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

Self Magazine has an online service that helps you track your caloric intake and exercise. It’s free for their subscribers.

• Self Diet Club

It’s pretty cool, actually.

They have a huge list of foods to search from including name brand processed foods and fast food from restaurants. The same is true for exercise. They have choices of everything from cleaning the house to running 10 minute miles.

I especially like the meal planner. You tell it the number of calories that you want to eat every day and it breaks it down into portions of protein, dairy, fruits and grains for you to eat each meal, including suggestions. Once you choose your selections, you can print up your day and even create a shopping list.

After you’ve maintained your food journal for a while, the Self Diet program can analyze your diet habits and tell you where you can optimize things. They shoot for a healthy balance of protein, carbohydrates and fat, so they will analyze what you eat and tell you how your percentages rack up against the recommendations.

This service is free with a subscription to SELF Magazine. For twelve bucks a year, you get the online service AND the magazine. That’s a lot cheaper than the Weight Watchers Online service (not to mention MyFoodPhone) and just as helpful.

I’m shockingly impressed by MTV’s review of the fat suit trend in Hollywood.

• MTV.com – Movies – News – Rewind: Does The Fat Suit Really Fit Anyone In Hollywood?

They were really hard on Shallow Hal, which was one movie that I really thought the fat suit looked more real than any other and had a good moral ending to the “lookism” problem. There were a lot of cheap shot fat jokes in it, but I actually liked the movie a lot.

This article was obviously initiated because of the release of the movie, Just Friends, in which the main character plays a fat kid who loses the weight and goes back to win the heart of his first love. I wish Hollywood would let me write that story. That girl who wouldn’t even consider him dating material when he was fat isn’t worth his time. She was too shallow to love him when he wasn’t “perfect,” why should he try to win her over now that he is?

I want to see the story of the girl who loved him so much for who he was that he eventually believed in her vision of him. He lost the weight because she convinced him that he should take care of himself, live a healthy life and have the body he deserved. That’s the movie that I want to see. Either that, or the revenge scenario where he realizes that she’s not worth winning after he becomes thin (or before, for that matter).

Hollywood doesn’t understand the complicated issues of fat because it’s an industry that surrounds itself with thin. Hollywood understands thin very well. Anyone who has seen The Machinist can attest to that, but they have no comprehension of what fat is like. It’s going to take a movie from an independent to tell the world what fat is really like. Just like Napoleon Dynamite was able to tell the world what a rural teen experiences, there is a director and writer out there who can truly tell Hollywood what it’s like to be fat and when they do, they’ll be a blockbuster because everyone who has ever experienced this will flock to the theaters.

Until then, don’t let Hollywood convince you that being fat means that you have to be lonely. Loneliness is caused by isolating yourself from people, not from your body shape. If you are lonely, it’s not because you’re fat. Promise yourself that you will do something today to alleviate your loneliness (join a club, call an old friend, volunteer your time). Then, when you get to goal weight, you won’t have the shocking discovery that thin people get lonely too.

Via: Big Fat Blog: MTV on Fat Suits

There is a new service out there that is willing to help you journal your food and give you feedback from a registered dietician. It’s called My Food Phone.

• My Food Phone

Here’s how it works:

• Every day, you take pictures of every meal and snack and upload them to your account.
• Once a week, you will receive a video message from their nutritionist with recommendations on how to eat healthier.
• You can keep track of your meals in visual form online along with your weight, BMI, waist to hip ratio and lots of other items that you may want to track.

According to them:

“This is much more fun – and motivating – than pen and paper food journaling!”

It may be, but it typically costs between $99 and $149 a month. At that cost, it’s worth the money to just write down what you eat for the day. At that cost, you could probably hire a personal nutritionist to look over your food journal and give you recommendations once a month.

Don’t lose the good idea with the horrible execution, however.

If you find yourself too busy to write down your meal in your journal and you’re scared that you might forget all that you ate, take a quick photo of it with your camera phone. It will jog your memory when it comes time to write it all down.

I don’t know about the rest of the world, but this secret that was posted on PostSecret is a personal fear of mine. Even though I have lost a lot of weight, I haven’t hit PlayBoy Bunny status. Part of the reason is that I stopped wearing makeup and working so hard on my appearance when I lost the weight. Another part is that I’m still 30 pounds away from my goal weight and 45 pounds away from PlayBoy Bunny weight.

What if I get to goal weight and I become vain? Isn’t spending so much time on losing weight just another form of vanity? What if I lose weight and think I’m finally beautiful, but it turns out that I was one of those fat AND ugly people? What if losing weight doesn’t make me pretty? What if losing weight makes me shallow and hollow like a chocolate easter bunny?

All of these worries have plagued me for years. The best that I have been able to do to curb them is quit wearing makeup and concentrate on health. I started this journey because my stomach hurt me all the time. Concentrating on that aspect of eating healthy has been the most helpful to me. I am not losing weight to be a beauty queen. I’m losing weight so I can live on this planet a couple of more years.

If any of you have conquered this fear, leave a comment. I’m sure others are fighting with this issue and I KNOW that it has been interfering with my weight loss for a long time.

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.

I haven’t worked out with Yourself! Fitness in a long time. I really enjoyed working out with Maya, but playing DDR is a little more fun and running on the treadmill is a little more intense. It appears that Glen at Videogame Workout is more dedicated to working out with Maya than I was.

• Videogame Workout: And Now, a Poem!

I can’t believe that I have owned Yourself! Fitness for over a year. I kind of got sick of it after the first couple of months. There was a lot less repetition than a workout video, but there were still problems with the game. I would have liked to adjust the intensity on the cardio without increasing the intensity on the weight training. I would have liked to be able to say that I wanted to workout with the stability ball or weights. Just because I told Maya that I had those items didn’t mean she would use them. All in all, Yourself! Fitness is an amazing workout program that eclipses anything else on the market, but it still isn’t quite enough to prevent boredom.

