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

When I was a child, we ate a lot of ground beef. Hamburger Helper, spaghetti, curry stew, and lasagna all had their basis in ground beef. I remember learning how to make these dishes as a child and my parents taught me to carefully drain off the fat into a large tomato can that resided by the side of the stove. I asked what we saved the fat for. I remember my Dad telling me that some people used it to fry food and poor people even used it on their bread instead of butter, but we just throw it away when the can gets full because it’s not healthy. We used Crisco to fry and margarine on our bread.

Little did we know, trans-fat (or hydrogenated oils) were the primary ingredient of our “healthy” replacements. Pork lard is different from the beef lard, of course, but the idea for this New York Times article is the the same. Maybe animal-based fats aren’t nearly as bad for us as those trans-fatty ones we’ve been eating since childhood.

• New York Times – High on the Hog – by Corby Krummer

In my house, our ground beef can is a tiny mushroom can shoved into the back of the refrigerator. It usually molds before we add to it and is thrown away when I go on a cleaning binge. I don’t know what is right when choosing which fats to cook with. Hopefully, they’ll figure it out in our lifetimes.

Via: Male Pattern Fitness – The Lard Is His Savior

It’s nice to hear the inside story about a company whose business is to provide food. Yum! Brands is the company that owns Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, KFC, Long John Silver and A&W. They were owned by PepsiCo until they were sold off in 1997. This is a detailed interview with the minds behind these restaurants that are probably within three miles of your home, waiting to feed you and your family.

• The Economist – Yum! Brands | Fast food’s yummy secret

Best Quotes:

“We are offering salads because that is what people want to see,” says Mr Novak, choosing his verbs carefully. But the salads are not what the industry calls “business builders”: they are there to win over the “veto vote”, offering something to the calorie-conscious eater who might otherwise dissuade a whole family or group from going to a KFC or a Taco Bell.

These companies won’t concentrate on offering healthy food until we are able to make the healthy choices “business builders” instead of “veto vote” preventers.

Nor does there seem much scope for traditional fast-food chains to grow in America by opening new outlets. According to UBS, three-quarters of Americans already live within three miles of a McDonald’s. Two-thirds live within three miles of a Pizza Hut and a Taco Bell and a KFC as well. To expand, then, the chains will have to win business from one another, using new pitches and products.

Be prepared for more advertising and new products on an increasing basis. The only way that these companies will be able to grow their market share is to keep grabbing our attention with flashy commercials. Remember, they usually don’t have nutrition facts for those new items, so make sure you stick with your “veto vote” food until they are able to tell you how many calories are in those shiny new burritos.

You will never go bust by under-estimating the public taste. But you have to do it cheaply, efficiently and on a very large scale.

The longer I eat healthy, the more refined my taste has become. Don’t be scared of becoming a picky eater. We end up eating the best tasting, healthiest food around.

Nutritional Information for Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Long John Silver, A&W, and KFC

Via: CalorieLab Calorie Counter News – Yum! Brands in the Economist

I was at the library picking up some CDs that I had ordered and I saw this book sitting in the highlighted books section. I picked it up and decided to read it to review it for Starling Fitness. I find this diet plan iffy and based on unproven science. The ideas at the beginning of the book, however, are very helpful motivators.

• The Thin Commandments

The Thin Commandments are as follows:

• Strategy is stronger than willpower: He suggests eating every 3-4 hours to prevent the kind of hunger that can spawn a binge. He also recommends keeping a food diary.

• Think historically, not just calorically: This commandment is repeated so many times throughout the book that I don’t know why he didn’t put it first. I don’t know why he didn’t use it as the title of the book. He suggests analyzing your food history and identifying foods and situations that have been involved with bingeing. Then, he says that you are powerless against these foods and should never eat them again. I don’t agree with that premise and I think it’s much better to learn to live with your Vulnerability Foods.

