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

This article explains the benefits of taking a day off from exercising.

A Day Off: why you need to include rest in your exercise program – by Joe Friel, M.S.

This is the hardest thing for me to do. When I do something every day, it becomes a habit and it only takes one day off for me to get out of the habit. Remembering to take a guilt-free day of rest is something that I have been working on since the beginning and haven’t fully mastered.

For all of you who saw “Supersize Me” and have shied away from McDonald’s Restaurant, Karen Hiser has the rebuttal.

Travel Fitness for Road Warriors: McDonald’s Goes Active

McDonald’s has added a Go Active section to their website for health conscious customers. Using their Bag A Meal utility, Karen found that a meal with a Caesar’s Salad with Grilled Chicken, Lowfat Dressing and the Yogurt Parfait (without the granola) is less calories and fat than the typical healthy lunch she usually eats.

As I have said before, it is possible to lose weight or maintain a healthy weight while eating restaurant food. Bag a Meal is just one of many resources you can use to find one or two meals at each restaurant that are healthy.

I hear this phrase all the time. I’ve thought about it a lot. “Nothing tastes as good as being thin feels.” It’s supposed to be a really inspirational thought. I’ve heard women say it to themselves when they are tempted to overeat. I have never found it inspiring.

I don’t know what “being thin” feels like. I have no idea if it compares to lavender creme brulee or carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. Those foods taste pretty damn good, so I’m thinking that being thin must feel incredible. The problem is that I’ve never actually felt thin, so I have no idea what these people are talking about.

Of course, when I look at my old high school pictures, I realize that I was thin. I never felt thin, though. I look at those pictures and I can remember the first time I ever saw them. “Man, I am so fat.” I thought, looking at my offending body parts. Now, years later, I realize that I wasn’t so fat. I was at the upper edge of the healthy weight ranges for my age, but I wasn’t fat. I never felt thin, though. I certainly didn’t feel better than carrot cake with cream cheese frosting.

I suspect that feeling thin has nothing to do with the number on the scale. If that’s the case, can’t I “feel thin” even if I’m fat? I know that I felt a lot thinner when I lost fifty pounds. I felt so thin that I actually considered just maintaining at that weight. Even though I was still overweight, losing those fifty pounds felt so good that I thought I was happy with staying there. In fact, I did stay there for about two years.

After a while, however, I got used to it. I started to see that I was still fat. Instead of feeling good about losing fifty pounds, I started pinching fat and trying to squish it into jeans one size too small. It only took two years to start “feeling fat” again.

What if it never ends? What if I get to my goal weight and I still “feel fat”? What if I never “feel thin”? What if I never understand what they are talking about when they say, “Nothing tastes as good as being thin feels”? Sure, the first year, I’ll “feel thin,” but after that, when I’m used to my body, will I start noticing miniscule bits of fat on myself? Will I just turn my critical eye to wrinkles or gray hair or my speech patterns?

I have no idea. I don’t know what it feels like to feel thin. I don’t know what it’s like to be a thin adult. All of this is undiscovered country for me. Exciting, isn’t it?

“See how I had a spike in my stats on that day. That’s when that website linked to me.” I was showing Mike my webstats last year. He replied, “Yeah, you’ll notice that your numbers will go back down, but they will be a little bit higher than they were before they linked to you. It’s called Punctuated Equilibrium.” I crinkled my brow at him and he continued, “It’s a biological term, actually, but it describes this… I guess because we are dealing with people and people are biological, it works…”

Punctuated Equilibrium is a theory that states that jumps in evolution can happen suddenly with long periods of stabilization afterwards. I see it in my webstats. I will get linked to a big site, I’ll have a huge jump in traffic, it will ease off, but never as low as it was before the huge jump.

It took me three years to notice the same phenomenon in my weight loss. After looking at the graph, my weight loss has followed the same pattern. I will have a large loss and the next week or two, I will either gain a little or maintain. On the whole, the graph has gone down consistently, but there were just months where things would stay the same.

It was hard for me not to panic during the Equilibrium time. When things felt like they were stagnating, it really meant that my body was catching up. When that scale didn’t move, my mind was getting used to the idea of being thin. My weight loss journey has taken so long that by the time I get to goal, I am going to be completely acclimated to life as a thin person.

Next time you feel discouraged that the scale hasn’t moved and you know that you did everything perfectly the week before, remember the phrase Punctuated Equilibrium. You might be waiting for that big loss that is coming in the next week or two. Just hold on.

I have a few recipe books, but on the whole, I’m not a recipe girl. If someone makes fabulous food for a potluck, I compliment them. I thank them. I never, ever ask them for a recipe.

After months of writing for Starling Fitness, I realized today that I haven’t shared one recipe with you. It’s not because I don’t have any. I have family recipes that have been slimmed down and bulked up with veggies. I have books of healthy recipes including nutrition facts. I have plenty of recipes, but it never occurred to me to tell you about them.

