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

It’s everywhere. I can’t pick up a newspaper or turn on the television news without hearing about Childhood Obesity. Every article has tips for parents on how to deal with obese children. What they need to do and what they need to feed their kids.

Let me tell you, as a former obese child, there is no way that your children don’t know that they are fat. They get it every day at school. They hear the rhymes: “Fattie, fattie, two by four. Can’t fit through the bathroom door.” There is no escape from the hell that they experience at school. If you start treating them like they are fat, then there is no escape, period. If they get the torment at school and then get it at home, they might as well…

I’m speaking from experience and here is what I might as well did: vomiting after each meal, starving myself, overeating in frustration, living in depression, and contemplating ending it all. And I was lucky. I only dealt with a home situation that called me fat during the summers when I lived with my grandmother. Three quarters of the year, I lived in a loving and nurturing environment.

So, what do I recommend parents do?

“If you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and make a change.”
– Michael Jackson, The Man in the Mirror, 1987

Your children learned their habits from somewhere. If you want your child to eat healthier food, don’t say a word to them. You need to eat healthy food as an example. That means if you’re making a healthy dinner, they eat it too. If you want a snack, make sure you’re snacking on fruits and vegetables.

If you want your child to stop watching television and playing video games, don’t say a word to them. Get your own butt off the couch. “Hey, I’m going on a bike ride. Do you want to come with me? No? Ok, have fun.” Several weeks of them missing a nightly bike ride, they will join in. It works with anything, “I’m going to go shoot some hoops, wanna come?” “I’m going to take a walk over to the park, wanna come with me?” Don’t force them to come. Don’t reprimand them for not coming. Just give them a good example.

No amount of nagging will make them eat healthier or exercise more. Enrolling them in classes and watching television the whole time they’re gone, just makes them resent you. Forcing them to eat food that is healthy and sneaking off to stuff Hostess Cupcakes in your face just proves to them that “our family is just fat.” Don’t make their homelife the living hell that school is. Provide them with a good example and let them make their own choices.

It’s only natural that I feel sad that we weren’t on the list, but one of the “blogs” that they listed isn’t even a weblog.

• Forbes.com Best of the Web – Health and Fitness Blogs

Here is the list of Forbes’ Favs:

• A Trail Runner’s Blog – A good specialized weblog about trail running. The author is a runner who gives you the inside look. Recommended entry: Where does all the money go?

• AllYourStrength.com B-Blog – This weblog is written by a company that sells personal training (over the phone?!). I don’t care for this site because they promote the over-muscled and bulked up image for men. I don’t think that sort of body abuse is any more healthy than being overweight and I don’t think men need that pressure to look like a steroid addict.

• A Passion for Running – Another very specialized weblog about running. I knew about this site, but I don’t read it because this guy is into more running than I can comfortably relate to.

• Diet Blog – The Truth About Diet and Weight Loss – This weblog is the only one that I regularly read on this list. It’s a pretty good resource for information. They won’t feed you full of commercials or hype.

• Health and Fitness Blog – Note to Forbes: I would call this blog an Echo Chamber. This is a weblog that is run by a company that sells fitness equipment (getfitsource.com) The posts are mostly just links to other websites’ articles with little original content. I know of at least 10 other weblogs that are better than this one, so don’t bother.

• ActiveLog Health and Fitness Training Blog – Note to Forbes: Just because it says “blog” in its title, doesn’t mean it is one. This is a program that you sign up for to “log” your daily exercise and eating. You can read other peoples’ “logs”, but it’s not the same thing as a weblog.

• Genetics and Public Health Blog: All about genetics and public health – This is a professional weblog that has little to do with weight loss. It is categorized correctly for Forbes, but I don’t want to read about genetics on a regular basis.

• Male Pattern Fitness – This is a new one on me. It looks pretty good and I will keep reading it. Somehow, I like the fact that he’s willing to use guttural language when he’s angry about things. I tend to just use big words.