• The problem may be in the food, not in you: This phrase may sound empowering, but what the author is really saying is that you have no control over certain foods. He suggests avoiding the food to desensitize yourself from it with no plan for slowly reintroducing it. I disagree with anything that suggests that I am powerless.

• Structure gives control: He suggests eating a snack with protein and fiber during the 3pm – 5pm hours. Bring your own snacks and not depend on fate to provide for you. Plan ahead so that you won’t get too hungry. These are all good tips. If you are on a different sleep schedule, you will need to find when you’re sleepiest time of the day is and plan a protein/fiber snack during that time of the day.

• Separate mood from food and strategies for preventing mood eating: These are good strategies strikingly similar to the Weight Watchers Tools For Living.

• Take control of your favorite foods: He suggests adopting the phrase, “I don’t begin, I don’t have any problem.” Aside from grammatically awkward, I disagree with this commandment because I refuse to live my life without my favorite foods. You CAN live a healthy life at a healthy weight and enjoy your favorite foods in moderation, no matter what the author of this book says.

• Slips should teach you, not defeat you: The Weight Watcher equivalent to this is, “There are no failures, only feedback.” This is a really good commandment with lots of ideas on how to recover from a binge and how to learn from it.

• Stop feeling deprived: This is also a really good section about changing your mindset from deprivation to concentrating on a healthy life. He suggests substitution, not deprivation. I’ve never found that to work for me, but many of the ideas that he has here are great ways to concentrate on healthier eating habits.

• Treat your calories like dollars: This is a concept that most newbies learn from Weight Watchers in the first week. Is it “Point-Worthy?” is something that I learned to ask myself very quickly. The same is true for calories. If the food is not very filling, but has a lot of calories, you need to make a conscious decision to know whether you feel it’s worth eating. There are a lot of tips in this section about nutrition. Some of them are based on unproven science: the thermogenic effect of food, “magic” foods (like cinnamon, fish, fiber and calcium) help you lose weight and The Dairy Myth. Some of them are good advice: Fill up on fruit, drink water to feel full, exercise your body and your judgment.

• Losing weight is half the job; keeping it off is the other half: Instead of teaching you how to slowly add trigger foods back into your life, he suggests avoiding them forever. There are a few other tips to maintain, which are basically, watch for the inevitable weight gain and go back on the diet.

Worst Quote:

“No matter how intelligent you are, or how secure you feel, you’re no match for the force that is your body’s physiological response to food.”

I don’t believe that to be true. You are not powerless over food. Take back your power and use it to get healthy and strong.

On the whole, this is a relatively good book. The motivational thoughts and the ideas like creating meditation tapes may not be original, but they are helpful. I would follow a sensible eating plan like Eat More, Lose More or Weight Watchers and use this book for a motivational boost.

I don’t know how it happens, but even the blogs I read for fun end up to be eating lessons for me. I regularly read a blog written by Ward Jenkins, an animator who works for Primal Screen. He has worked on Space Ghost: Coast to Coast and probably a hundred other things, but I can’t find a complete resume for him. I started reading Ward-O-Matic because of his wonderful review, The Polar Express: A Virtual Train Wreck. It explained to me why the animation on that movie gave me the heebie-jeebies.

This entry, “More or less,” is about animation and developing the ability to work in that medium:

• The Ward-O-Matic – More or less? – by Ward Jenkins

He says:

“A new animator wants to put more drawings in, a seasoned animator wants to take more drawings out.”

When I read that, I felt the same thing about eating healthy.

“A new dieter wants to put more food into their diet, but a seasoned healthy eater wants to take more food out.”

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If you have lost weight by removing foods from your life, you’re probably feeling pretty desperate right now. You haven’t had this binge food for a long time and the more you think about it, the less control you feel like you have over it. Your house is clean of the food and has been for a while, but the thought of a life without that food doesn’t sound like it’s worth living. If this sounds familiar, you’re in luck. I’m going to tell you how to add former binge foods back into your life.

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