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

I got this exercise from Martha Beck’s book Four Day Win and changed it up a little for myself.

• Make sure you’re feeling in a pretty good mood. Are you hungry? If so, make sure you go eat something a little decadent. It doesn’t have to be a large portion, but right now, go eat something that you have been denying yourself.

• Make a quick list of your happiest memories. Just get a clean notebook and on the first page write all the happy times in your life. One memory per line, list them out. Keep writing until you can’t think of any more. If you have less than five, you’re probably not in a good enough mood to do this exercise, so try again a different time. Shoot for a list of fifty or so memories.

• Each day, when you’re feeling most comfortable and happiest, go back to the notebook. Take one page per memory and write out the full memory in as much detail as you can. Use all five senses to write your memories. What did the air smell like? How did his lips taste? What color was the sky? How did it feel against your skin? What music was playing at that moment? Sight and smell are the most powerful memory joggers, so make sure you at least cover those two senses.

• After a month or so, you will have a book full of happy memories that you can use as a resource when you’re feeling like bingeing. When you can feel a binge coming on, give yourself a few minutes and read through some of your favorite happy memories.

This exercise has been really powerful for me and I have only been doing it for a couple of weeks.

One caveat: I’m a writer, so writing is the way I relate to the world, but there are MANY ways to do this exercise. You can use pictures from the past and create a scrapbook. You can draw your favorite memories and use the pictures to reminisce. You can take film clips that remind you of your favorite memories and make a video of your favorite times of your own life. You can even just go through a box of old belongings and mementos that you have saved over the years.

We humans are so diverse in our abilities, however you can do this Happy Memories exercise is wonderful as long as it works for you.

We just passed Sacramento on the Race Across the USA! With only four days of running, that is freakin’ awesome!

These are the cities we are going to see along the way:

• Los Angeles, California – Starting Point
• Sacramento, California – 384 miles
• Salt Lake City, Utah – 1,036 miles
• Omaha, Nebraska – 1,971 miles
• Chicago, Illinois – 2,439 miles
• New York, New York – 3,227 miles

You can see the full route in detail here:

• Race Across USA Route

Don’t forget that there are prizes for the top 10 finishers:

• 1st place – Most miles run – Four DVD set of Starling Fitness walking videos: Swami’s Beach, Sugarhouse, Moab and the as yet unreleased San Antonio Riverwalk.
• 2nd and 3rd place – Choice of three Starling Fitness DVDs.
• 4th and 5th place – Choice of two Starling Fitness DVDs.
• 6th through 10th place – Choice of one Starling Fitness DVD

The current Top Ten are here:

There is still time to join up! To enter, you have to have a Nike+ and link it up to their online system. You cannot leave a message here to be sent an invitation. You must click on this link and ask to be added to the Race Across the USA on the Nike+ website:

• Race Across the USA

You will be invited to a Distance Goal race of 1 mile. You’ll be able to achieve that goal quite easily, but keep running. We’ll add the miles of everyone together. I will check the mileage every day. As soon as I notice that we have achieved the goal of 3,227 miles, I will stop the race and prizes will be announced. The Race Across the USA started March 1st, so come walk across the USA with us!

Since Nike’s system isn’t set up for a cooperative event like this, you will need to check here at Starling Fitness for progress and winners.

We reserve the right to limit participation in the challenge due to our time constraints or the limits of Nike’s system.

This event is not sponsored by Nike or Apple. Starling Fitness will choose the winners based on total mileage. Our decisions are final.

How many things have promised us that we’ll be thin, only to fail on the promise?

• Bulimia
• Meal Replacement Shakes
• Smoking
• Diet Pills
• Diets

What else would you add to the list? This secret from PostSecret hit home with me because I always felt ripped off that I had the bingeing but couldn’t purge. Somehow I felt if I could just purge, I wouldn’t be fat. The truth of the matter is, not even bulimia can keep up with some bingeing. I can eat more in a few minutes than I can work off on the treadmill all day. I don’t even think barfing and laxatives could keep up.

Learning how to nurture myself without food has been the best step toward healthy eating in a long time.

If you have been tempted by any of those things that promise to make you thin, just let them go. Have the courage to take an inner journey and find out what you need to do to take radically good care of yourself. Loving yourself isn’t a quick fix weight loss solution, but I truly think it’s the only one that works.

