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

It seems like just yesterday when I was watching The Cosby Show and wishing I was as beautiful as Claire Huxtable. Even now, looking at Phylicia Rashad’s photos, she’s a knockout considering that she’s sixty years old.

When she found that she couldn’t climb three flights of stairs without getting winded, however, she decided to do something about it.

• Phylicia Rashad Will She Lose the Weight? – Diet & Fitness, Phylicia Rashad : People.com

“Honestly, it’s about the way I feel. I thought, ‘Hmmm.’ I just want to be light on my feet.”

Phylicia isn’t the first celebrity to turn to Jenny Craig to lose weight. A lot of people are attracted to the ease of pre-packaged meals. Breakfast, lunch, dinner and a snack are all color-coded and easy to choose from. You don’t have to make any decisions. You don’t have to write anything down. You don’t have to do any math. I can certainly understand the appeal.

Of course, for me, I want freedom. I want to be able to eat whatever I want. I don’t mind keeping a detailed food journal in exchange for the freedom to eat whatever I want. Sure, Weight Watchers works better when I check off foods from the Filling Foods List, but if I was on a plan where I wasn’t able to just eat a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, it would send me to Binge City for a week. Putting any food on a “Do Not Eat” list makes me want it all the more.

Fortunately, there are many different programs that work for every different style of person. I’m wishing Phylicia the best of luck. She has lost 16 pounds so far and I hope she achieves that lightness on her feet soon!

This week, Dawn has collected diet information from newspapers, tabloids and magazines. Who is to blame for all of this?

The cake of culpability includes: celebrities, stylists, model agencies, designers, or even the fashion shows themselves. Suddenly, all the of them refuse to even comment with her and none of them are willing to take any responsibility.

Will Dawn be able to fit into her glamorous size zero dress at the end of all of this? Tune in next week for the final episode.

One of the best motivators is bribery. One good way to get into the habit of exercising every day is to pay yourself to exercise. Whether you’re walking, going to the gym, riding your exercise bike or pounding the pavement, you can motivate yourself to get your exercise done by bribing yourself.

According to the American Journal of Preventative Medicine, it would take anywhere from $9 to $37 a week to convince people to walk for their own health.

• Older Adults Say Cash Might Motivate Them to Walk

He pointed out that one hour of activity per week does not meet government health standards of 30 minutes, five days a week for moderate intensity activity such as walking. In the study, sedentary and inactive adults wanted $36.30 per week to do this much exercise. If they had to go in a group, they wanted nearly twice as much more.

Money is a great incentive. Giving yourself some money every day as a reward for getting your exercise done has worked for me in the past. You can read about it here:

• Starling Fitness » Bribe Yourself

I even created a form to keep track of my weekly bribes:

• Weekly Goals Journal Sheet from Starling Fitness: Excel spreadsheet for use with MS Office or Open Office.

If you’re having a hard time getting into the habit of exercising every day, try bribery.

Via: How Much Would They Have to Pay You to Walk?

This postcard from PostSecret is one of my fears of finally getting to goal.

It reads:

I will never miss the person I lost when I lost 100 lbs. +, but I will always live in constant fear that no one will love the body that she left behind.

What if I get to goal weight and I don’t like that sagging skin any more than I like that fat tummy? Sure, I can hide it with clothing, but will it make me feel any better about myself? What if I hate my body just as much when I’m skinny as when I was fat?

I finally decided that it doesn’t matter.

I’ve always hated my body. I’ll probably STILL hate my body, even when I’m finally at goal weight. The difference is, I’ll be treated better. I won’t be discriminated against by employers, health insurance companies, doctors and strangers. I will be healthier. I’ll be stronger and more able to do strenuous activities that are fun. I’ll finally be free of the shackles of binge eating. All of that is more important than loving my body.

Someday, I might be able to finally love my body, but I’m not waiting around for that to happen before I allow myself to get to a healthy weight.

PostSecret‘s beneficiary is the National Hopeline Network. It is a 24-hour hotline (1 (800) SUICIDE) for anyone who is thinking about suicide or knows someone who is considering it.

Every time I see an advertisement for a new kind of exercise machine, I just roll my eyes and wish they would just quit trying. This time, however, I got a little excited. I got an email about Real Ryder, which is an exercise bike that acts more like a real bicycle.

• Real Ryder-The Next Generation of Indoor Cycling

Introducing the RealRyder: It tilts, turns, and banks like an outdoor bike–works out the core, upper body, legs, cardio, and improves balance the way other indoor cycling bikes can’t.

Here is a video of it in action:

The biggest problem that I can see with the Real Ryder is that you can’t buy one. Just like so many other exercise products being advertised on the Internet, it’s not just a simple case of giving them your credit card number to get one. There is no price listed on their website and buying one isn’t as easy as filling out a form and waiting for FedEx. In fact, you have to contact a Sales & Marketing representative to even find out more information. Additionally, two of these “sales” people have the same last name. That smacks of nepotism to me, and I’ve found that it isn’t the best way to run a company.

The Real Ryder is a GREAT idea. I’d love to see it made into a video game controller so I could play motocross video games using this bike instead of buttons. I have so many good ideas that could work with Real Ryder, but if I can’t just give them my credit card and BUY one, I’m not going to believe they exist.

Update 07-22-12: It is nearly FOUR years later and the SHOP section of their website STILL says “Coming Soon.” I think I can safely assume that they’re never coming.

