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

I have a few recipe books, but on the whole, I’m not a recipe girl. If someone makes fabulous food for a potluck, I compliment them. I thank them. I never, ever ask them for a recipe.

After months of writing for Starling Fitness, I realized today that I haven’t shared one recipe with you. It’s not because I don’t have any. I have family recipes that have been slimmed down and bulked up with veggies. I have books of healthy recipes including nutrition facts. I have plenty of recipes, but it never occurred to me to tell you about them.

I guess I prefer to outsource my food preparation. My hardest task during this weight loss journey has been portion control because restaurants give me so much food. Ironically, if I complain, they usually end up giving me more food. Even more frustrating is when they get to know me and give me even more food because they like me. Slimming down family recipes and finding new ones was easy compared to learning how to politely and graciously say, “No, thank you.”

I remember talking with a group of friends. One of them said that she wished she had a cook to take care of family meals. I told her, “I have several cooks. They work at all the restaurants all over the city.” Living in America has given me the luxury of being able to have other people cook my meals.

With that luxury, however, is the added difficulty of eating healthy. If you ask me, I can tell you three healthy menu items at every restaurant in town. The large restaurant chains have nutrition facts for you so that you can easily find the healthiest food. The local restaurants, however, are a little more difficult. Sometimes you have to estimate or compare their menus to that of the large restaurant chains.

Here are some simple tips if you eat out:

• Find the menu and nutrition facts for the restaurant online (See Dotti’s Weight Loss Zone)
• Choose at least two healthy options for each restaurant.
• Make a list of the healthy choices and keep it with you just in case your plans change.
• Download the nutrition facts to your Palm device (See Palm Restaurants).

After “Supersize Me” came out in the theaters, there was a huge backlash on the food industry. I had already lost my weight eating primarily restaurant food, so I had already learned that I am responsible for the food that I eat. You can eat healthy and lose or maintain your weight eating out every night of the week. No cooking required.

My cat likes to sit on paper. If she were in an empty room and one sheet of paper was lying on the floor, my cat would be sitting on it. That’s about the best use I can think of for this week’s US Weekly.

The headline reads, “20 Best Body Makeovers: How top stars went from flab to fab!” Referring to any one of those twenty women with the adjective “flab” is a travesty. Even when Oprah Winfrey and Queen Latifah were at their heaviest, they were fabulous. I sat there looking at all the before pictures thinking, “If that is flab? How could I ever measure up?”

Margaret Cho said that when she looks at the pictures of women in fashion magazines wearing things that she could barely fit on her finger, she thinks, “If that’s what being a woman is all about, I must not be one.” I understand how she feels. Sometimes I feel so disconnected from the media’s perception of female beauty. Magazines like this week’s US Weekly just make me want to pound someone into a bloody pulp.

It’s such a contrast from the January article about the same issue. The Sexy Diet Secrets that turned out to be eat less and exercise more was so down to earth. This week’s article calls twenty beautiful and stunning women flabby and then touts “losing baby fat” as fabulous.

They did provide one tip per woman on how they lost the weight. These tips amounted to the same story of eating less and moving more, but the focus of the article was the before and after pictures. It was as if some catty girl’s club sat down and looked at all the pictures. “Look at her thighs. She was FAT. I can’t believe she went out in public looking like that!” When all I can see is one fabulous before picture after another.

Worst of all, there wasn’t one man on the list. What about Billy Bob Thornton? That boy looked like he was on death’s door when he first met Angelina Jolie and by the time she was finished with him, he was toned up and looking hot. What about the lead singer of The Goo Goo Dolls, Johnny Rzeznik? After pressure from his record label, he dropped weight and came back lean. There is not one mention of Tom Hanks’ multiple dances with weight loss for movie roles. What about Matt LeBlanc? He starved himself on The Zone diet to keep Joey’s character slim and sexy. Sure he was fabulous before, but so was Beyonce.

Don’t waste your money on this week’s US Weekly.

Comment by Sinistar on “Getting Past Your Excuses” – 3/6/2005 @ 7:25 pm

Okay, here’s my excuse for why I haven’t so much as waved to Maya in the past month.