I guess I prefer to outsource my food preparation. My hardest task during this weight loss journey has been portion control because restaurants give me so much food. Ironically, if I complain, they usually end up giving me more food. Even more frustrating is when they get to know me and give me even more food because they like me. Slimming down family recipes and finding new ones was easy compared to learning how to politely and graciously say, “No, thank you.”

I remember talking with a group of friends. One of them said that she wished she had a cook to take care of family meals. I told her, “I have several cooks. They work at all the restaurants all over the city.” Living in America has given me the luxury of being able to have other people cook my meals.

With that luxury, however, is the added difficulty of eating healthy. If you ask me, I can tell you three healthy menu items at every restaurant in town. The large restaurant chains have nutrition facts for you so that you can easily find the healthiest food. The local restaurants, however, are a little more difficult. Sometimes you have to estimate or compare their menus to that of the large restaurant chains.

Here are some simple tips if you eat out:

• Find the menu and nutrition facts for the restaurant online (See Dotti’s Weight Loss Zone)
• Choose at least two healthy options for each restaurant.
• Make a list of the healthy choices and keep it with you just in case your plans change.
• Download the nutrition facts to your Palm device (See Palm Restaurants).

After “Supersize Me” came out in the theaters, there was a huge backlash on the food industry. I had already lost my weight eating primarily restaurant food, so I had already learned that I am responsible for the food that I eat. You can eat healthy and lose or maintain your weight eating out every night of the week. No cooking required.

My cat likes to sit on paper. If she were in an empty room and one sheet of paper was lying on the floor, my cat would be sitting on it. That’s about the best use I can think of for this week’s US Weekly.

The headline reads, “20 Best Body Makeovers: How top stars went from flab to fab!” Referring to any one of those twenty women with the adjective “flab” is a travesty. Even when Oprah Winfrey and Queen Latifah were at their heaviest, they were fabulous. I sat there looking at all the before pictures thinking, “If that is flab? How could I ever measure up?”

Margaret Cho said that when she looks at the pictures of women in fashion magazines wearing things that she could barely fit on her finger, she thinks, “If that’s what being a woman is all about, I must not be one.” I understand how she feels. Sometimes I feel so disconnected from the media’s perception of female beauty. Magazines like this week’s US Weekly just make me want to pound someone into a bloody pulp.

It’s such a contrast from the January article about the same issue. The Sexy Diet Secrets that turned out to be eat less and exercise more was so down to earth. This week’s article calls twenty beautiful and stunning women flabby and then touts “losing baby fat” as fabulous.

They did provide one tip per woman on how they lost the weight. These tips amounted to the same story of eating less and moving more, but the focus of the article was the before and after pictures. It was as if some catty girl’s club sat down and looked at all the pictures. “Look at her thighs. She was FAT. I can’t believe she went out in public looking like that!” When all I can see is one fabulous before picture after another.

Worst of all, there wasn’t one man on the list. What about Billy Bob Thornton? That boy looked like he was on death’s door when he first met Angelina Jolie and by the time she was finished with him, he was toned up and looking hot. What about the lead singer of The Goo Goo Dolls, Johnny Rzeznik? After pressure from his record label, he dropped weight and came back lean. There is not one mention of Tom Hanks’ multiple dances with weight loss for movie roles. What about Matt LeBlanc? He starved himself on The Zone diet to keep Joey’s character slim and sexy. Sure he was fabulous before, but so was Beyonce.

Don’t waste your money on this week’s US Weekly.

Comment by Sinistar on “Getting Past Your Excuses” – 3/6/2005 @ 7:25 pm

Okay, here’s my excuse for why I haven’t so much as waved to Maya in the past month.

The company I work for is on the brink of ruin, is in the midst of a split (half the assets were purchased by another company), and the IT guy resigned. So, for the past month, I have been promoted from web server admin to Director of IT, requiring me to show up early and work late. I suppose I could wake up earlier to get my workouts in, but I’m epileptic, triggered by sleep deprivation, so I try to be careful about that. I could probably work out in the evenings, but by the time I get home, make dinner, spend some time with my son, and say hello to my wife, it’s already late. On Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday nights, I don’t even really get to say “Hello” since my wife has to go to sleep early while I stay up late monitoring our son (who has cerebral palsy and a tracheotomy – we need to listen out for him to make sure he is suctioned when needed) so she can get a few hours of sleep before she has to be up from 1AM to 11:30PM the next night (which is when our home health nurses come in for their shift).

I was managing to get in 30 minutes of exercise a day before the work situation exploded, but right now, I don’t even know where I’d fit it in.

Though, I guess I could have exercised in the time it took me to write all this. 🙂

Sinistar,

I just got your comment on Getting Past Your Excuses. All I can say is that you need help. I don’t know if you have family in town that could help you, but that might be an option. Another option is a second shift of home health nurses. Sometimes the hardest thing to do is admit that you need help, but if it was me, I’d be asking my family to help me or even ask my mother-in-law to move in with me.

