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

Adding yet another “magic” food to the list, Korean pine nuts are being touted as a weight loss food.

• Pine nut ingredient helps suppress appetite – Yahoo! News

The expert, Dr. Jennifer L. Causey, explains to Reuters why pine nuts are supposed to help manage weight.

“Health ingredients such as pine nut lipids from natural origins can help with a weight management program by producing a feeling of fullness, potentially allowing for one to consume less calories and thus impact weight loss.”

At 150 calories for just a 1/4 cup, pine nuts are full of protein, fat and carbs. They SHOULD reduce your hunger and produce a feeling of fullness, just like a similar serving of anything with the same macronutrients.

Dr. Jennifer L. Causey works for a company in Idaho called Lipid Nutrition. They sell products that are supposed to aid in weight loss, “natural defense”, infant nutrition, cardiovascular health and memory improvement. After looking at their website, it appears that they have more to sell you than just pine nuts from Korea.

• Lipid Nutrition

I don’t believe that Korean pine nuts are any better at curbing your appetite than any other food and I REALLY don’t believe that any pills from Lipid Nutrition are going to help you lose weight any better than just watching your diet and exercising regularly.

Whenever a news story hits the market promising that a “super” food is going to help you lose weight, look behind the glib quotes to see who is sponsoring the research. Who is paying the research scientist to announce the benefits of the super food. I will be surprised if we don’t see a pill coming out from Lipid Nutrition that contains pine nut oil.

Via: Korean pine nuts can help curb appetite – Slashfood

I found an old entry on Kathy Sierra’s weblog called Fitness Hacks for Geeks. She talks about the kinds of gadgets that can keep a computer-obsessed person interested in exercise.

• Creating Passionate Users: Fitness hacks for geeks

Here is her list of items that can make you more excited about exercise.

• Use an iPod
• Use a heart rate monitor
• Use an accelerometer
• Log it and blog it
• Dance Dance Revolution on PlayStation 2 or Xbox

I have never tried exercising with an accelerometer (or a GPS), so I don’t know how inspirational it might be. I also have never really blogged about my daily workouts. When I find a weblog that just lists the daily workouts of the writer, I tend to shove them into the “this is personal and not for me” category and never read them again. I guess I think that no one really cares what I do for exercise.

I don’t know why I assume that people care about what I THINK about exercise, but that’s another story…

If you have been feeling a little unmotivated to get your workouts done, you might want to try one of Kathy’s suggestions. More importantly, what do YOU do to keep motivated and interested in exercise?

If bare-foot running seems a little too extreme for you, these shoes are supposed to give you the same benefits of running barefoot while still giving you some protection from rocks, glass and pinecones.

• Vibramfivefingers

I don’t know if I believe it. It looks like hype to me. I know that barefoot running is supposed to protect some people from injury, but I am still addicted to my running shoes. I love how they feel and I never have any blisters. Of course, I’m running a lot less miles every week than the people who are benefitting from barefoot running, so I don’t have much to say about the stress and trauma that people training for a marathon endure.

Via: A Passion for Running » doctor romanov of pose method endorses vibram five fingers shoe

I buy my tennis shoes from Ryka, so they send me email every once and a while. Mostly it’s just advertisements for more Ryka products, but this time, they announced a series of races they are sponsoring, Iron Girl.

• RYKA – Iron Girl Race Series

The race schedule is as follows:

• July 9 – Boston, MA
• July 23 – Irving, TX
• August 6 – Denver, CO
• August 27 – Columbia, MD
• September 10 – Seattle, WA
• September 24 – Bloomington, MN
• September 30 – Clearwater, FL
• December 2 – Tempe, AZ

The nearest they come to me is Denver, so I won’t be participating in any of these triathlons, but it’s nice to know that Ryka is actually sponsoring events that have something to do with their shoes.

If you have been having trouble with motivation lately, try signing up for a race. I’ve found that knowing that I’m going to have to compete against other people is enough to get me out of bed and onto the treadmill every day.

When I was deciding which gym we should join, I looked at the Salt Lake County Recreation Centers. The fees at our closest facility were $5.00 for a daily pass. As I look at the website right now, it seems that their rates are the same even though it has been three years.

This is the origin of my idea that a workout costs five bucks.