The company I work for is on the brink of ruin, is in the midst of a split (half the assets were purchased by another company), and the IT guy resigned. So, for the past month, I have been promoted from web server admin to Director of IT, requiring me to show up early and work late. I suppose I could wake up earlier to get my workouts in, but I’m epileptic, triggered by sleep deprivation, so I try to be careful about that. I could probably work out in the evenings, but by the time I get home, make dinner, spend some time with my son, and say hello to my wife, it’s already late. On Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday nights, I don’t even really get to say “Hello” since my wife has to go to sleep early while I stay up late monitoring our son (who has cerebral palsy and a tracheotomy – we need to listen out for him to make sure he is suctioned when needed) so she can get a few hours of sleep before she has to be up from 1AM to 11:30PM the next night (which is when our home health nurses come in for their shift).

I was managing to get in 30 minutes of exercise a day before the work situation exploded, but right now, I don’t even know where I’d fit it in.

Though, I guess I could have exercised in the time it took me to write all this. 🙂

Sinistar,

I just got your comment on Getting Past Your Excuses. All I can say is that you need help. I don’t know if you have family in town that could help you, but that might be an option. Another option is a second shift of home health nurses. Sometimes the hardest thing to do is admit that you need help, but if it was me, I’d be asking my family to help me or even ask my mother-in-law to move in with me.

You have two people who depend on you. To take care of them, you need to take care of yourself first. If you die at a young age because of a heart attack, they will be all alone in this world.

It’s obvious to me that you are tired and stressed beyond belief. Exercise will help relieve some of that stress and eating healthy will too (although I’ve noticed that it only relieves my stress about eating…).

I would recommend tracking everything you do for one day. Just make a list of all the things that you do (reading email, surfing the Internet, cleaning, watching TV, etc.) Just keep a log of what you do. When I did this, I set my watch to beep every 15 minutes and I would write down what I did those last 15 minutes. Only do this for one day, but try to keep your day as realistic and typical as possible.

After you’ve gathered this data, see if there is any place that you can squeeze in 30 minutes of exercise. What about your lunch hour? Bring your gym clothes, change, and run outside the office for 30 minutes. If you get a full hour, there’s just enough time to change back into your work clothes and eat a healthy lunch. Your lunch hour is just an example. You’ll have a better idea when you’ve taken a hard look at your day where you can squeeze in exercise.

You deserve 30 minutes a day. It’s essential for your health. You’re worth the time it takes to get and stay healthy. Your exercise doesn’t have to be Dance Dance Revolution or Yourself! Fitness. It can be taking a walk with your wife or riding your bike to work instead of driving. It doesn’t matter what kind of exercise as long as you schedule it into your day and protect that time. Guard it as if your life and the life of your family depended on it, because frankly it does.

You can do this!

Laura

Even though last year’s race was poorly managed and treated like an afterthought to the marathon, I’m going to run in the SLC 5K this April. It took me a long time to decide to run it, so now I have less than six weeks to train for it.

This isn’t really a problem for me. I have been exercising regularly. Dance Dance Revolution and Yourself! Fitness have kept my cardio training up to running level. I just need to get back to running so I don’t surprise my muscles on the race day. Running works different muscles than either of the other exercise routines I use.

I decided to run the 5K while lying in bed last week. “I do what is required to weigh 120 pounds,” I told myself. It wasn’t getting me up. I imagined my daily reward (thirty minutes sitting on the heat vent, reading or crocheting or playing video games, whatever I want). Not even the comforting heat vent time was getting me up. “This isn’t working,” I thought to myself. “I need different motivation.”

At that moment, I decided to run the 5K. I imagined myself running the familiar pathway from Liberty Park to The Gateway shopping center. I sat up in bed and walked to the back door to let the dog out. Not even the potentially bursting bladder of my faithful dog was enough to get me up, but thinking about running that race got me up and dressed for a run within minutes.

Motivation comes from the strangest places. Oddly, this month, it came to me from deciding to run a race. I wish I could harness motivation. I wish I could bottle it and sell it. If I could, I would make a million dollars.

I’ve been tracking the stories about these concoctions since mid-February. The Luther Burger is a bacon cheeseburger served on a Krispy Kreme Donut (or two, depending on the news source). The Ham Dog is a hot dog, wrapped in ground beef and served with cheese, bacon, chili and egg on a hoagie bun. These articles talk about the caloric and fat content of these culinary items and blame them on the South because the restaurant is located in Georgia.

• 02-13-05: Associated Press – Decatur, Georgia – Health officials wage tough fight in America’s ‘Stroke Belt’

• 02-14-05: A Welsh View – The Hamdog And Luther Burger Are Killing Off Southerners

• 02-21-05: Chicago Tribune – In praise of the Luther Burger

• 03-03-05: Snopes.com – Luther Burger

I’m in flux. I want to talk about this, but I don’t know what to say. I have so many voices inside of me.

