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

This article by Ruth Kava was written in 2003, but it is still very applicable today.

• Health Facts & Fears – Let Them Eat Cake! – by Ruth Kava, Ph.D., R.D.

The most important quote that I can take from this article is, “Poor Nutrition and Obesity Are Not the Same Problem.” When I tell people that I have lost all my weight using the Weight Watchers program, I hear the response, “Yeah, but you can just eat junk all day and if you stay within your points, that’s alright with them. That’s not healthy.”

Yep, they’re right. Eating to stay within your Points allowance with no regard to the nutrition guidelines that they give you is not healthy. But do you know what? You’ll lose weight anyway. I ate garbage the first few months on the program, but I still lost weight because I stayed within my Points allowance.

We are talking about two separate things. Obesity and poor nutrition are not the same problem. Quite frankly, I think that dealing with obesity first is the way to go. I ate junk food and fast food and all the hydrogenated oil that I could fit within my Points and I lost weight. After a while, however, I started paying attention to the nutrition guidelines that Weight Watchers provided. I slowly added healthier habits into my routine.

Sometimes I think that so many diets fail because people jump into things head first and make too many changes into their routine too quickly. I found that adding small changes slowly over the course of many months helped me eat healthier than I ever imagined I could.

This article at eDiets talks about the benefits of making sure your diet has sufficient calcium and the foods with the most of it.

eDiets.com – Bone Up! 10 Best Calcium Foods – by Sheri Strykowsk

Ten Calcium-Rich Foods:

• Fat-Free Milk
• Ricotta Cheese
• Yogurt
• Calcium-Fortified Soymilk
• Tofu
• Spinach
• Sardines
• Swiss Cheese
• Legumes
• Almonds

Check out the article to find new ways of adding these foods to your diet and the nutritional information about them.

Jerradk is sponsoring a workout tomorrow morning. This is an invitation only match, so please email me with your gamertag by 7pm Eastern (4pm Pacific) tonight if you are interested in playing.

Workout Details:

• Dance Dance Revolution Ultramix 2
• Difficulty Level: Light
• Thursday Morning, 02-17-05
• 7 am Eastern (4 am Pacific)
• Duration: Approximately 30 minutes

This is the first time I’ll be an invitee to a match, so I’m excited to see how it works!

Comment from Post: More on Trans-Fatty Acids

Name: BigChaz

Help! What is the difference between hydrogenated oil and partially hydrogenated oil. In the lit the two terms seem to be used in the same way. Surely there must be a difference.

Posted Feb 13, 2005 1:28 PM

According to this article:

• Biostructural Medicine – Trans Fatt Acids – by Alberto Ascherio, M.D., Dr.P.H., Meir J. Stampfer, M.D., Dr.P.H., Walter C. Willett, M.D., Dr.P.H., Harvard School of Public Health, and Martijn B. Katan, Ph.D., Peter L. Zock, Ph.D. of Wageningen Center for Food Sciences, Netherlands

…there is a difference chemically between hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated oils, but they have the same effects medically. Avoid both of them for a healthier diet.

We have just added a new category to the site: Motivation. If you are feeling low and wanting to cheat or skip your workout, try this category of posts.

Keeping your body healthy is an expression of gratitude to the whole cosmos – the trees, the clouds, everything.
– Thich Nhat Hanh

Thanks, world! I’m so glad that my legs and arms and lungs and heart and head all work. They work really well, even though I left them dormant for so long. Sometimes they ache from the effort, but they keep moving.

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Lies you tell yourself:

• “It’s just one day.”
• “I have to be gracious.”
• “We deserve to celebrate our love.”

Don’t lie to yourself this year.

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I was browsing at Best Buy and came across Secret Formula: Ultimate Fitness for Men. It led me to believe that there might be an Ultimate Fitness for Women, but I couldn’t find it in the store. At first glance, it looked like a cool thing. It has 130 strength training exercises, 45 cardio exercises and 115 video clips. It runs you through a personal assessment, then you can customize your fitness program and track your results. It looked pretty cool until I started comparing it to Yourself! Fitness and what Maya does for me.

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Prevention Magazine has tested eighteen treadmills and has recommended their favorites. That sounds like a big commercial to me. The headline might have well said, “Seven high ticket items to buy that will make you thin.” Then again, I’ve constantly tried to Buy Fitness, so I checked the article out.

Prevention.com – We Test It: Treadmills by Denise Foley with Tanya Beers

What I found was a list of seven treadmills to buy and tips on how to buy a treadmill. There were also links on how to buy other high ticket physical fitness equipment. If I looked, however, there were hints on how to walk on a treadmill without injuring myself and how to bump up the intensity with hill workouts. Check out those articles for ideas to help keep your treadmill workouts safe and interesting.

“There’s no easy way out. If there were, I would have bought it. And believe me, it would be one of my favorite things!” – Oprah Winfrey, O Magazine, February 2005

I haven’t eaten brussel sprouts since that day in 1984 when my grandma wouldn’t let us leave the table until we ate all of our brussel sprouts. I remember looking at the round green baby cabbages, wishing they would disappear.

We were forced to eat lots of food that we didn’t like when we stayed with Grandma and Grandpa. We experienced months of salad, green beans, sugar snap peas, raspberries, strawberries and sometimes a couple carrots would be ready to eat before we were shipped back to Salt Lake at the end of the summer. All of those foods have become not only food that I’ve learned to enjoy, but gateways to the past.

Not brussel sprouts. I haven’t tried them again since she forced me to eat all four of those green monsters. Now, I find that maybe my grandma wasn’t faking it when she said they were delicious.

• Reuters – Genetic “sweet tooth” wears off with age

According to recent studies, things taste different when you are an adult than when you’re a kid. What tasted bitter and unpleasant when you were ten can mellow and taste like a delicious treat when you become an adult. I guess it’s time that I give brussel sprouts another try. Maybe this time, I’ll be able to eat them all without wishing for a dog to feed them to.