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

If you got a Stability Ball for Christmas, you are problably bored with the video that came with it by now. If you didn’t get a video with your new exercise toy, then you might have even blown up the ball and just bounced it around the room after doing a few crunches.

• About.com – Quick Fix Lower Body Workout – by Paige Waehner

This set of exercises gives you a bunch of fun new moves to try with your Stability Ball. My favorite, the One-Legged Hamstring Roll, is pictured here. Maya on Yourself! Fitness made me do that once and I had no idea how effective it was until the next day when I could barely walk. I do Leg Curls at the gym with as much weight as I can do and I it won’t have that kind of effect on my hamstrings.

Enjoy this lower body workout!

I’ve seen the ads at the gym. They flash on the television while I’m sweating away on the elliptical trainer. Anna Nicole Smith is thin and beautiful again and the words, “Be Envied” burn themselves into my forehead. Isn’t that what we all want? Sure, those bitchy looks from women might sting a bit, but they wouldn’t give you those looks if you didn’t have something to be proud of, right?

Isn’t that what life is about? Survival of the fittest is all about being the Alpha. Anything below Alpha is going to envy me, right?

• About.com – What you need to know about Trimspa diet pills – by Cathy Wong, ND

The only thing that can wipe the slogan for the diet pills off my forehead is the knowledge that I am doing this to be healthy. I am exercising to be healthy. I am eating nutritionally to be healthy. I am limiting my portions to be healthy. Healthy shines through my skin and shows up in my hair and nails. Healthy reveals my firm and toned muscles under my skin. There is no fast forward to healthy. There is no pill that can give me that result.

Plus, when I finally get there, I will Be Envied, and I’ll know I earned it.

Go Ask Alice is a website hosted by Columbia University that provides health information. Fitness and nutrition are a small part of healthy living, but they have dedicated quite a few questions to them.

• Go Ask Alice – How do I know when I’m no longer hungry?

My hardest obstacle was knowing when I’m hungry. I would let myself get to the point of feeling ravenous before I would eat. I started eating Mini-Meals every two to three hours whether I felt hungry or not. Eventually, I learned what hunger feels like. I used to think hunger was the point when I was shaking and couldn’t think straight. That point is way beyond hunger. Now I am able to feel those first hunger signs and eat before I’m to the point where I will stuff anything in my mouth.

My first mistake was to buy my tennis shoes online. I guess I really had to because all the Lady Footlockers in the city closed down and the regular Footlockers didn’t carry my shoes. I thought it would be great. All I needed to do was to buy the exact same model of my beloved shoes directly from the manufacturer. It worked. They came in the mail and fit like a dream. I’m on my third mail-ordered pair.

Of course, with the shoes came the advertisements for the fancy exercise clothes. You know the really cute outfits where the tops match the stripes on the bottoms. The pants are made of some really cool fabric that magically cools down the athlete in the summer and keeps her warm in the winter. Oh, and by the way, the shorts cost twenty bucks apiece. Are they worth it?

• ACE – Low-Tech Togs Keep Exercisers Cool

This article from the American Council on Exercise leaves the answer open. While they don’t technically reduce skin temperature, they do allow sweat to evaporate quicker than cotton. I have a couple of tops that are made out of that space age fabric and the only thing that I’ve noticed is that they feel lighter and silkier than the cotton tank tops I usually run in. Mostly, I just like them because the tops match the color of the stripe on the side of the pants.

Forget about whether vitamins and herbal supplements actually help you. The question today is: do your vitamins and herbal supplements really contain what they say they do? Consumerlab.com has tested a wide variety of products to determine whether they contained 100% of the labeled amount of vitamins, minerals or herbal supplement.

• Consumberlab.com – Independent Tests – Latest Results

This company offers a summary report for each testing for free. You do not have to subscribe to see the results of those tests. They show the brand names of the drugs tested (i.e. Vitamin World, Nature Made, CVS Pharmacy brand) and whether they passed the tests or not.

If you want exact measurements and all the full details, they have a one-year subscription to their website for $24, with savings for multiple-year subscriptions. Thirty-day access to one test is $9. I was able to find out a lot from just the summary report.

Check out the Nutrition Bar Testing to find the bars that actually contain what they say they do. To find the ones that contain more carbs than they actually do, you have to pay for the full report. Might as well just stick with the ones that are what they say they are.

When I first started Weight Watchers, it was strickly to lose weight. I was willing to do whatever they told me baring surgery or pill-popping. My only focus was getting my butt smaller. I had a dim glimmer in the back of my mind that maybe my stomach would feel better if I ate correctly, but I didn’t have high hopes for that. The thought of doing it strictly to get more healthy or to “see what I could achieve” never crossed my mind.