It cost five dollars, to workout at the county recreation sites, so I now judge EVERYTHING by that measure. If I look at a workout video and it costs twenty dollars, I think to myself, “Will I work out with that thing for at least four times?” I usually have a workout video memorized after two repetitions, so usually the answer is NO. Sometimes I force myself to workout with something enough times for it to “pay for itself.”

I would have to workout with a $700 treadmill 140 times for it to “pay for itself.” That would be three workouts a week for a year for it to pay for itself. Of course, if Mike can workout with it also, then it “pays for itself” faster.

I’ve used this judge of workout equipment for the last three years and it has made me feel so much better about my purchases. That stability ball that felt like such a rip-off at $20 has paid for itself at least four times. Yourself! Fitness was $40 when we bought it over a year ago, but Mike and I have exercised with Maya so many times that I couldn’t count. It was worth the cost.

It even makes me feel better about the workout videos that I HAVEN’T used. That DVD that I bought at Fry’s in Las Vegas because I thought it would be great for working out in the hotel room feels like a waste. It cost twenty bucks and I only exercised with it once. It was a $15 mistake. When I phrase it that way, I feel much better.

Next time you’re looking at exercise equipment, try the Five Buck Workout evaluation. If you are positive that you are going to run on that treadmill three times a week for a year, then it’s worth it. If you have some doubts about your ability to be that consistent, then you can pass it by without another thought.

Easter is the end of Lent, meaning that you can eat all the things that you gave up during the Catholic time of denial. What did the L.A. Times reporter find among the Italian communities after 40 days of Lent? Two words: Asparagus Flan.

• In the spirit of spring – Los Angeles Times

This dish is made with whole asparagus tips and thick béchamel (thicker and heavier than cream), so this isn’t a healthy dish at all, but in moderation, it’s an interesting change of pace. I wanted to know if it was sweet or savory, but the review doesn’t specify. I thought it was savory until they talked about the sauce,

“For the sauce, I substituted Fontina because it has a more mellow flavor than Parmigiano; it suits the borderline sweetness of the asparagus. But the sauce could be dispensed with altogether, especially if the flan is served as a side dish rather than a first course.”

I think it’s a savory dish, but with fontina cheese and heavy cream, it should be enjoyed in moderation.

Via: Italian Easter, Vegetables, and Sea Salt – LA Times Food section in 60 seconds – Slashfood

Sometimes I feel as if I have no secrets about weight, exercise or eating anymore. I’ve written them all here.

I’ve told you that I have problems with bingeing. I STILL have problems with bingeing.

I’ve told you that I am addicted to exercise gadgets, even though I KNOW they won’t help me lose weight. I still want to buy them.

I’ve told you that I feel like a fraud or a poser when I write for Starling Fitness and I’m not able to keep my eating under control.

There is one secret that I haven’t ever told you, though…

Writing for Starling Fitness helps me more than it helps any of you. Your comments on my entries mean more to me than all the other websites I read on a daily basis. If it wasn’t for Starling Fitness, I would have given up by now.

I wish my secrets would evaporate when I wrote them here, but they don’t. I STILL have these troubles, even though I confess them every day.

If you were to write a secret postcard to PostSecret about weight, exercise or eating, what would it be?

How would you feel if your secret evaporated the second you wrote it here?

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.

If you thought avoiding Easter Candy was hard, just imagine how it was for this guy. He created a giant Cadbury Creme Egg.

• SupersizedMeals.com – Giant Cadbury Creme Egg

He completed this project by hollowing out 22 normal sized Cadbury Eggs and placing the fillings in the huge egg.

After eating the discarded shells of 22 Cadbury Eggs, he wanted nothing to do with his huge egg and sold it on EBay for the equivalent of $30 (17 pounds).

J. K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, had a series of events happen to her that made her stand up and notice the pressure that all women are under to be thin.

• J.K.Rowling Official Site – For Girls Only, Probably…

She saw a woman whom she hadn’t seen for three years and the first thing the woman said was how thin she was. Rowling’s instinctive response was perfect.

“I’ve produced my third child and my sixth novel since I last saw you. Aren’t either of those things more important, more interesting, than my size? But no – my waist looked smaller! Forget the kid and the book: finally, something to celebrate!”

She goes on to say,

“Let my girls be Hermiones, rather than Pansy Parkinsons.”

But she has failed to notice that the actress playing Hermione has wasted away to a skinny skeleton of herself.

None of us are exempt from this body judgment, not even world-famous authors.

Via: Skinny Models: Telling It Like It Is