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

I have a huge list of links in my drafts list and you are getting them all here at once. None of these really deserved an entire entry all by themselves. I don’t even like a lot of them, but I thought I would pass them along to see if you like any of them.

• PUSH – Customed personalized training DVDS for $25 a month. You would need to exercise with these five times a month in order to make it pay for itself.

• iMusic | Your Soundtrack for Success – They say that they can get your brain in the “peak performance” mode with their iMusic. It sounds like baloney to me. Maybe a real scientist would be able to tell, but until it sounds less like psuedo-science, I’d save my money.

• Podfitness.com – The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) – They say their a personal trainer in your iPod for $19.95 a month. You would have to exercise with it four times every month to make it worth it.

• The Gadgeteer – BioTrainer – This gadget is supposed to tell you how many calories you burn every day. They aren’t clear about how it can tell your calorie-expenditure, but all I know is you have to pay ten bucks a month just to use it. When I buy a gadget, I don’t want to have to pay a monthly fee just to use my new toy.

• HyperStrike online health trainer – Lifehacker – Yet another online website that wants to be your trainer. Unless you can actually take your computer into the gym with you, this might be less than helpful.

• We Endure social training log – Lifehacker – This looks like a MySpace for exercise and competition. I looked to see if the Salt Lake 5K had been entered in the Events category, but there was nothing there. I guess it’s not being used much in SLC. This is FREE, so it doesn’t hurt to sign up. If a lot of people use it, it would be good for people looking for training partners. If not, then it’s just a place to put all your exercise information.

That’s it for my links for the day.

It seems counter-intuitive to me. When I work out, I get really hot and sweaty. How could getting hot and sweaty help prevent me from getting hot and sweaty? Somehow, it works.

• CNN.com – Working out might tame hot flashes – Jun 9, 2006

Sadly, even the doctors don’t know WHY it works yet.

She Dr. Lila Nachtigall, a spokeswoman for the North American Menopause Society, said it is critical for women to get exercise at this time of life despite the lack of conclusive evidence that exercise relieves menopausal symptoms.

I think it’s great that exercise helps women with menopause. It’s something that we need anyway for heart health, so get out there and do it!

I just noticed that Microsoft has a bunch of templates that work with their Office Suite (Word, Excel, OneNote, Publisher, etc.). Some of them are for weight loss or weight tracking. You can find them here:

• Microsoft Office Templates: Diet and Exercise

• Microsoft Office Templates: Nutrition and Recipe Planning

My favorite was the Fitness Chart for Excel. You enter your weight, height and measurements and it calculates your body fat percentage and BMI. It’s such a convenient way to keep track of your progress. You can download them here:

• Microsoft Office Templates: Fitness chart for women

• Microsoft Office Templates: Fitness chart for men

If you have Excel on your computer, this spreadsheet could help you keep track of your progress. There are so many templates that work with the MS Office Suite. I’m sure you’ll find one thing there that will be helpful to you.

You buy a pedometer, set it up and it will connect to the computer, showing your steps, distance and other information. You can get walking buddies and even have a friendly competition with them. What’s the catch?

• WalkStyles Home

It costs $9.95 a month to use the website. Now, according to the Five Buck Workout Rule, you would only have to workout twice a month to make the membership pay for itself. But then again, I HATE to find out that the coolest features of my new toy only work if I fork over money to the people who manufactured it EVERY month.

It sounds like a good idea and I can justify it feasibly, but it’s something that I’m not going to jump for. I think I’ll just use my McDonald’s pedometer, which came free with my salad and just keep track on my own.

Bruce was challenged by his neighbor to a pedometer contest. They’re fighting now, and here’s why:

• Rocky Mountain News: W. Bruce Cameron – Pedometer Competition Part 1

• Rocky Mountain News: W. Bruce Cameron – Pedometer Competition Part 2

It began with a hostile act: Tom called to invite me over so he could give me a present. “Sort of an early birthday gift,” he explained.

This is a seriously funny story. Just click on the links and read both parts. Totally worth it.

Bruce was referring to a website and pedometer. Tune in this afternoon to see more.

Via: About.com: Walking – Carnival of the Walkers #47 by Wendy Bumgardner

If you are mixing your alcohol with diet sodas instead of sugary ones, you might be getting a little more tipsy than your non-dieting friends. According to an Australian study, artificial sweeteners increase the absorption of alcohol in the system.