The Klingon inside of me is screaming, “Road Trip!” over and over with a growl in her voice. (more…)

I keep hearing the phrase, “Who is to blame for obesity?” Whether it’s childhood obesity, American obesity or just obesity in general, the same thought is being thrown around: Who is to blame? This article tackles that issue:

• The Independent – Who’s really to blame for the problem of childhood obesity? You are by Richard Kilgarriff

“The truth is, we are all to blame for the society in which we live, and the finger-pointing and point-scoring has to stop. This childhood obesity problem is bigger than any political party or supermarket or manufacturer, and much bigger than food advertising on TV.”

More importantly, IT DOESN’T MATTER. It doesn’t matter which industry or institution is the cause of obesity. The longer we argue about who is to blame, the less time we have to fix the problem. Who cares if it’s television or video games or high calorie snack foods or shoddy school lunch programs or inattentive parents or… The list goes on a mile long. The most important thing with both adult and childhood obesity is that we stop it. The only people who can stop it are each and every one of us.

You… Yeah, you… Next time you think about skipping your workout or eating something that is not scheduled for your meal plan, STOP. Make sure you get your workout in. Make sure you stop that binge in its tracks. The only way to make the world a healthier place is to take personal responsibility for yourself. You are the only person on this planet that you can truly control.

Red Octane just announced that they are releasing a Playstation 2 version of the game In The Groove. You can log this in the “Yet Another Reason To Consider the Playstation Format” book. Roxor Games released an arcade version of this game originally in 2002. The gameplay requires more elaborate dance moves than the Dance Dance Revolution format. The arrows look the same, but there are times when some of them are required to be pressed by your hands (think Twister at a quicker pace).

• Red Octane Press Release
• Roxor Games In The Groove Official Site

They are planning on integrating a Fitness Mode that tracks the amount of calories you burn. Hopefully it will be more accurate than the DDR calculations. This mix will have over 70 songs, which is a large enough number to keep the most dedicated players occupied for months. Finally, there is great excitement that Red Octane is the company that will be releasing this product considering the high quality of their dance pads. They didn’t provide a release date, so I am waiting excitedly to hear more.

This article from Prevention.com is an intimate and emotion-driven story.

• Prevention.com – Barricaded Behind Fat by Geneen Roth

I hate that stuff. It makes me want to scream, “Go to Redbook where you belong!” Why am I recommending it? She has damn good advice.

Why Food Can’t Protect You
When you’re tempted to shield yourself by overeating, remind yourself:

• The pain will still be there after the food is gone.

• Eating only makes you feel full, not happy.

• After you’ve eaten, you have two problems: the one you ate to hide from and your physical discomfort.

• No matter how much you eat, even if you go on a monthlong binge, the feelings will someday come back to haunt you.

• Eating can’t make illness, rejection, sadness, loneliness, or fear of death go away.

There are a hundred thousand excuses for not following your eating or exercise program. I could list them here, but they all fall into one category:

BOGUS

You’re rolling your eyes right now. You think I’m just being hard and callous, but you’re wrong. For every excuse, there is someone out there who moved past it. It’s snowing? I’ve seen people run in the snow. It’s too hot? I’ve seen people exercising in the Las Vegas heat and smog. It’s just one chocolate? I’ve known people who have eaten healthy for years, forgoing every hint of chocolate. I don’t care what your excuse is, there is someone on this planet who didn’t let that barrier get in the way of their health.

How do I do it?

(more…)

Fitness Magazine has teamed up with NEC to provide a Fitness Phone. For a monthly fee of $9.99 a month, you can have your personal trainer and dietician in your phone.

• NEC Fitness Phone
• Fitness Magazine

I don’t know what I think about this. I have a hard time imagining someone bringing their phone into the gym and referring to it for each exercise, checking them off as they go. I could do the same thing with Palm software, but I don’t want to bother bringing the thing into the gym with me. A piece of paper is so much easier and even that is a burden when I’m going from machine to machine.

Additionally, some gyms have cracked down on camera phones in locker rooms and this phone has a fully functional camera (including a light for low-light situations ?!). This just seems like technology gone wrong. It might be a helpful reminder to the forgetful, but when you are truly dedicated to putting yourself first, a Post-It Note will do.