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.

Laura,

I have a question about Weight Watchers..Do you think the Core Plan works better than the Flex Plan? I am on the Flex Plan right now and i was just wondering if the Core works better.

Thanks!
Leah

Leah,

I have liked the Flex Plan because I can eat ANYTHING as long as I work it into my Points. The minute someone tells me that I can’t eat something (even something as simple as 2% milk, which is restricted on the Core Plan), I am craving it. It’s because I was starved for so many years as a child that my mind goes into famine brain with just the mention of restriction. I have never tried Core because everytime I have even thought about going on the Core Plan, it has caused a binge.

Thank you,
Laura Moncur

Michael and I are going to be in Austin, Texas for SXSW. While we’re there, we wanted to allow our readers to have a chance to meet us, so we set up a reader meetup at the Sunset Valley Barnes and Noble:

Location: Barnes & Noble – Sunset Valley
5601 Brodie Lane Suite 300, Austin, TX 78745 Google Map
Phone: 512-892-3493

Date and Time: March 9, 2006 6pm-7pm

Please RSVP using Upcoming.org so that we don’t feel like we’re going to be waiting at the bookstore all alone:

• Upcoming.org: Starling Studios Reader Meetup at Barnes and Noble Sunset Valley (Friday, March 9, 2007)

We are going to hang around for an hour, gathering readers and then we are going to let you pick a restaurant where we can eat and hang out for longer if you want. We are really interested in what we can do to make Starling Fitness a better place to be. What are you interested in? What bores you? How can we help you? Come with ideas and helpful hints because we’re all ears!

Starling Fitness is sponsoring Race Across the USA. It is a cooperative event using the Nike+ Challenge. You can still join up if you hurry! The goal is to run across the United States. Going the route I chose, it would take 3,227 miles to cross the USA. The map above is the route that I have chosen. We already have 52 confirmed racers, so join in now to log your miles!

We will walk to the following cities:

• Los Angeles, California – Starting Point
• Sacramento, California – 384 miles
• Salt Lake City, Utah – 1,036 miles
• Omaha, Nebraska – 1,971 miles
• Chicago, Illinois – 2,439 miles
• New York, New York – 3,227 miles

You can see the route in detail here:

• Across the USA Route

There are prizes for the people with the most mileage:

• 1st place – Most miles run – Four DVD set of Starling Fitness walking videos: Swami’s Beach, Sugarhouse, Moab and the as yet unreleased San Antonio Riverwalk.
• 2nd and 3rd place – Choice of three Starling Fitness DVDs.
• 4th and 5th place – Choice of two Starling Fitness DVDs.
• 6th through 10th place – Choice of one Starling Fitness DVD

To enter, you have to have a Nike+ and link it up to their online system. You cannot leave a message here to be sent an invitation. You must click on this link and ask to be added to the Race Across the USA on the Nike+ website:

• Race Across the USA

You will be invited to a Distance Goal race of 1 mile. You’ll be able to achieve that goal quite easily, but keep running. We’ll add the miles of everyone together. I will check the mileage every day. As soon as I notice that we have achieved the goal of 3,227 miles, I will stop the race and prizes will be announced. The Race Across the USA starts March 1st (Thursday), so come walk across the USA with us!

Since Nike’s system isn’t set up for a cooperative event like this, you will need to check here at Starling Fitness for progress and winners.

We reserve the right to limit participation in the challenge due to our time constraints or the limits of Nike’s system.

This event is not sponsored by Nike or Apple. Starling Fitness will choose the winners based on total mileage. Our decisions are final.

I found this video in my Starling Fitness folder, but it doesn’t look like I’ve ever written about it or shown it to you. It sat around because it was such a big file. I tried compressing it, but it was still huge, so I put it up on YouTube. Unfortunately, I have no idea where I found it…

Pretty healthy diet for 1954. I’m interested in the fact that Ralph becomes so popular after eating healthy. When’s that gonna happen to me?

Kevin Smith is known for his Silent Bob character, but he is also the acclaimed director of movies like Jersey Girl (my favorite), Chasing Amy and Clerks. He writes regularly on his weblog and in January, he started a lifestyle change. You can read about it here, but if the title of his entry bothers you at all, don’t click the link.