The Food Museum weblog had a shocking discovery over the Thanksgiving Holiday. She was looking for whipping cream and could not find one in the grocery store that wasn’t loaded with extra ingredients.

• food museum blog: Eat Well and Be Well–Happy Thanksgiving!

The last few times I purchased cream, I never even thought about looking at the ingredients. Now, I’ll be checking them. If I’m going to spend the calories and fat on whipping cream, I want to have the real stuff, not some fake cream filled with emulsifiers and seaweed.

“Foodie held a small carton of something labeled whipping cream but when she scanned the list of ingredients “cream” was not high among them. The “food gum,” carrageenan, a seaweedish item once only from Ireland but evidently now more likely to come from the Philippines or Chile, was on the list–along with gelatin and diclycerides and so on. Stabilizers and emulsifiers rule in mass produced cream and other milk products.”

Part of eating healthy is knowing what is worth the calories. Once I’ve decided that “real” whipped cream is worth it for this dessert or occasion, I don’t want to have a huge list of alternate ingredients in my cream. I want the real thing.

I just got a CycleOps Bike Trainer so I could exercise inside this winter. It was pretty easy to setup and you can see my review of it on the Gadgets Page:

• The Gadgets Page » First Glance: CycleOps Mag Indoor Bike Trainer

The bike trainer came with a Train Right DVD that you can exercise with. The particular DVD that came with my trainer was called Train Right: Time Trial, which I can’t find on Amazon.com, but they offer Train Right: Climbing. This video is exactly what I need in an exercise video.

Too many workout videos spend too much time talking. There is plenty of talking from the coach, Chris Carmichael, but he isn’t irritating or perky. He sounds like he’s just coaching me through a tough workout. Chris Carmichael was the US Olympic Committee Coach of the Year, so he really knows what he’s talking about.

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These pictures are not a hoax. They are very real. Cathie Jung started corset training after giving natural birth to her three children. She whittled her 26 inch waist down to 15 inches. She has been listed in the Guiness Book of World Records as the Smallest Waist on a Living Person. She has been unable to get down to Ethel Granger’s 13 inch waist, but she is far taller than Ethel Granger was.

• Cathie Jung Website

I remember in fifth grade, the Guiness Book of World Records was the cool book to read. I found everything except the human body section incredibly boring. I remember being fascinated by the fat, the tall, the small, the conjoined and the boy with flippers for hands. It was like an eighteenth century sideshow in a book. The capacity for variation within the human species is so vast that we all fit in there somewhere.

Comparing yourself to anyone else is as silly as comparing yourself to the extremes of our species. We are all unique creatures. Wishing your butt looked like Jessica Simpson’s is just as harmful to your psyche as wearing a corset every day of your life in order to whittle your waist down to 15 inches. Yes, you can do it, but you are never the same afterward. Enjoy the beauty of your body as it is now and do your best to treat it with respect and loving kindness.

Via: Museum of Hoaxes – 15-Inch Waist

This is a story from Associated Press about how Minnesota State University is encouraging fitness on their campus.

• Happy News – Exercise goes high-tech on Minnesota campus – Associated Press

The university has outifitted their exercise gear with computer/entertainment systems where the students can do homework, surf the web or watch television while on the exercise machines. It looks like a little awkward setup based on the picture, but having to stretch a little to reach the keyboard is better than boredom.

Speaking from experience, it’s much easier for me to finish my workout when I can watch a movie, television or listen to music. The time seems to fly by quickly compared to those times when all I am left with are my own thoughts.

This is a Salon.com article about a teen training camp called Wellspring. Five years ago, it would have been called a fat camp, but Wellspring wants the emphasis to be on the training aspect. They imagine that they are training these teenagers to have a “healthy obsession” with food.

• Salon.com Life | Gut check – By Katharine Mieszkowski

As an overweight child and teen, I’m pretty bugged by Katharine’s attitude toward overweight teenagers:

“I did meet shy kids, who seemed as if they’d be a lot more comfortable alone in front of a computer screen than with their peers. But I also met major social alphas and super-extroverted comedians, who sang and rapped and joked. It may be time for the stereotype of the overweight social outcast to get a big fat makeover.”

She was amazed that teenagers could be overweight and popular. She was amazed that one of the campers was a cheerleader back home. She was amazed that these kids didn’t fit her narrow stereotype of what overweight means. Most importantly, she couldn’t resist saying the phrase “big fat makeover.”

Since I was an overweight teenager, I look at the entire experience differently. Take Lily, the only camper there with the “kahunas” to tell the truth about her situation:

“My mom is embarrassed about the way I look,” says Lily, who weighed 170 pounds when she came to camp and at five feet, five inches is supposed to weigh between 119 and 149 pounds according to the BMI. “She’s afraid I’ll keep gaining weight. She doesn’t want an obese kid, because no one will be my friend and no one will talk to me, and I’ll be really unhappy.”

The truth of the matter is I bet most of those kids are there against their will. They are fantasizing about Pringles and milk and beef and chicken because this is an externally instituted change. The only lasting change must come from within. Unless those kids want to get thin and healthy, throwing money at an “adventure” camp won’t do a thing for them.

Every summer when I came out from under the strict regime of my grandparents and went back home to my parents, I binged. I ate things just because I had been denied them for so long. I binged during those summers, too. I saved up all my allowance money and spent it on the highest calorie food I could. I don’t think these fat camps are helpful to teenagers who are sent to them, only teenagers who beg to go.

Western Wellspring Adventure Weight Loss Camp for Teens in California

Via: Boing Boing: Weight-loss camp demands obsessive measurement