It seems like the boys at Forbes called their friends and asked them, “Hey do you know any good weblogs?” Their friends in suits said, “Well, my company has a weblog and there are a couple others that I know…”

I talked before about NutritionData’s Nutrition Facts & Calorie Counter. They are a helpful resource when you need to know the nutrition facts for food. Now, they have another tool that makes it even easier to look things up.

• Firefox Search Plugin for NutritionData

It is a small little plugin that allows you to type a food in the search bar on your Firefox browser. It doesn’t take up extra space, it’s just another option on that search bar (you can choose it instead of Google). It works like a dream and I haven’t had any weirdness since installing it. It was so easy to install, that I thought I did something wrong and installed it again, so don’t worry if it takes less than a second to download.

If you don’t use Firefox as your browser, you’re missing out. Try it for free.

If you thought that you would feel better about your body once you were thin, you might be wrong. If you thought that you would feel better about your body if thousands of fans loved and adored you, once again, you might be wrong. According to Gunnar Peterson, a personal trainer to the stars, even his clients have body issues.

• National Nine News – Stars battle the bulge too, says trainer

If Angelina Jolie, Gwen Stefani, Jennifer Lopez and Cameron Diaz have body issues, is there no escape? The first time I heard this, I remember thinking, “What’s the point of dieting? I’m going to feel like shit about my body even if I get thin. I might as well eat whatever I want. Then I have a reason to feel inadequate.” It took me years to realize that the idea, “Then I have a reason to feel inadequate” was the whole problem.

It was like I was overeating to punish myself. I felt inadequate. Everybody does at some times. When I was overweight, I could just blame it on my weight. The big fear was that when I was thin, I would have no reason to feel inadequate and I would have nothing to blame it all on. If I didn’t get a raise at work, I couldn’t blame it on my weight. If someone pointed and laughed at me in the gym, then I couldn’t blame it on my jiggling hips. I wouldn’t have a scape goat anymore.

Once I stopped letting myself blame everything on being overweight, I was able to start clearing up those body issues. Here is the best quote from the above article:

“Those people are just people. They have two legs, two arms, a torso and a head,” Peterson said. “The body works in three plains of motion. It has a cardio pulmonary system. It has the same muscles and bones, they just happen to be on the screen.”

Once you realize that you have the same general makeup as all those stars and you have the same worries and concerns as they do, you can concentrate on the incredible and wonderful things that your body CAN do.

Via: About.com – Stars Are People Too – by Paige Waehner

Most people say that they read Playboy magazine for the articles. I “read” Dakota’s Weblog for the pictures. This entry, however, was a beautiful picture and an inspiring entry.

• Dakota – Embodiment

I love the way she describes this picture:

“This is a body/spirit(s) shot. Whether the spirits are coming or going isn’t clear, but, since I took the picture, I am going to assume that it is about my wish to embody my whole self, all of who I really am, and I will take it as a measure of my progress thus far.”

Lofty goal indeed!

The author of the Food Museum Blog calls herself Foodie. In the following entry, she considers what it would be like to wear a fat suit, such as the kind they use to make movie stars look fat.

• food museum blog: Fat Suits Featured

The movie industry really burns me up when it comes to portraying fat people. Even the kid who played Fat Albert in the live action movie wore a fat suit. You can’t convince me that there wasn’t one black kid who was fat AND could act better than that guy. I know Gwyneth Paltrow is an Oscar winning actress, but I think there were too many furniture breaking jokes in Shallow Hal. I am intimately familiar with the morbidly obese and I have never seen a chair break under them. It’s like the movie industry takes the cheap shot every time.

I don’t wish for a day in a fat suit. I know what it feels like. I know how I would look if I were fat again. I would recognize the looks on the faces of the people who feel like they are superior to me just because they are thin. I can vividly remember being discounted again and again because of my weight. I know what it feels like to be working my butt off and still be viewed as lazy. I don’t want a fat suit.

