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

Watching this video made me eager to dance again. I never was into breakdancing, but moving the body to music is so therapeutic and even cathartic that I miss it sometimes.

You can also see the video here:

Rocketboom – August 11, 2006

When asked, the leader of Fox Force Five, the winners of the competition, described the joy and passion that can come from a sport that you love.

“You put in dedication so that even after you hurt yourself, you know that you can’t wait ’til you get back better because you know that you are going to start all over again. Some people have a kid and say I’m not doing that anymore. A B*Girl will have a kid and be like, ‘Can’t wait ’til I pop that baby out so I can practice again!'”

Next time you can’t imagine jumping on that treadmill once more, put on your favorite tunes and try your hand at dancing. It doesn’t matter if your moves are as smooth as a B*Girl. You can burn just as many calories dancing like a maniac as you would dancing like a ballerina. Let your favorite tunes move you for thirty minutes instead of pounding away at the gym and you might just enjoy your workout a little more.

Yesterday, I did a post about Yahoo! Avatars and how you can make them fat. I redid my avatar to be a more busty version:

What if Avatars were real?

What if you could have any body that you chose?

Would you choose a celebrity body?

Would you keep the one you have, just fitter?

What if they couldn’t make you thin unless you chose a different body?

Would you give up your current body just to be thinner?

What if that meant you had to be stupid? Or cruel? Or boring?

The Question of the Week is meant to be an Inner Workout for you. Find some time during the week and allow yourself to write the answers to the questions posted. You can write them on paper, on a word processor or here in the comments section. Whatever works for you as long as you do it.

Keep writing until you find out something about yourself that you didn’t know before. I’ve also heard that it works to keep writing until you cry, but that doesn’t really work for me. Whatever works for you. Just keep writing until it feels right.

My biggest complaint about Yahoo! Avatars was that I couldn’t make my avatar look even remotely like me.

• Pick Me! » Winter Avatar

Even though I have lost weight, I’m still really curvy and that skinny thing that they came up with looked nothing like the busty version that looks back at me in the mirror. Well, they finally did something about it.

• Yahoo! Avatars

Now, you can choose Plus Size in the Clothing section and your avatar will have a little meat on its bones. You can see my before and after avatars here:

No matter how little I eat or how much I exercise, I could never be as thin as the avatar on the left. I actually prefer the new one. It’s more realistic.

Good Job, Yahoo!

Via: Big Fat Blog: Yahoo! Avatars Expands

to whom it may concern,

I’ve been trying to find an expert to email this question too, can you help me ? my question is.does eating to many sunflower seeds cause cellulight? if you could answer that or maybe send me too someone who can .

thanks DANA

Cellulite is a complicated issue, but it’s not directly caused by eating sunflower seeds. Cellulite is not caused by any food eaten in moderation. Here is some more information from Wikipedia:

• Cellulite – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sunflower seeds, or any other food, does not cause cellulite:

“There appears to be a hormonal component to its presentation. It is rarely seen in males. It is seen more commonly in males with androgen-deficient states such as Klinefelter’s syndrome, hypogonadism, post-castration states and in those patients receiving estrogen therapy for prostate cancer. The cellulite becomes more severe as the androgen deficiency worsens in these males.”

In fact, cellulite isn’t even related to being overweight. I remember reading a story about a woman who managed a gym and had seen a wide variety of women from fat to thin. Cellulite resides on all bodies, not just people who are fat. Once again, Wikipedia verifies this:

“Cellulite is not related to being overweight; average and underweight people also get cellulite.”

There is a huge industry trying to make you feel bad about yourself and those dimples on your bottom. Don’t let them make you feel self conscious. Why is it that dimples on baby bottoms are cute and on grown up bottoms aren’t? Who decided that? Whoever they were was wrong. Cellulite is a natural occurence. Embrace it and the rest of your body with love.

I am NOT recommending this as a dieting technique. This looks very dangerous to me and I don’t want anyone thinking that I even approve of this.

I just wonder how she did this. I guess it’s supposed to be erotic, but all I could think about is how does she do that without choking or filling up her stomach to the point of pain. The balloon looked fully inflated, so I’m just shocked.

Does she regurgitate it? Does it come out the other end? Does it make her unable to eat for days? Does it pop within her body? Is it all a hoax and the video editing just makes it look like she swallowed it? There are so many unanswered questions…

On a more serious note, if you were disgusted by this, just imagine what the medical industry has done to overweight people for years. One of the bariatric surgery techniques used to involve inserting a balloon into the patient’s stomach and inflating it to prevent the patient from being able to eat large quantities of food. How is that different from the sideshow you just saw? Next time you’re tempted by some new drug or weight loss surgery, remember this video and how it’s not so different from what the medical industry is doing.

I bought the book Silent Bob Speaks because I enjoyed Kevin Smith’s story about his struggles with Jason Mewes and trying to help him stay off drugs. I thought that it would be more of his writing (since the word writing is in the title) and I expected some entertainment.

I got that, but I didn’t expect a hilarious story about morbid obesity and fat-blocking prescription drugs.

