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

Would you flail me alive if I told you that I notice the 300 pound young woman who waits for the bus every morning? I pass her with my car. I pass her on my bike. She waits for the bus with her headphones blaring. Anyone who rides the bus regularly soon learns to arm themselves with headphones. Otherwise the mentally unstable riders who see you everyday assume that you’re their friend. Her headphones announce, “Stay away. I’m not your friend.” I noticed her look at me when I passed her in my Beetle once. I smiled at her, hoping to coax a smile out of her, but she turned away.

I’m only guessing at her weight. She towers over me in height, clocking in at almost six feet tall. If I was as fat as she is, I would weigh about 300 pounds, but I’m only 5’2″, so she must weigh more. My eye is drawn to her every day. She waits for the Westbound 30 and I whiz past her on my bike, trying to avoid her gaze despite being drawn to look at her.

Most of the time, I feel like I was only a few pounds away from her fate when I joined Weight Watchers. I feel a kinship to her. I feel the desire to print up my before pictures and show them to her. I want to pull her aside and secretly tell her that I have found the path to a healthier life. If she wants to follow it, I’ll show her the way. I want to give her my bike and tell her to ride it every day, even though it’s far too small for her long legs.

I know that’s the worst thing I could possibly do. I still sting from the casual mention from the grocery store clerk looking at my selection of food. She said, “Have you see that Body For Life book?” She pointed at the book at the checkout. “I can’t believe those before and after pictures. Those people lost all that weight in just 12 weeks.” She might have just been making small talk, but it still stung.

The best thing for me to do is just leave that girl alone. All she is doing is waiting for her bus every day. Her headphones make it perfectly clear what she thinks of me, “Stay away. I’m not your friend.”

Steve Pavlina has written a great entry about the difference between End Goals and Means Goals. It’s a great read and really applicable to weight loss.

• Steve Pavlina – End Goals vs. Means Goals

If you feel like you’ve failed, take another look. What did you fail at? Did you stop exercising every day? Did you overeat at the buffet? Did you lose your battle with bingeing? Did you buy another weight loss product at a high price only to find out that it’s useless? Whatever you think you’ve failed at isn’t the End Goal. All of those things are just a means to get to your End Goal.

The End Goal is to be at a healthy weight and fitness level. If you stopped exercising, that is just information for you. Whatever you were doing wasn’t your thing. You need to find something else that you truly love that will bring activity into your life. If you binged at the buffet last night, you didn’t blow it. You just overate one day. Today is a new day and a new chance to live healthy. Next time, you’ll know that going for more than one trip up to the buffet is not a good idea.

All those things that make you feel like a failure are nothing. Cull what information you can from them but keep your eye on the End Goal, not on those Mean Goals. There are a myriad of ways to get to a healthy weight and fitness level.

I subscribe to Seventeen magazine. The first time I noticed that they were using models who looked normal, I called Mike over to me.

“Look at this!”

“What is it?”

“It’s Seventeen magazine.”

He looked at the pages and handed the magazine back to me.

“Do you want those jeans?”

“No, look at the models. They look like normal human beings.”

He took the magazine back and looked at it again.

“They look like models to me.”

Sure, they were models, but they were normal sized models with real bodies instead of living, breathing coat hangers.

“This is why I love Seventeen Magazine.”

• MSNBC.com – More curves hit pages of women’s magazines – Associated Press

This article, while noticing that magazines have a much better view of the female form, is still insulting to me because of this quote:

“Mixed among the pages of dazzling celebrities and rail-thin models that dominate fashion and teen magazines is a surprising sight: young women with thick thighs and flabby abs.”

Instead of describing them like they really are using words like “voluptuous” or “realistic”, they said “thick thighs and flabby abs.” Magazines like Seventeen have come a long way, but there’s a reason that Associated Press keeps their reporters anonymous. They don’t want me hunting them down and giving them a sock in the jaw.

The most important quote from this article is the following:

“I think maybe seeing someone like me in a magazine makes you realize that you don’t have to be skinny to be pretty,” she said. “People see skinny girls in magazines and they think that’s what normal is when it’s not the case.”

Remember this and hold it close to you. That is the thought that will help you make healthier choices in your life. You are beautiful and you are worth the effort it takes to get and stay healthy.

Via: About.com – Real Women Have Curves – by Paige Waehner

It appears that someone has been working on their Photoshop Skillz by making thin models even thinner:

• The Museum of Hoaxes – Too Skinny?

I sometimes wonder at things like this. When I first saw the Photoshopped picture, I thought to myself, “That girl needs to eat a sandwich.” I almost felt justified. I may not be at my goal weight, but at least I’m not wasting away.

I almost think that pictures like these and those photos of Lindsay Lohan’s ribs serve a purpose for us, whether they are real or not. When I saw that picture, I felt that being fat was better than wasting away. It is, but the best option is to be a healthy weight. Maybe these sort of pictures serve the purpose of keeping us from realizing our dreams of achieving a healthy weight. Maybe they feed our fear of being hungry all the time.

Don’t let things like this distract you. When you get to your goal weight, you will be healthy and strong, not weak and skinny.