When I was fat, the first thing that got me on the road to living healthy was loving my body so much that I wanted to keep it around for awhile. Don’t let the movie industry tell you that you are only valuable if you are thin and svelte.

The full title of the webcomic is: “I hope, someday, to spend some time in a world like my own,” but it’s “A World Like My Own” for short. I don’t know what the answer to her dilemna was. She cut her hair after this.

Body image is such a nebulous thing. I’ve never had an experience like this because there never was a time in my life where I felt I was thin. I had been overweight since I was four. The rare times I had been thin, were the result of summers of starvation at the hands of my grandmother, so they don’t really represent a positive time in my life.

I think that comparing myself to a past me is just as useless as comparing myself to someone else. Past Me is a different age and has had less experiences than I have. Another person has lived a completely different life.

Self-loathing is never the path to a healthy weight. You need to love yourself so much that you are willing to treat your body with respect. Treating your body with respect is the key to getting to a healthy weight. A healthy body image will follow, don’t you worry.

It looks like the FTC has cracked down on Cytodyne for their claims about Xenadrine CarboCurb. Surprise, surprise… Those claims that their product would cause dramatic weight loss weren’t substantiated. Imagine that…

• FTC Takes Action Against Marketers of Xenadrine EFX

• FTC Warning Letter to Cytodyne LLC

More importantly, Cytodyne is currently marketing other products that are supposed to increase your energy within 30 minutes and help you burn calories. Since they have come under the scrutiny of the FTC before, don’t trust them.

Via: Consumer Health Digest, July 26, 2005

When I lost 30 pounds, I went to the DI to get some clothes that would fit me and tide me over until I lost the rest of my weight. It was a difficult day. When you shop at a thrift store, you can’t really trust the sizes listed on the clothes. Sizes change with the years, but these clothes have been sitting in peoples’ basements for ages. Plus, back then, I had no idea what size I was. I was size 24 when I started with Weight Watchers, but after losing 30 pounds, I didn’t know anymore.

I went through the jeans several times. The first time, I was drowning in the pants. The second time, half the pants fit, the others were too big. I remember holding up a pair of jeans that fit comfortably. They looked so small, like clothing for a little girl. They were size 18. I look at size 18 clothes right now and they look too big, but back then, they seemed tiny.

When I first started losing weight, I struggled to know my body. Even now, I’ll look at a cute outfit and immediately reach for the back of the rack. My size isn’t there anymore, but my mind still hasn’t learned that yet.

I stayed at a loss of 50 pounds for over two years. It took that long to learn what size I was. To be able to pick up a piece of clothing and know whether it would fit was a skill that took two years to develop. Sometimes I think that people regain the weight because they don’t allow themselves enough time to relearn their new body size. Maintaining a weight loss for over two years is what it takes. Until then, your mind isn’t reprogrammed yet.

Body image has nothing to do with the size of your body. I lived in a size 18 body, but still reached for size 24 clothes. Body image is something that you have to consciously visualize in your mind, both before and after you have lost the weight.

Just a quick link to the top search result for the words “Body Image”. This is brought to you by the Eating Disorder Referral and Information Center.

• EDReferral.com – Improving Body Image – by Judy Lightstone

It has some good recommendations for overeaters:

• Listen to your body. Eat when you are hungry.

• Be realistic about the size you are likely to be based on your genetic and environmental history.

• Exercise regularly in an enjoyable way, regardless of size.

• Expect normal weekly and monthly changes in weight and shape.

• Work towards self acceptance and self forgiveness- be gentle with yourself.

• Ask for support and encouragement from friends and family when life is stressful.

• Decide how you wish to spend your energy — pursuing the “perfect body image” or enjoying family, friends, school and, most importantly, life.

I think this advice is for anorexic and bulimics, but I found it to be good advice from the point of view of an binge eater. Check out the whole article.