The doctor also discerned that I suffer from what I used to call heartburn, but now call Acid Reflux Disorder.

“How’d I develop this?” I asked, fascinated to learn about the high drama going on in my gut. But I wasn’t prepared for his response.

“It’s often associated with cases of morbid obesity.”

He prescribed me something called Xenical, a pill that prevents 30% of the calories you digest from being stored as fat. What follows is not for the faint of heart…

Kevin learned what everyone who was prescribed Xenical learned. He continues to give you the “official” Xenical descriptions for what might happen and translate them into the unpleasant truths, with humor, of course.

I’ve never laughed so much at the phrase, “oily, fatty stools” in my life!

More importantly, he mentions to his readers that he wants support in his effort to lose weight. He talks about becoming accountable to his wife, parents and friends, but he finally adds all his fans to the list of people he wants to help him in his weight loss journey. He has since lost the extra “baby” weight and is living a much healthier life, hopefully without Xenical.

If you enjoy Kevin Smith’s writings, you can read his weblog here: My Boring Ass Life

Something about running gives me chapped lips. I think it’s the fact that I have to breathe out of my mouth instead of my nose. All that air rushing past my poor lips makes them parched by the end of a workout. Most of the times, I only crave water because my lips are chapped. Lip Balm helps some, but the Overnight Lip Treatment from Chapstick is better than normal lip balm because it lasts through the whole workout instead of needing reapplication halfway through.

This stuff was designed to be used overnight while I sleep, so it stays on my lips the whole workout. It has been my favorite for a long time, but I keep forgetting to pass on this tip. I guess I thought I have more important things to write about than lip balm. The truth is, however, the more comfortable you are during your workout, the more likely you’ll do it again. If all it takes is a little container of Chapstick to get you out the door every day, then I wish I had told you sooner.

This ad was an entry in a Photoshop contest called Worth1000. If fast food industries told this truth, they would sell a lot fewer burgers, don’t you think?

The reason you should write down everything you eat is an awareness issue. It’s really easy to eat one potato chip here and five M&M’s here, but when you add up all those little tastes and bites, it can pile on the pounds.

This article from Slashfood talks about just that and gives you the calorie counts for small quantities of food that might end up in your mouth.

• Bet you can’t eat just one – Slashfood

Even after years of eating healthy, I find that I do better when I’m writing down everything I eat. Part of it is awareness and part of it is laziness. If I know I have to log the food, sometimes I’m just too lazy to eat it.

My Goal Disappeared

When I heard about the Nike+iPod and how it synced with an online system, I was bugged. I was worried that they might charge me a monthly fee to access my data. The idea of having to be online in order to look at my running data also bothered me. I didn’t even think about flaky programming.

Last week, Nike+ updated the Goals section of their website so that it tells you how you can earn trophies and ribbons on their site. Sure, that’s great. I liked to know that there are other ways to compete, but when they did the update, they lost all my goal information.

I had logged on to see how far along I was on my goal to run more often and it was gone. Sure, I could create a new one and I was only one week into the goal, but it was depressing to start again. It was as if those other runs didn’t mean anything to Nike. They just wiped my progress on that goal without even warning me.

That’s why I hate online software. Companies are able to make changes without notification and they can wipe out my data with one blow. I would much prefer a software program on my computer that does the same thing. I like being able to share it online, but I was really bothered when I lost my goal and all the progress that I had made.

Leaderboards

I found another section on the website called Leaderboards that is pretty cool. It is a list of all the people running with Nike+ and rates them based on distance, duration, fastest 5K and fastest 10K.

You would think that it’s totally depressing to be number 4883 on distance, but I like to see where I am and to see if I can get higher on the list. I would like to know 4883 out of how many people total. 4883 out of 4883 is not so good. 4883 out of 10,000 is great! Even if I’m dead last, though, I like to know that I can run a little more to get a little higher on the boards.

Something must be wrong with them though. How could Ghost Cyber run for 42 hours 44 minutes and 08 seconds? It must be a mistake or something. I’m sure there are ways to fool the system, but I don’t care. As long as I’m able to get from 4883 to 4880 and beyond, I’m happy.

Mileage

I’ve heard some complaints from other people that it doesn’t record the correct mileage. It’s true. The Nike+ isn’t a GPS system. It can’t tell precisely where you are running and calculate the mileage perfectly. All it can do is measure the speed at which your foot is moving.

Using the Google Pedometer, I have calculated the mileage for all my runs and the Nike+ has been within .02 to .05 miles of accuracy on every one. It’s not perfect, but it’s close enough for me. The best part is that I know while I’m on the run approximately how far I’ve gone instead of having to get online when I get back and calculate it. I can’t wait to run with the Nike+ on a trip.

Two Week Evaluation:

Despite software problems and minor mileage inaccurancies, I am still loving the Nike+. It has gotten me back on the road running. After three years of treadmill running, it’s so invigorating to be running outside again and it’s all due to the Nike+. It’s like a treadmill for the outdoors!