Via: The Museum of Hoaxes – Skinny Women

I regularly read The Food Museum blog. They tend to talk about places that I don’t live near and food that I may never eat, but every once and awhile, I find something interesting. Here is a link to their views on School Lunch Reform.

• The FOOD Museum – School Lunch Reform

My views on the subject are tainted by my experience with school lunch as a young adult. Once I hit high school, I felt like I was in heaven as far as school lunch was concerned. No matter what they served, I could always have a salad. Of course, I drenched it with ranch dressing, but I always felt like I had a healthy option.

Personally, I don’t think school lunch is the problem. I think that parents that don’t provide a good example are the problem. If your children see you eat healthy in every environment, they will do the same. If your children are sent to school with immaculately healthy food in their lunchbox, then they will eat healthy (aside from trading). I think school lunch reform has more to do with the home than government programs.

When I read about this, I got really excited. It’s an online user-written system for logging and finding good places to go for a run. I didn’t even finish reading the review of it before I clicked over to see what was there.

• Welcome to Run The Planet

It is a really good idea, but the software leaves it poorly executed. I would have liked to see a spot for real addresses to log where to start and where to park. I would have liked to see maps showing where to run and how many miles the run is. Instead, the few runs that have been posted are vague descriptions with unclear directions.

I think I’ll stick with the Google Pedometer when I find myself in a strange city and need to go on a run. Shucks, it was such a good idea…

Via: Really Useful Fitness Blog – Find Local Running/Walking Trails

If you type Health and Fitness into Google, the number one search is this website.

• Health & Fitness Tips Newsletter Archive

It looks like they stopped making newsletters three years ago, yet they are still the top search result. The advice in the newsletters seems to be reasonable, even if the sponsors are a little questionable. When I tried to sign up for the newsletter, it didn’t work.

Check out the tips from three years ago and enjoy yourself.

Please address the problem of leaking in post menopausal women. I would love to run to improve my bone health but… I do kegels, still leak.

My first suggestion is to see a urologist. The body is a really complicated machine and there is no way that I could tell what your particular situation is. Make sure you take your health seriously and see a physician about this situation.

Here are some articles that discuss running and incontinence:

• Overactive Bladder – Urgency/urge incontinence – The American Urogynecologic Society: A very thorough explanation of all the situations in which women may “leak.” There are suggestions here as well as therapies that are available. They mention the importance of keeping a Voiding Diary in order to assess the situation.

• Incontinence: It Doesn’t Just Happen to Your Grandmother: A less thorough article about the issues, but concentrates on exercise incontinence. A very good description of what a Kegel Exercise is.

• DEPEND – Learning Center – About Female Incontinence: More information from Depend Undergarments. No mention of Kegel Exercises or any other options, but they have a form for a Voiding Diary that you can print up and use.

Just as you mentioned Kegel Exercises are the number one recommended way to prevent incontinence in all situations, but here are some other tips that I gathered while looking:

• Do not limit the intake of fluids before or during exercise. It is more important to stay hydrated when exercising.

• Go to the bathroom right before you start exercising.

• Use a tampon when running. This was recommended on a couple of websites and some of the women suffering from this swear by this technique.

• There are some medications available that prevent bladder contractions. Contact your doctor about those options.

• Some women wear a feminine napkin when they exercise (or there are products specifically designed for small urinary leaks). Considering how sweaty a good workout can make you, a little leakage on a feminine napkin or Poise pad isn’t going to be that noticeable.

Most importantly, don’t let this problem get in the way of your physical fitness. There are hundreds of ways to get fit and healthy. You and your doctor should be able to work out a plan so you can participate in sports and be healthy. Don’t rest until you find a way to make this work. You deserve a healthy and strong body.

This StrenthCast is with Caroline Kohles, a NIA dance instructor. If you can stand listening to the guilt trip at the beginning about paying for the membership, this is a pretty good podcast.

• StrengthCast – Caroline Kohles

They don’t talk about NIA very much, such as what it is and what it can do for you. Caroline does give a good motivational talk, however. Here’s my favorite quotation from this podcast:

“Knowing what you want is a huge present because it gives us direction. If you’re ever jealous, then that’s great! That means you want what someone else has and then you know, ‘Wow! That’s what I want!'”

She recommends getting your body on a schedule because the body does better when you have the same routines every day. She also believes that it’s best to take the “shoulds” and “shouldn’ts” out of your life. Instead, you should pay attention to your body. What do you naturally move towards? What do you naturally shy away from? Are these tendencies helpful or harmful to you?

The first time I saw this stuff, my Weight Watchers teacher passed around the one pound version. It was the first time I ever saw a visual reminder of what a loss of one pound of fat really looked like. My leader said, “Next time you complain about only losing a pound, remember what one pound of fat really looks like. A pound a week is plenty.”

• My Pet Fat

This company sells visual reminders like this. I can’t imagine wanting one of your own unless you actually teach people about weight loss. The most dramatic reminder of this was the one at Disneyland’s Innoventions.

Via: Hungry Girl – Monday News 08-22-05