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

This is a great article if you are a regular runner who wants to run faster or longer. They have 21 days of rest and workout for you. It is also supposed to get you in the habit of running, but anyone that can do these workouts is already a regular runner. I wouldn’t recommend these for a beginner.

• 21 Days to Better Running – Runners World – by Doug Rennie

I used to subscribe to Runners World and I found it very useful when I was training for my first 5K. I’ve found that my Treadmill Workout Spreadsheet is more helpful to me now, but I do find the articles and pictures motivating. It’s a good magazine that doesn’t overload you with advertisements.

Via: Fitness News – 21 Days to Better Running

Update 08-28-06: It looks like Runner’s World has pulled this article. It’s a shame because it was a kind of a good one.

Sometimes I feel like I’m the only skeptical food addict on the planet. Every weekday, I receive the Hungry Girl email in my inbox gushing about all the new fake food out there. It’s nice to know that there are others out there who are wary of the food industry and their Franken-Foods.

• Diet Blog – Whole Grain White Bread: Huh?

This post talks about the new Whole Grain White Bread which is supposed to be made of a new specifically-bred grain. It’s not genetically modified, just bred… um… bread.

Rumor around town says that Coca-Cola and Nestle are creating a “calorie burning tea.” There is supposition about flavors, but very little talk about efficacy in the following Hungry Girl article.

• Hungry Girl – Monday Newsletter – Calorie Burning Tea

I am so wary of everything that I read from Hungry Girl. I somehow feel that they are just an advertising outlet for the food industry. Here’s the reason why: the article about calorie burning tea looks like it’s quoted word for word from the information from this article:

• Billings Gazette – Coke, Nestle developing calorie-burning tea

This article goes into depth about marketing gimmicks and whether the tea could possibly be effective, whereas Hungry Girl just froths about a tea that can boost your metabolism. Hungry Girl didn’t even touch on the best quote from the entire article:

“Consumers need to be aware of anything that says easy weight loss, anything that promotes a quick fix,” said Jessica Enders, a registered dietician at Emory University Hospital.

Remember, there are lots of companies out there trying to take your money. Don’t let them get you.

Dear Laura,

I have recently stopped taking aspartame. My son and I have been drinking diet lemon lime sodas almost exclusively. I have seen information about aspartame and decided that it was time to get off it. We switched to bottled water, but have each been drinking about one diet drink daily. We both have dry mouth after decreasing to one a day. I have also experienced bed wetting 3 times. I am not sure if that is because I’m not drinking the aspartame or not. I’ve tried drinking less in the evening, but my mouth is so dry. Normally, I wake in the night to use the bathroom, but these 3 times I didn’t. I think I increased diet soda drink each time after wetting and didn’t wet the following night. I have awakened 2 times with severe pain in my left elbow. One of those times, my hand and arm were very swollen. I added over the counter potassium to see if that helps. I don’t like to admit taking an old prescription of HCTZ, but I did, to decrease the swelling. Are dry mouth, fluid retention, bed wetting and increased pain possibly be symptoms of aspartame withdrawal?

Leaving Lemon-Lime

Dear Leaving Lemon-Lime,

I really don’t know the symptoms of aspartame withdrawal, if there are any. Considering your symptoms, I think it would be best to see a trusted doctor.

Laura

I started eating healthy because of this stomach problem. The doctor said I had Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). He handed me a clean colonoscopy and a clean MRI, and basically told me that the reason I had IBS was because I was fat and ate too much fast food. I covertly flipped him off, my left hand covering the right hand’s finger, and I never saw him again.

That doesn’t mean that I didn’t believe him. I decided to get my body in shape and get my eating under control. I decided to do Body For Life. I looked at all those before and after pictures in his book and I was convinced it was the right thing for me to do. I prepared my food and workout journal and started. I worked out and ate perfectly the first day. The second day, I couldn’t move without hurting and I quit.

Two months later, I started Weight Watchers. It was a plan I could follow and after three and a half years, I can safely say that I follow the plan perfectly 80% of the time. My stomach pain has diminished greatly, but there are still times when I experience intense abdominal cramping. I am close to my goal weight and I eat healthy, yet I still am in pain. Sometimes it’s just as bad as when I weighed 235 pounds.

I feel like I should feel justified. I feel like I should go back to that idiot doctor and make him eat his words. Instead, I am STILL blaming myself. During my last attack, I started considering that it might be psychosomatic. After all I have learned about IBS, I still blame myself.

Doctors are not perfect and they have prejudices against overweight people just as so many other people do. If you feel like your symptoms have been glossed over because of your weight, go see another doctor. More importantly, losing weight will help guarantee that you will get healthier, if only because you’ll be able to bypass the prejudice and get better health care.

The YMCA is helping a lot more than “young men” now. They have devised a fitness plan that forces new participants to start out slow. Instead of hurting and being unable to walk after each workout, new clients are slowly taught the habit of exercise. I think it’s a great idea!

• CNN.com – Program aims to prolong exercise habits – Associated Press

When I started out exercising I just jumped in gung ho. Nothing could stop me. I didn’t care that I was hurting because the only thing that was important to me was losing weight. It took me a long time to learn that exercise is more about making myself healthy so I will live longer. If I’m in pain, that means I overdid it and I need to rest the next day. Taking the softer approach has kept me injury free and able to run, bike and play as much as I want.

Via: About.com – Stick With Your Exercise Program – by Paige Waehner

This StrengthCast is a telephone interview with Dave DePew, a personal trainer from San Diego. Despite the interview happening over the telephone, it is quite easy to listen to and understand (the sound quality is good). Dave Depew’s plan has a Money Back Guarantee, which is interesting, but this interview doesn’t provide the details of it.

• StrengthCast – Dave DePew Interview

This StrengthCast seems to be more for personal trainers than for people trying to take care of their own health. He gives a lot of advice about tailoring the workout plan to the client. Most of us ARE the client, so listening to this interview might not be as inspiring as it could be.

When I imagined the Inner Workouts category, this is the kind of entry I imagined for it.

• a million monkeys typing » On the Beauty of Imperfection

My favorite quote from this entry:

“Is beauty a thing so shallow that following a few simple rules will allow one to calculate it?”

If it were, only five percent of the population would procreate. You are so much more than the numbers on the scale.

Update 09-02-14

I know this entry is REALLY old and MusicMatch doesn’t exist anymore, but you can use iTunes, record things on your phone or use Audacity to record your meditation MP3.

If you did the exercise on my Visualize a Different You, then you have written down positive thoughts about how you want to be in the future and how you want to visualize yourself right now. Braidwood said it like this:

“You know what I’ve been thinking about? Advertising! It is a science and it WORKS, it changes people’s minds. So, why not advertise what you want for yourself?! Create a jingle, create some enticing pictures and a slogan, and expose yourself to them often. You will be unable to resist… :)”

That’s what this entry today will show you how to do…

(more…)

After July’s issue, which had me inwardly screaming in anger at the diet pill article, this month’s O Magazine is much, much better. There is a brilliant article about eating “real” food instead of “fake” food. Dr. Phil has an interesting entry about losing weight and there is this article about those last 10 pounds.

• The Last 10 Pounds

I was pleased to notice that for most of the women, Bob Greene recommended that they didn’t need to lose those last 10 pounds. He suggested that they continue exercising to tone up and be healthy, but losing the weight was not a goal they should pursue. It’s a rare health guru that will tell his followers that they are beautiful the way they are and that they shouldn’t lose any more weight.