You have two people who depend on you. To take care of them, you need to take care of yourself first. If you die at a young age because of a heart attack, they will be all alone in this world.

It’s obvious to me that you are tired and stressed beyond belief. Exercise will help relieve some of that stress and eating healthy will too (although I’ve noticed that it only relieves my stress about eating…).

I would recommend tracking everything you do for one day. Just make a list of all the things that you do (reading email, surfing the Internet, cleaning, watching TV, etc.) Just keep a log of what you do. When I did this, I set my watch to beep every 15 minutes and I would write down what I did those last 15 minutes. Only do this for one day, but try to keep your day as realistic and typical as possible.

After you’ve gathered this data, see if there is any place that you can squeeze in 30 minutes of exercise. What about your lunch hour? Bring your gym clothes, change, and run outside the office for 30 minutes. If you get a full hour, there’s just enough time to change back into your work clothes and eat a healthy lunch. Your lunch hour is just an example. You’ll have a better idea when you’ve taken a hard look at your day where you can squeeze in exercise.

You deserve 30 minutes a day. It’s essential for your health. You’re worth the time it takes to get and stay healthy. Your exercise doesn’t have to be Dance Dance Revolution or Yourself! Fitness. It can be taking a walk with your wife or riding your bike to work instead of driving. It doesn’t matter what kind of exercise as long as you schedule it into your day and protect that time. Guard it as if your life and the life of your family depended on it, because frankly it does.

You can do this!

Laura

Even though last year’s race was poorly managed and treated like an afterthought to the marathon, I’m going to run in the SLC 5K this April. It took me a long time to decide to run it, so now I have less than six weeks to train for it.

This isn’t really a problem for me. I have been exercising regularly. Dance Dance Revolution and Yourself! Fitness have kept my cardio training up to running level. I just need to get back to running so I don’t surprise my muscles on the race day. Running works different muscles than either of the other exercise routines I use.

I decided to run the 5K while lying in bed last week. “I do what is required to weigh 120 pounds,” I told myself. It wasn’t getting me up. I imagined my daily reward (thirty minutes sitting on the heat vent, reading or crocheting or playing video games, whatever I want). Not even the comforting heat vent time was getting me up. “This isn’t working,” I thought to myself. “I need different motivation.”

At that moment, I decided to run the 5K. I imagined myself running the familiar pathway from Liberty Park to The Gateway shopping center. I sat up in bed and walked to the back door to let the dog out. Not even the potentially bursting bladder of my faithful dog was enough to get me up, but thinking about running that race got me up and dressed for a run within minutes.

Motivation comes from the strangest places. Oddly, this month, it came to me from deciding to run a race. I wish I could harness motivation. I wish I could bottle it and sell it. If I could, I would make a million dollars.

I’ve been tracking the stories about these concoctions since mid-February. The Luther Burger is a bacon cheeseburger served on a Krispy Kreme Donut (or two, depending on the news source). The Ham Dog is a hot dog, wrapped in ground beef and served with cheese, bacon, chili and egg on a hoagie bun. These articles talk about the caloric and fat content of these culinary items and blame them on the South because the restaurant is located in Georgia.

• 02-13-05: Associated Press – Decatur, Georgia – Health officials wage tough fight in America’s ‘Stroke Belt’

• 02-14-05: A Welsh View – The Hamdog And Luther Burger Are Killing Off Southerners

• 02-21-05: Chicago Tribune – In praise of the Luther Burger

• 03-03-05: Snopes.com – Luther Burger

I’m in flux. I want to talk about this, but I don’t know what to say. I have so many voices inside of me.

The Klingon inside of me is screaming, “Road Trip!” over and over with a growl in her voice. (more…)

I keep hearing the phrase, “Who is to blame for obesity?” Whether it’s childhood obesity, American obesity or just obesity in general, the same thought is being thrown around: Who is to blame? This article tackles that issue:

• The Independent – Who’s really to blame for the problem of childhood obesity? You are by Richard Kilgarriff

“The truth is, we are all to blame for the society in which we live, and the finger-pointing and point-scoring has to stop. This childhood obesity problem is bigger than any political party or supermarket or manufacturer, and much bigger than food advertising on TV.”

More importantly, IT DOESN’T MATTER. It doesn’t matter which industry or institution is the cause of obesity. The longer we argue about who is to blame, the less time we have to fix the problem. Who cares if it’s television or video games or high calorie snack foods or shoddy school lunch programs or inattentive parents or… The list goes on a mile long. The most important thing with both adult and childhood obesity is that we stop it. The only people who can stop it are each and every one of us.

You… Yeah, you… Next time you think about skipping your workout or eating something that is not scheduled for your meal plan, STOP. Make sure you get your workout in. Make sure you stop that binge in its tracks. The only way to make the world a healthier place is to take personal responsibility for yourself. You are the only person on this planet that you can truly control.