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

I was at the library picking up some CDs that I had ordered and I saw this book sitting in the highlighted books section. I picked it up and decided to read it to review it for Starling Fitness. I find this diet plan iffy and based on unproven science. The ideas at the beginning of the book, however, are very helpful motivators.

• The Thin Commandments

The Thin Commandments are as follows:

• Strategy is stronger than willpower: He suggests eating every 3-4 hours to prevent the kind of hunger that can spawn a binge. He also recommends keeping a food diary.

• Think historically, not just calorically: This commandment is repeated so many times throughout the book that I don’t know why he didn’t put it first. I don’t know why he didn’t use it as the title of the book. He suggests analyzing your food history and identifying foods and situations that have been involved with bingeing. Then, he says that you are powerless against these foods and should never eat them again. I don’t agree with that premise and I think it’s much better to learn to live with your Vulnerability Foods.

• The problem may be in the food, not in you: This phrase may sound empowering, but what the author is really saying is that you have no control over certain foods. He suggests avoiding the food to desensitize yourself from it with no plan for slowly reintroducing it. I disagree with anything that suggests that I am powerless.

• Structure gives control: He suggests eating a snack with protein and fiber during the 3pm – 5pm hours. Bring your own snacks and not depend on fate to provide for you. Plan ahead so that you won’t get too hungry. These are all good tips. If you are on a different sleep schedule, you will need to find when you’re sleepiest time of the day is and plan a protein/fiber snack during that time of the day.

• Separate mood from food and strategies for preventing mood eating: These are good strategies strikingly similar to the Weight Watchers Tools For Living.

• Take control of your favorite foods: He suggests adopting the phrase, “I don’t begin, I don’t have any problem.” Aside from grammatically awkward, I disagree with this commandment because I refuse to live my life without my favorite foods. You CAN live a healthy life at a healthy weight and enjoy your favorite foods in moderation, no matter what the author of this book says.

• Slips should teach you, not defeat you: The Weight Watcher equivalent to this is, “There are no failures, only feedback.” This is a really good commandment with lots of ideas on how to recover from a binge and how to learn from it.

• Stop feeling deprived: This is also a really good section about changing your mindset from deprivation to concentrating on a healthy life. He suggests substitution, not deprivation. I’ve never found that to work for me, but many of the ideas that he has here are great ways to concentrate on healthier eating habits.

• Treat your calories like dollars: This is a concept that most newbies learn from Weight Watchers in the first week. Is it “Point-Worthy?” is something that I learned to ask myself very quickly. The same is true for calories. If the food is not very filling, but has a lot of calories, you need to make a conscious decision to know whether you feel it’s worth eating. There are a lot of tips in this section about nutrition. Some of them are based on unproven science: the thermogenic effect of food, “magic” foods (like cinnamon, fish, fiber and calcium) help you lose weight and The Dairy Myth. Some of them are good advice: Fill up on fruit, drink water to feel full, exercise your body and your judgment.

• Losing weight is half the job; keeping it off is the other half: Instead of teaching you how to slowly add trigger foods back into your life, he suggests avoiding them forever. There are a few other tips to maintain, which are basically, watch for the inevitable weight gain and go back on the diet.

Worst Quote:

“No matter how intelligent you are, or how secure you feel, you’re no match for the force that is your body’s physiological response to food.”

I don’t believe that to be true. You are not powerless over food. Take back your power and use it to get healthy and strong.

On the whole, this is a relatively good book. The motivational thoughts and the ideas like creating meditation tapes may not be original, but they are helpful. I would follow a sensible eating plan like Eat More, Lose More or Weight Watchers and use this book for a motivational boost.

I don’t know how it happens, but even the blogs I read for fun end up to be eating lessons for me. I regularly read a blog written by Ward Jenkins, an animator who works for Primal Screen. He has worked on Space Ghost: Coast to Coast and probably a hundred other things, but I can’t find a complete resume for him. I started reading Ward-O-Matic because of his wonderful review, The Polar Express: A Virtual Train Wreck. It explained to me why the animation on that movie gave me the heebie-jeebies.

This entry, “More or less,” is about animation and developing the ability to work in that medium:

• The Ward-O-Matic – More or less? – by Ward Jenkins

He says:

“A new animator wants to put more drawings in, a seasoned animator wants to take more drawings out.”

When I read that, I felt the same thing about eating healthy.

“A new dieter wants to put more food into their diet, but a seasoned healthy eater wants to take more food out.”

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If you have lost weight by removing foods from your life, you’re probably feeling pretty desperate right now. You haven’t had this binge food for a long time and the more you think about it, the less control you feel like you have over it. Your house is clean of the food and has been for a while, but the thought of a life without that food doesn’t sound like it’s worth living. If this sounds familiar, you’re in luck. I’m going to tell you how to add former binge foods back into your life.

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This entry comments on the increasing trend of fiber being added to all sorts of foods, from yogurt to candy bars.

• Yahoo! Health Expert Blogs Eat Right, Stay Fit – Fiber

I think this trend in the food industry was originally spawned by the Atkin’s Net Carb thing. There was the idea that if carbohydrates were countered with fiber that they caused less of an insulin spike. Because of this idea, lots of products showed up on the market with added fiber, including candy bars and yogurt.

I think there is also an incentive to increase the fiber levels of typically fiber-lacking foods in order to lower the Weight Watcher Points values of food. The Weight Watcher Points system is a calculation based on the fat, fiber and calorie content of foods. Increased fiber, lowers the Points value. In order to play upon the popularity of Weight Watchers, food manufacturers are adding fiber to food. Weight Watchers is not the innocent victim in this game either, though. If you look at their food products, they are unusually high in fiber content as well.

