finished his 12-Week course with Eyetoy:Kinetic. It’s an exercise game for PlayStation 2. He gives his full review here:

• Videogame Workout: Eyetoy:Kinetic Week 12 – DONE!

He feels like he has gained some muscle tone and cardiovascular benefits, but laments some losses:

“I’ve lost a little muscle tone (compared to my prior exercise regimen) in my mid and upper body. This is largely because I stopped doing the “optional” segments. As my training progressed the main game portion got longer and more intense and I started to feel like I had neither the time nor the energy left to do a full toning segment. Rather than start a workout segment I know I’d have to bail out of, I just skip right to stretches.”

I’m just grateful that the videogame industry is trying to make games that train your body. This game is first generation. I am excited to see the next generation of exergaming.

I wondered what was going through the heads at Visa’s advertising firm when I saw this commercial. When I linked to this site, there was a great ad about what life takes.

When I clicked on Life Takes Determination, however, I was shocked by what I saw.

• Visa Life Takes Determination

I saw a 15 second commercial devoted to gluttony. If Visa thinks that THIS is determination, they have NEVER fought with weight loss. What were they thinking?

When I think of the last four years and how hard I have worked to lose and maintain a healthy weight, I want to scream at the fool who thought wolfing down a huge hamburger takes determination. Determination is eating healthy, even when people are shoving food in your face. Determination has NOTHING to do with inhaling a four-pound hamburger.

For a decadent treat that makes you feel like you’ve stepped into a gourmet deli, try this:

• Food porn: prosciutto and melon – Slashfood

You can keep this indulgence well within your diet by keeping the portions small:

• Proscuitto (a deli meat that is aged) 1.8 oz (4 slices): 100 Calories, 6 g Fat, 0 g Fiber (2.5 WW Points)

• Cantaloupe 4.7 oz (1/2 cup): 46 Calories, 0.3 g Fat, 1.2 g Fiber (0.7 WW Points)

• Total: 146 Calories, 6.3 g Fat, 1.2 g Fiber (3.2 WW Points)

All calorie counts provided by:

• CalorieKing – Diet and weight loss. Calorie Counter and more.

I had figured out the reasons in my head why I kept gaining and losing the same 10 pounds for two years, but I still ran into trouble once I was able to get that under control. The second element of the Hidden Plateau was just as difficult for me to find, even though it was right under my nose:

I was lying to myself.

We are at our worst when we lie to ourselves, because we can’t even see it when it happens. I can tell if a diet pill advertising lies to me, but when I lie to myself, there is no one there to point the finger and yell, “Baloney!” Here are a couple of ways that I lied to myself.

Portion Control:

I had stopped measuring. Cereal in the morning was the worst. I had been following the program for over two years, so I thought I knew what 3/4 cup of cereal looked like in my bowl, but when I actually got real with myself and pulled out those measuring cups again, I was shocked at how much I had actually been eating. Sometimes it was twice the serving size, which had doubled my caloric intake. No wonder I was having trouble losing weight.

Risky Restaurants:

I would purposely go to restaurants that didn’t have published nutrition facts so I could estimate the calories for the meals. These estimates turned out to be hilariously less than they should have been. Even I could see through this lie, but it didn’t stop me from continuing the bad habit. For the longest time, my favorite restaurant only had minimal nutrition facts posted on their website. It wasn’t until I downloaded the full list that I found out the the bowl of pasta that I estimated at 350 calories was actually 550 calories. That sort of difference was what was stalling my weight loss.

Shoddy Exercise:

When I started exercising, I wasn’t able to do much without overloading myself. I had gotten into a routine of running the same course on the treadmill (or around the neighborhood) every day. I would “forget” to wear my heart rate monitor, telling myself that I could tell how hard I was working. It wasn’t until I started using my heart rate monitor religiously that I realized that I had been slacking. Exercise that used to be in the high intensity range was really in the moderate or light range now, but I had been counting it as high. Now, I wear my HRM every time I exercise, no matter what. If I’m going to spend time working out, I want it to actually do me some good.

Re-evaluate yourself. Have you been lying to yourself at all? If you are, that might be the reason behind your weight loss plateau. Truly looking at myself with eyes wide open helped me far more than the pat and easy answers that were handed to me by gurus.