• Kevin’s Boring Ass Life – I’m cutting two ugly, fat bitches out of my life!

He has a family history of diabetes. Considering his weight, he was worried that he was also going to become a victim of that disease.

So I took the glucose tolerance test – the blood test one undergoes to see if they’re diabetic or at least pre-diabetic. You fast for twelve hours, have blood drawn, down a bottle of sugar-heavy medicinal soda (in my case, orange-flavored), wait two hours, then have blood drawn again – all in an effort to track your body’s ability to deal with sugar (diabetes is, after all, the body’s inability to metabolize sugar normally). After taking the test, I went to Jersey for a week to hit some Devils games and play some poker – all while ignoring the distinct possibility that I’d passed the point of no return, and had, indeed, developed diabetes. Today, I went to the doctor’s office for my weigh-in and to face down the test results…

Which I passed with flying colors.

Apparently, my body knows what to do with sugar: it stores it as fat. Not great, but very awesome, considering the alternative. It was a wake-up call. I’ve beat the genetic odds thus far, but just because you haven’t shot yourself yet doesn’t mean you keep playing Russian Roulette. I’m putting the gun down, folks: the gun that’s filled with cake frosting.

He will be chronicling his efforts with weight loss and diet management on his weblog, so you can read more about his life there.

On another note, I feel for Kevin. The picture above was on his website with the following name: fatfuck.jpg. When I downloaded it, I renamed it to KevinSmithBefore.jpg because I couldn’t bear to let that name stand. Fat Fuck is something a grade school kid calls you, not something you call yourself. We become very attached to names, even when they hurt our feelings. I don’t want Kevin Smith to think of himself as a Fat Fuck, even if he’s overweight. Sorry, buddy! You’re going to have to be the glorious and grand Kevin Smith. I won’t let you be Fat Fuck.

What names have you been calling yourself? Time to let them go…

Update: Kevin decided to starve himself using the OptiFast program. If you care about this guy at all, please email him and tell him not to do this to himself. I have starved myself enough times to know that it will only make his weight issues worse. He is already teetering on the edge of a binge.

• My Boring Ass Life » Fat-Fuck vs. Food, Week 2

There were times in my life that I only felt motivated to diet if I felt bad about myself. Something would click in my mind and I would start being disgusted with myself. It seemed like the only way that I ever would be willing to go on a diet was when I was so unhappy with the way that I looked that I was calling myself names at all times. I called this “motivation.”

The reason why I had a hard time following diets is because I was starving myself. Sure, it’s hard to follow a diet when you’re starving yourself. When I took a much more relaxed and loving attitude with myself, I was able to eat healthy without the name-calling.

How do you motivate yourself to eat healthy and exercise?

What do you do to keep yourself on track?

Is being on track difficult?

If it is, do you think it’s because of the program or do you blame yourself?

There were so many times when I would demean myself and call myself lazy for not following a diet plan that was INSANE. It was the diet plan, not me that was the problem.

It looks like Peter Pan peanut butter is being recalled because a salmonella outbreak has been tracked back to their product. With e.coli on your spinach and green onions and salmonella in your peanut butter, is there anything we CAN eat?

• Salmonella Outbreak Due to Peanut Butter – washingtonpost.com

So many times, nutritionists tell us that we should be eating whole foods. My spinach is a whole food, but because of the way it is packaged, it can become unsafe for me to eat. Now, peanut butter is very processed, but the machines that grind peanut butter in the health food store aren’t all that clean either. Which should I trust? Neither?

Over a hundred years ago, Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle. It blew the lid off the food processing industry, revealing the lack of cleanliness in meat packaging plants all over the nation. Here we are one hundred years later and we are still dealing with these issues. Is the only option to grow our own vegetables? How do I assure that I don’t accidentally get e.coli on my own spinach? I can’t even imagine slaughtering my own meat. I would HAVE to get my protien from homemade peanut butter.

Eating has never been easier for the human race. We have more food than we can consume and when we try to consume it all, we end up dealing with obesity. The only problem is that we have placed the production of our food in the hands of other people and I have no way of knowing if they washed them.

Via: food museum blog: Yucky Peanut Butter