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

If you are plagued by food cravings, even when you’re not hungry, then you might want to try a low-carb diet. I have severe problems with bingeing and have found myself eating even when my stomach is full. When I go low-carb, however, those cravings go away.

If you want to be free from food cravings, here is a guide that should help you get through the first week of living low-carb.

• First Week of a Low-Carb Diet – Challenges and Rewards When Starting to Eat Low Carb

The first five days, here are her suggestions:

• Eat lots of fiber and lots of fat.
• Don’t go hungry!
• Plan delicious things to eat.
• Be good to yourself.
• Get Support.
• Drink lots of water.

Honestly, these are really good tips no matter what diet you are starting. If you want to be able to eat food like a normal person, limit your carbs and make sure you eat enough protein. I found that my constant desire to binge just drifted away and I was free!

I used to save episodes of The Biggest Loser until the next morning and watch them while walking/jogging on the treadmill. I found it so inspiring to see all those people working out. This year, however, I decided not to watch after seeing a preview clip of Jillian just screaming at a contestant.

I couldn’t watch it anymore. I love Jillian, but I do not want to watch people being screamed at. She literally screamed,

“The only way you’re coming off this treadmill is if you DIE on it! Unless you faint, puke or DIE, keep walking!!”

It’s just not entertainment and it’s certainly not inspiring. A day after The Biggest Loser premiere episode, however, I’m laughing and it’s all because of Ernie at Littlest, Yellowest, Differentest:

• Littlest, Yellowest, Differentest – Things People Eat While Watching “The Biggest Loser,” According to Twitter

Things People Eat While Watching “The Biggest Loser,” According to Twitter:

• Pepper Jack grilled cheese sandwiches
• Ice cream
• Taco Bell
• No seriously, a lot of Taco Bell
• Chocolate cream pie
• Bacon/Chocolate candy bars

Every one of those people seem to feel guilty for eating while watching The Biggest Loser. Maybe watching that TV show isn’t all that good for all of us. Whenever Jillian screams at an overweight contestant telling him that he is going to stay on that treadmill until she tells him to get off or until he dies, maybe we feel like we deserve that sort of abuse. Eating while watching the show just makes it more deserved.

Me? I’m skipping it this year… or at least I’m not watching for as long as I can.

Now that Hurricane Ike has passed through Texas, I think of all the people who evacuated Galveston and Houston to avoid the hurricane. They knew it was coming, but not everyone got out.

What if you were in that situation? What if the freeways were clogged with cars? Could you get away if you were on foot or on a bicycle?

How far can you go in one day on foot if you were really pressed to get out of town? How far could you go on a bike? If the situation was desperate enough, could you escape using only the power of your own body?

THIS is why we workout. We have to be strong for those rare times when everything might be asked of our bodies. It can be the difference between life and death.

The iPhone has gotten a lot of publicity because there are so many applications that can make it a great workout partner. One I covered is RunKeeper:

• Starling Fitness » RunKeeper: It’s like a Garmin on your iPhone

It looks like Blackberry isn’t being left behind in that arena, however. Wendy Bumgardner, at About.walking talks about how to use your Blackberry to track your workouts:

• Turn Your Blackberry into a GPS Pedometer/Speedometer

Within minutes of hearing about it, Wendy had downloaded a program called AllSportGPS.

What do you get? A constant readout of your current speed and average speed for the session, plus accurate distance, plus a map of where you are and where you might be going! And when you’re done, it automatically transmits it to a web site where it is saved for posterity, and you can choose to keep it private or share it with the world. But wait, there’s more! A graph of your speed throughout the workout! An elevation profile for your workout so you can brag about the steep hills! A map of it all – and since it uses Google Maps, you can select a street view, satellite view, or topographic view.

It looks even better than Runkeeper because it also logs elevation, so if you happened to be running hills in San Francisco, you would get those extra kudo points for that as well as distance and speed. If you own a Blackberry or Motorola Smartphone, check out AllSportGPS for your workouts.

According to a study that was published in the Sept. 16 issue of Radiology, researchers at John Hopkins University have found a new way to curb hunger. They inject a chemical that destroys the main vessel carrying blood to the top section (fundus) of the stomach. About 90 percent of the body’s ghrelin originates in the fundus, which requires a good blood supply to make the hormone.

Suddenly, your body is only able to create 10 percent of ghrelin that it used to be able to create and your hunger pangs are lessened.

• Researchers Suppress ‘Hunger Hormone’ – US News and World Report

Dr. Aravind Arepally is the clinical director of the Center for Bioengineering Innovation and Design, and associate professor of radiology and surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He explained the procedure:

“With gastric artery chemical embolization, called GACE, there’s no major surgery. In our study in pigs, this procedure produced an effect similar to bariatric surgery by suppressing ghrelin levels and subsequently lowering appetite.”

I don’t know if I want part of my stomach destroyed. Considering all the negative effects of gastric bypass surgery, I wouldn’t be the first in line to try this procedure. Let them experiment on someone else.