It wasn’t so hidden to the rest of the world. I had lost weight. I lost about fifty pounds and then everything stopped… for two freakin’ years. I couldn’t lose more than 10 pounds without having a binge relapse and gaining back the 10 I had just lost. I bounced from 180 to 170 so many times in those two years that I began to think that I couldn’t get lower than 170 pounds. To say I was frustrated was an understatement. The truth of the matter was, I was at my wits end.

The articles and weblog entries that I read in magazines and online were bloody useless. USELESS! They talked about mixing up my calorie intake and starting weight training. I was honest with myself and I knew that the problem wasn’t my body’s fault. I knew that it wasn’t an issue with my body trying to maintain some sort of equilibrium. When I followed the program, I lost weight. It was as simple as that.

The problem was that I couldn’t folow the program for more than a month or two.

That hadn’t been the case when I started. For the first five months after I joined Weight Watchers, I followed the program to the letter. I didn’t feel a sense of deprivation. In fact, I was surprised at how much I could eat and still stay within the bounds of the program. No, it wasn’t Weight Watchers fault that I was bingeing, but I felt helpless against it. I was on a hidden plateau because the reason for it was hidden to me.

Here’s a glimpse into what might help you past something like this if you run into this problem.

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A weight loss plateau can be really discouraging, especially when you are doing everything “right”. The Diet Blog has some ideas to help you get beyond this problem.

• 5 Ways to Break a Weight Loss Plateau

This article lists five ways to get beyond the plateau:

• Zig-Zag Calorie Intake
• Strength Training
• Change Your Exercise Routine
• Alter Macro-nutrient Intake
• Change Meal Frequency

What this article doesn’t talk about is the hidden plateau. You aren’t losing weight and you know exactly why you aren’t. You can’t follow the program that was working before and you don’t know why.

Check Starling Fitness later today to see what you can do to get beyong that hidden plateau.

I am still tweaking my workout, trying to get the best fit for me and my equipment, but I have a basic workout that I have been doing for the last couple of weeks. Here is the workout that I am doing at home to replace the 24 Hour Express Zone Workout that I used to do at the gym:

Abdominals: Stability Ball Crunch

Full Legs: Squats (For safety, I do them with dumbbells instead of barbells.)

Calves: Standing Calf Raises

Quads: Leg Extensions

Hamstrings: Leg Curls

Chest: Barbell Bench Press (Do not do this exercise without a spotter.)

Shoulders: Seated Dumbbell Press

Biceps: Preacher Curl with Dumbbells

Upper Back: Lat Pulldown

Triceps: Pushdowns

I follow this entire routine, quickly going from one exercise to the other with no rest inbetween. I do 15 repetitions of each exercise with enough weight that I can barely do that last two lifts. I go through this circuit twice. It takes me about 30 minutes to complete the workout.

All animated exercises provided by:

Animated Exercise Examples – TheTrainingStationInc.com©- Exercises

I have found this website to be very helpful in finding exercises that I can do with free weights and my weight bench at home.

• Animated Exercise Examples – TheTrainingStationInc.com©- Exercises

I love how the exercises are organized by muscle groups and that they are animated to show good form. They are very simplistic, but they have enough information that I can understand how to perform the exercise.

I also like that they show several different ways to do the same exercise. For example, they have an animation for Leg Extension with a universal machine, a typical machine and with free weights on a bench.

They are all essentially the same workout, but they took the time to animate all three variations so you can understand how to do it on the equipment you have access to.

Give Training Station Inc. a look and create a workout for yourself.

I am still in my honeymoon phase since I got the weight bench and weights to do my workouts at home. I enjoy that I can just go downstairs and do the workout alone. I am doing the same workout as I did at 24 Hour Fitness and it takes me the same amount of time, except I don’t have to get in the car and drive to the gym.

The first few times I did the workout at home, I really over-did it. I used the same amount of weight that I did when I was at the gym, but those machines aren’t as efficient as free weights, so I ended up in severe pain after that workout. I had to lower my weight amounts by at least 15 pounds apiece in order to get a good workout without injuring myself.

I remember when I took weight training in high school. My friend was doing the exercises that her doctor had told her to do for her knees and the Muscle Brains would try to “help” us.

“You know, those machines might be safe, but they’re not as good as free weights. If you really want a good workout, you should be doing squats.”

I remember dismissing their advice because Karen was doing what her doctor told her to do and we were really just biding our time until we could slough this class and go to the Photography Lab. I realize they were just trying to be helpful, but at that time, I just wanted to be as far away from the weight training room as I could be.

Now, that advice is here, reminding me that I can get a good workout with just a bench and some free weights at home.