In cases like these, it is always better to eat homemade food. A dinner made by you with fresh ingredients will always be more healthy than a frozen dinner. When you are choosing convenience, make sure you look at the label and try to find the products with the least amount of ingredients and the healthiest mix of carbohydrates and fat. Don’t be fooled by added fiber. It doesn’t necessarily make the food more healthy for you, even if the Net Carbs or WW Points are less.

The first question that needs to be answered when tackling this is, “Why?” Why do you want to cut a certain food out of your life? What’s the point? The best way to prevent the feeling of deprivation is not depriving yourself.

Weight loss isn’t enough. If you want to lose weight, I promise you that you can do it without removing that food from your life. It is possible to eat healthy with rare treats in order to stave off deprivation. If you think you have to cut foods out of your life in order to lose weight or prevent binges, you need to read this entry on Vulnerability Foods.

Getting fit is not enough. Unless you are an Olympic athlete, a rare treat of your favorite foods is not going to influence your performance. No matter how many personal trainers say, “Food is fuel,” it doesn’t make it the whole truth. If food were solely fuel, there would be no creme brulee. Food is about pleasure just as much as it’s about providing nutrition.

What if the food doesn’t give you pleasure, however? What if when I asked you, “Why do you want to cut a certain food out of your life?” you answered, “Because thirty minutes after eating, I always find myself in the bathroom defecating what feels like a diamond encrusted howler monkey.” Then that sounds like a valid reason to stop eating it. If you answered, “Whenever I eat that food, I get a mind-splitting headache,” that’s another good reason. It could even be something as simple as, “I just feel kinda yucky after I eat it.” If your reason has a clear manifestation, then this section is for you.

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After the last few years of Low Carb Everything, the pendulum has swung the other way. I tried the Atkins diet and it left me listless and grumpy. I was promised weight loss without hunger. I got low energy and nominal weight loss. I lost five pounds and then the scale stuck at 230. After that, I was pretty bitter. Low Carb hit the market like a tsunami and I was the first to ridicule it.

This entry from Diet Blog gives an unbiased view of the Low Carb phenomenon and tells us what good came out of all that hype:

• Diet Blog – Low Carb: Misconceptions Abound

In the end, we learned that “Fat is not evil. We eat too many refined carbs. Whole food is best.” I wouldn’t say that the Low Carb phenomena taught me these things. It took me years of experimenting with various foods and checking my hunger levels against what I ate to learn this. The funny thing is that I came to the same conclusion independently.

It feels like we are in a lull right now. The Low Carb fad is over and the new head of the beast hasn’t grown back yet. I’m wondering if the next fad will be “Whole Foods.” I wonder how the food industry will spin their products to fall into that category.

Everything online about Weight Watchers sounds like a commercial. Let me tell you the truth about it without all that sugar coating.

Why I Stay With Weight Watchers Even Though I Have The Points Program Memorized By Heart:

It’s not about the Points. If I could follow the program by myself, then calorie counting would have worked for me. Points is actually more complicated than keeping track of calories, yet it’s the first program where I was able to keep the weight off.

It’s not about the Core Food List. There is no magic food list that would have worked for me. I tried limiting my intake of food before. I did lose weight, but I gained it right back when I “fell off the wagon.”

It’s not even about the Tools For Living. They are very powerful and helpful parts of the system, but the first time I read them, they were useless to me. It wasn’t until I sat through several classes describing their use that I was able to use them.

The meetings and the accountability are the one thing that have kept me on track week after week. I suggest finding a leader that you love. Go to the same class every week. Get to know the people at the class. Be honest when you say how you’re doing. Participate in the class. You can’t replace the accountability that you will receive when you attend the same class at the same time with the same leader EVERY week.

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This is a very informative blog entry about the media’s constant attention on famous people and calling them anorexic. It makes one wonder if anorexia is the new diet fad.

• Diet-Blog – Anorexia: The New Diet Plan?

Skipping meals itself is not enough to be considered anorexic. It is, however, very detrimental to any dieting efforts you may be working on. This entry explains it perfectly.

This week, we are concentrating on diet and nutrition. It isn’t the only factor in weight loss. Any program that tells you that you can lose weight without eating healthy AND exercising is probably lying to you. This week, however, we are going to focus of tightening up our eating program. Here is a sampling of what we have in store for you this week:

• Low Carb Backlash – What did we learn from the last few years of fad eating?

• More Fiber in Foods – Why is there fiber in your yogurt?

• More or Less? – “A new dieter wants to put more food into their diet, but a seasoned healthy eater wants to take more food out.”

• How To Remove Foods from Your Life without Feeling Deprived

• How To Work Former Binge Foods Back Into Your Life

Stay tuned for these entries and more this week!

I find it fascinating that any blog that starts with the phrase:

“I ran in the rain today and it was g-l-o-r-i-o-u-s!”

Could end with the phrase:

“I must thank God no one was there at the end to witness my 30 second dry-heaving episode.”

• A Passion for Running – get outta my way!

Running has never felt like that for me. There are times after a race that I have felt like I was going to faint because of poor planning on the part of the race directors, but I have never run so fast that I want to barf afterward. I wonder if that means that I’m reasonable or that I’m not pushing myself hard enough.

Running is a joyful thing to me. Pushing myself so hard that I get dry heaves just doesn’t sound appealing. It actually seems like a punishment. It seems like abuse. I know Mark was doing a time test to see if his times have improved since his recovery, but I don’t know if I could ever get to the point where I can say, “The run was glorious,” and “I almost threw up,” in one breath.

I guess we’ll see.