• About.com – Real People, Real Results – by Paige Waehner

This article is a compilation of comments from those people who have been living healthy for years and enjoying exercise along the way. They have learned, as I have, that weight loss has many benefits. My stomach is much less troublesome now. I can hike up mountains and trek around the city without losing steam. I try new forms of exercise just to see what I can achieve. There are so many benefits to having a stronger and healthier body that I want to shout it out to the world, but then, that tends to make me seem annoying…

There are a few things that I have learned about eating home cooked meals:

• Dish up the correct number of servings onto the plates in the kitchen. – When I was growing up, my family used to just bring a huge bowl of spaghetti noodles and another huge bowl of spaghetti sauce to the table. The bowls would be passed around and we could choose how much of each we wanted. Now that I have mastered healthy eating, we dish up all the food in the kitchen and bring the individual plates to the table. I found that serving a meal “Family Style” is too much of a temptation for me. I tend to take too much in the first place and go for seconds afterward.

• Dish up the leftovers into individual sized portions. – I use Ziploc Storage Containers because they are inexpensive and translucent enough to tell what has been stored in them. If the recipe says that it has six servings, I get a dish for me, a dish for Mike and four Ziploc bowls. I divide the recipe equally among the six dishes and put lids on the containers before taking our dishes to the table.

• Leave the leftovers in the kitchen. – If the leftovers (in their individually sized containers) are in the kitchen when I finish eating. I am reluctant to get up and dish up another serving. I would have dirtied a dish (and lid) for nothing and that’s one less lunch for me over the week. If you want to truly be committed to only eating one serving, put them in the freezer before you eat your meal. I guarantee that the idea of that same meal, growing ice crystals in the freezer will prevent you from overeating.

Controlling the amount of food I eat has been an important factor in my weight loss success. Whether I am eating at home or at restaurants, managing my portions has been essential. I don’t cook at home very often, but when I do, I find that these three tips prevent me from eating too much at home.

The market is filled with tiny MP3 players that you can just wrap around your arm and take with you on a run or to the gym. Microsoft has an article that seems to be in response to the iPod Shuffle, but the points they bring up are valid.

• Microsoft Windows Media – Buying a Flash Memory MP3 Player

They do a good job of explaining why the flash memory players are better than the hard drive players (such as the iPod). They fail to tell you that flash players are good because they are so much smaller than hard drive players. They recommend players that have a display, which I agree with. I really wish Apple had included a small, one-line scrolling LCD display on the side of the Shuffle. But then again, the Shuffle looks so cool.

I personally use my Palm OS device with the MP3 player software that came with it. The songs are stored on an SD card and I can have hours of music at my fingertips. Not everyone is willing to trick out their Palm just so they can listen to tunes, so this guide may be of service to you.

Via: Engadget

Last week, I came to the realization that I’m one of those annoying people who think exercise is fun. I felt that twinge of guilt because I have been subjecting my favorite people to continual talks about health, fitness and nutrition. This article makes me feel a little better.

• About.com – Enjoying Exercise & Healthy Eating – by Paige Waehner

What I am feeling is a normal response to eating healthy and exercising regularly. The best part of this article is that it gives you a clear picture of what healthy living will feel like once you get to your goal weight and maintain it for awhile. Pull this article up each time you are lagging in motivation because it’s the closest thing to what being thin feels like I have ever found.

If you haven’t been following the comments on my post called Supersize Me Rebuttal, you might want to check them out. This following comment was so interesting that I thought I should highlight it:

I just saw this movie last night. The DVD has bonus materials that caught my eye. Specifically the “scientific” mold test he did on fries and a burger from a restaraunt that actually makes their stuff fresh.. then he took the sandwiches and fries from McD’s and put them all in a jar to promote mold growth… the real burger & fries molded in about a week… the McD’s fries didn’t mold after 10 weeks.. the burgers were alient planets all by themselves by that time.. but it took a while.

Point is. What are you actually eating when you eat their fries? I wouldn’t even want to know. I’m sure all of us have performed a variation of this experiment w/out even knowing it… you clean out your car and discover some fries that missed your mouth that have fallen under your seat … God only knows how long it’s been there.. but looks as perfect as the day it was purchased. NO biological breakdown or mold at all… makes ya wonder what you’re really eating.

I, for one, will never eat fast food again.

Comment by Ben — 3/26/2005 @ 8:08 pm

Ben,

You said, “I, for one, will never eat fast food again.” That is just the kind of thinking that can send some people into a purge/binge cycle. If I told myself that I could never eat fast food ever again, I would follow that rule to the letter… for about three-four months (I’ve tried this before, I know my limits).

After three to four months of DENIAL, I would end up bingeing on fast food and end up eating far more than I ever would have if I had told myself that I could eat at fast food restaurants whenever I wanted. Given permission to eat whatever I want, I tend to choose healthier options than if I tell myself that I CAN’T have something.

What we should focus on is being healthy. Which is healthier?

Restricting something from your diet until it becomes the only thing you can think about and bingeing on it beyond comfort.
OR
Allowing small quantities of unhealthy food into your diet tempered by healthy food most of the time.

In my case, I have found that allowing myself permission to eat whatever I want paradoxically helps me eat less. It has been the method that allows me to eat healthier than I ever have in my entire life.

Thanks,
Laura Moncur