• Artificially sweetened booze packs more punch – Addictions – MSNBC.com

They weren’t just testing how drunk the participants felt, the blood alcohol was tested and these were their findings:

“The peak blood alcohol concentration was significantly higher with the diet drink than with the regular drink. The blood alcohol concentration was also higher with the artificial sweetener than with the sugar-sweetened drink.”

Most diets recommend that you limit your alcohol consumption, but if you do decide to imbibe, make sure you have it with club soda to avoid the sugar AND the increased alcohol absorption from artificial sweetners.

Via: Diet mixers increase alcohol absorption – Slashfood

I tried exercising with the Swami’s Beach DVD with my exercise bike for the first time on Sunday. I just can’t wait to tell you how it was!

It sucked!

Seriously, this is a pretty video where you get to see a lot of ocean and see interesting things along the way, but when I was exercising with my bike and watching it, it just didn’t do it for me. First off, there’s the huge staircase. I can’t even imagine going down that with a bike, so it just felt like I was watching a movie. Then, when we finally get walking on the beach, it didn’t feel right because riding a bike on sand is extremely difficult to balance on. I constantly felt like I was going to fall over because of the sand.

I had to turn it off after ten minutes or so.

I’ve walked and run with this video lots of times on the treadmill and just LOVE it. Every time I watch it, I notice something different and I was the one who filmed it. It’s amazing how much our minds filter our consciousness. I love the video on the treadmill, but it was thoroughly unpleasant on the bike.

I have two more videos in the works and BOTH of them have stairs. Next time I do filming, I need to make sure that I choose a course that is accessible to both walking and biking.

Here is a glimpse of what the Swami’s Beach Video looks like:

If you have a treadmill next to a television and DVD player, you might like this DVD and it’s only five bucks plus shipping. You can buy it here:

• Starling Fitness – Fitness, diet, and health weblog » Walking Videos For Sale

Sometimes eating and obsessing about food gets me to to the point where I just wish I could have a simple thing that I could just throw in my purse and never have to worry about again. Obviously, The Last Angry Young Man feels the same way:

“Imagine going to the grocery store only once every 6 months. Imagine paying less than a dollar per meal. Imagine never washing dishes, chopping vegetables or setting the table ever again. It sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?”

“But can a human subsist on a constant diet of pelletized, nutritionally complete food like puppies and monkeys do? For the good of human kind, I’m about to find out. On June 3, 2006, I began my week of eating nothing but monkey chow: ‘a complete and balanced diet for the nutrition of primates, including the great apes.'”

He is logging his endeavor at The Monkey Chow Diaries.

• The Monkey Chow Diaries

The American Council on Science and Health noticed his experiment and have logged their opinions on his diet. They agree that the monkey chow is complete nutrition for humans and suspect that he will lose weight on the diet because the food is monotonous and unpalatable.

• ACSH > The Ultimate Convenience Diet: Monkey Chow > By Ruth Kava, Ph.D., R.D., Jeff Stier, Esq.

It’s interesting to watch his reaction to eating the food for the first time and even more interesting to hear his simple resignation the second day. He is saving about $600 a month by eating monkey chow instead of restaurant and home-cooked food. I’m excited to see what this experiment brings.

Via: Freakonomics Blog » The Monkey Chow diet

Jeremy Zawodny is another blogger who has undergone a startling transformation. He has lost 50 pounds over the last year and he is sharing his tips and tricks this week. Here are the links to the first two entries:

• Diet Tips or How To Lose Weight with a Spreadsheet and a Web Site (by Jeremy Zawodny)

• The Diet Plan and The Three Habits (by Jeremy Zawodny)

• The Diet Spreadsheet (by Jeremy Zawodny)

• Diet Tips: How To Eat Less (by Jeremy Zawodny)

• Diet Plans and Goal Setting: How Many Calories? (by Jeremy Zawodny)

• Closing Diet Tips and Advice (by Jeremy Zawodny)

Over the year, he learned the following things:

• Eat Fewer Calories and Monitor Your Intake

• Weigh Yourself Daily but Don’t Obsess Over It

• Learn the Difference Between “Not Hungry” and “Full”

This is a really simplified list, so you’ll have to go to his weblog to get the full story. Keep reading each day this week to get all of his tips and tricks.

Way to go Jeremy!

There are days when I’ve eaten too much and it comes to dinnertime and I have very few calories left, maybe 150 to 300 calories.

What do you eat when you are in that situation?

What kind of low calorie dinner concoctions have you found that really fill you up and make you feel like you’ve had a real meal?

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.