A couple of weeks ago, we were hit with the news that Starbucks was closing approximately 600 of it’s coffee shops.

• Business & Technology | Starbucks closing 5 percent of U.S. stores | Seattle Times Newspaper

The Seattle coffee company is cutting 5 percent of its U.S. locations as part of a wide-ranging effort to boost its bottom line and its stock price. The chain is accelerating international growth.

CNN itself gave out the advice to skip Starbucks when you’re trying to save money.

• How to save $2,425 a year – Skip Starbucks – CNNMoney.com

What about when you’re trying to save calories? The advice is the same. Starbucks coffee tastes so good because it’s packed full of milk and sugar. Even their “light” coffees are high in calories. For example, their 16 oz. Caffé Vanilla Frappuccino® Light Blended Coffee is 190 calories with 5 grams of fat.

So how do you make coffee at home that’s light in calories AND make it taste good? Here’s a quick list:

• Coffee: Good news, coffee is fat free and calorie free. Many grocery stores have coffee bean grinders right in the store, so you can get a small amount of freshly ground coffee every week while grocery shopping.

• Fat free milk: Many diets suggest a daily allowance of dairy products. You can get that into your diet easily by adding one cup of fat free milk for 80 calories. To heat milk in the microwave, use the 50% setting and heat for two minutes. All microwaves are different, of course, so watch it so your milk doesn’t bubble over.

• Torani Sugar-Free syrups: THIS is the secret ingredient that will make your coffee taste as good as a Starbucks coffee with no calories. Amazon has nine different flavors: vanilla, carmel, chocolate (doesn’t taste so good), raspberry, hazelnut, white chocolate, Irish creme, lemon and peppermint. You’re sure to find a flavor that can recreate your favorite Starbucks creation.

I gave up all forms of caffeine long ago, so coffee isn’t hurting my pocketbook or my food journal, but if your particular indulgence is coffee, here is a way for you to have your coffee at a lower price AND calorie count.

So much of eating fresh produce is KNOWING what to do with it. There are so many fruits and vegetables in my grocery store that I just have no idea how to peel them, how to eat them and even whether parts of them are poisonous. The Produce Picker Podcast is a great resource for learning about all kinds of fruits and vegetables.

This episode shows us how to cut open a pomegranate:

The steps are:

• Put a towel down on your cutting board to help prevent staining.
• Cut off the top and bottom of the pomegranate.
• Make four scores along the tough skin of the side of the pomegranate with your knife.
• Fill a large bowl with water.
• Break the pomegranate apart into four sections in the bowl under water.
• Pull the skin and pith away from the seeds.
• The seeds will sink to the bottom of the bowl, while the skin and pith will float.
• Skim the pith and skin off the top of the water.
• Empty the bowl into a strainer with holes small enough to catch the seeds.
• Transfer the seeds to whatever storage container you want.

As a child, my dad used to get a pomegranate. He would just open it up like and orange and we’d pick the seeds out with our fingers to eat it. The Produce Picker method is MUCH cleaner, because pomegranate juice really stains your fingers and clothes.

My friend, Nami, came from Iran, where pomegranates grow naturally. He would eat one by squeezing and squeezing it until it was soft and mushy. He then would poke a hole in the skin and drink the juice. I always thought he was missing out on the yummy pulp that way, but he also missed out on crunching the seeds.

However you eat a pomegranate, they are supposed to be super healthy for you and they fulfill one of your fruit/veggie requirements for the day, so get one and eat it today!

Sheldon’s grandpa has decided to lose weight online. He’s using the “Points Watchers” system, which is suspiciously similar to Weight Watchers Points system. He has a bunch of comics where he talks about losing weight online. Here is a link to the first one.

• Sheldonâ„¢ Comic Strip: Daily Webcomic by Dave Kellett

I love reading Sheldon, but I especially love it when Dave writes about things I’m so intimately familiar. Weight Watchers has been a part of my life since January 2002. The only times I have ever lost weight was when I was religiously following the Weight Watchers plan. It has changed over the last seven or so years, but in the end, it’s still the only thing that works for me.

This week, Dawn poses as a modeling agency who wants to hire girls. How far will these girls go to get a modeling job?

Dawn is in her fifth week of the 500 calorie restriction and she isn’t feeling well:

“I feel like I’m drunk all the time. I just want some food.”

During this episode, she tries the Master Cleanse lemonade diet and the Cabbage Soup diet. The soup didn’t work well for her:

“I’m so bored of this. And sure, I probably lost a few pounds, but my tummy is so swollen. And the side effects are slightly unsociable. I’ve got terrible farts. My cat won’t sit with me and she certainly won’t sleep in my bed.”

At week six, she has a skinny Christmas and a dire conversation with her doctor. The doctor wants her to stop the diet, but she wants to continue the experiment until the end.

Tune in next week to see what Dawn has collected from newspapers, tabloids and magazines.

This postcard from PostSecret is so true of anyone with an eating disorder:

It reads:

Your anorexia is changing you into a person I don’t know.
I miss you… the old you.

Anorexia isn’t the only disordered eating that changes you. Binge eating makes me do crazy things. Sometimes I see the look on Michael’s face and I KNOW that I’m doing something insane and that I should stop, but I do it anyway.

I just want to be the person I was before food became so weird in my life.

PostSecret‘s beneficiary is the National Hopeline Network. It is a 24-hour hotline (1 (800) SUICIDE) for anyone who is thinking about suicide or knows someone who is considering it.