Have you seen the commercials advertising High Fructose Corn Syrup? I hadn’t until The Diet Blog showed them to me. Here they are:

Both commercials repeat the same mantra:

“It’s made from corn, doesn’t have artificial ingredients and, like sugar, it’s fine in moderation.”

HFCS is just as safe as sugar? That’s the best they can do? Moms all over the world have been warning their kids of the dangers of sugar for decades. It all smacks of baloney to me.

The Diet Blog did the research and has the facts about HFCS for you here:

• Diet Blog: The Real Truth About High Fructose Corn Syrup

Here are their Take Home Points:

• Implicating a single food in causing weight gain or disease is folly and takes the focus away from the big picture of our diets.
• We eat way too much high fructose corn syrup. Even if it isn’t an independent factor in our growing waistlines and poor health, it is at the very least displacing healthier food choices.
• Calories still do matter – fructose levels do not seem to make a difference within the context of a reduced calorie diet.
• Rather than taking a magnifying glass to every ingredients list to find the “evil” ingredients, focus instead on eating minimal ingredient foods.
• Oh, and those commercials are correct in that it probably isn’t any worse for you than table sugar, but I would love to hear how they define “moderation”. (Hint, it’s not 78 lbs a year).

Personally, I have been avoiding anything sweetened for a while now. When I lowered my carbs, all sweeteners, artificial or not were cut out of my diet and now things taste far too sweet for me most of the time.

Whatever your stance on HFCS, make sure you know the details so that those smug moms and girlfriends (like in the commercials), won’t be able to give you a lecture about how “safe” it is.

To all of you vegetarians and vegans out there, here is one study you might want to take a closer look at. Scientists at Oxford University have linked a meat-free diet to brain shrinkage.

• Going veggie shrinks the brain | The Courier-Mail

The link was discovered by Oxford University scientists who used memory tests, physical checks and brain scans to examine 107 people between the ages of 61 and 87.

When the volunteers were retested five years later the medics found those with the lowest levels of vitamin B12 were also the most likely to have brain shrinkage. It confirms earlier research showing a link between brain atrophy and low levels of B12.

If you want to prevent brain atrophy, then you need to make sure you get enough vitamin B12. The best source for that vitamin is milk, liver and fish.

Fail Dogs is a funny little site that shows me pictures of dogs in embarrassing situations every day. This one, however, hit a little too close to home:

After being put on weight management food, this little puppy took matters in his own hands and ate the entire bag.

He probably still didn’t feel full…

There have been so many times when I’ve gotten low calories substitutes to eat when what I really wanted was the high calorie version. It took me years to give up those bland and nearly inedible “treats” and learn how to have a SMALL serving of the real thing. Once I gave up those 100 Calorie packs, I was able to eat what I really wanted AND lose weight.

I know the 100 Calorie packs are a godsend to some people, but I ended up just like this little dog when I had them in the house. I would eat three of them and they still wouldn’t have satisfied me as much as 300 calories of a REAL dessert.

I always thought the Weight Watchers Points system to be the easiest way to keep track of your food, but it looks like Clive Thompson at Wired Magazine has noticed how much it resembles playing a game.

• Games Without Frontiers: Fun Way to Lose Weight: Turn Dieting Into an RPG

Indeed, I’m in awe of the sheer brilliance of Weight Watchers in adopting the word points as its metric for measuring food. The word immediately shoves the user into the semantics — and fun — of gameplay. You regard losing weight as an intriguing challenge, as opposed to a mere grind.

This puts me in mind of the talk that Jane McGonigal — a brilliant and pioneering alternative-reality game designer — gave at this year’s South by Southwest conference. She argued that game designers ought to put their skills to use in the real world by reshaping dull, everyday activities into fun challenges. Why not a game that gives you points for walking your dog or jogging?

You can make this a game for yourself pretty easily without the use of Weight Watcher’s expensive eTools. All you have to do is use the Weekly Goals Sheet that you can download for free here:

• Starling Fitness » Bribe Yourself

Give yourself goals for every day of the week and choose a reward for each one. In my example, I’ve been just bribing myself with money, but you can use whatever reward you want for each goal. Whether exercise, eating, getting your chores done or whatever you goals you have, this goal sheet is the first step on the way for you to achieving them.

Via: Play Girlz: Weight Watchers RPG

Mana Energy Potion sponsored a treadmill modification to complete a race in World of Warcraft.

• [:Mana Energy Potion:] | RL Race Across Azeroth

What they did was modify some inexpensive treadmills to simulate pressing the “W” button.

Then they had a virtual race across Azeroth, which is an area in the game, World of Warcraft. Do you think running in World of Warcraft with these treadmills will be easier or harder than running in a real forest? You can see how they did here:

In the end, they ran 1 mile in the game, but only ran 1/2 mile on the treadmills. The game had them running at 12.0 mph, but the treadmills logged only 6.0 mph. So, running in World of Warcraft is still easier than running in the real world, even with fancy treadmills.

The race was sponsored by Mana Energy Potion, which is a high calorie energy drink. This may seem like a good promotion for fitness, but in actuality, they are promoting a drink that isn’t very healthy, so be forewarned.

Via: Play Girlz: Exercise World of Warcraft Style