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

If you read this article, it is written in such a way that the fact that study participants quit the study is because “Dieters Don’t Have Staying Power” not because of the side effects of the medication.

• Investigational Diet Drug Has Staying Power, but Dieters Don’t – MedPage Today

I am boiling mad right now because of this article. How many times are the patients going to be blamed when a medication makes them so nauseated that they want to quit the study? The media wants you to think that people who are overweight are too lazy to even finish a two-year study. Don’t believe them.

My friend Karen Rosenlund had a problem with her knees. Her doctor told her that she needed to take a weight training class in school so that she could get her knees stronger, and he showed her the exact exercises she needed to do. I took Weight Training because my friend Karen did. I needed to choose SOMETHING for gym, and this class had a friend in it.

Every day, we would dress for weight training and Karen would do the exercises that she needed to do for her knees. After that, we told the teacher that we were going to run a few laps around the auditorium for the rest of the class. He had suggested that as an alternative to working with weights every day. We would stretch, start running around the auditorium and keep running to the Photography Lab to see our other friend, Matt Sheffield.

I spent that entire semester in the Photography Lab, developing pictures I had taken with my 110 camera.

Weight Training had something called Maxs. They tested our Maxs at the first of the term. If we could beat them at the end of the term, we got an A. Just one more rep on each exercise and I could get an A. I didn’t know that at the first of the term, if I did, I wouldn’t have had to work as little as I did. For one day of the term, I pushed myself hard. The rest of the time, I developed grainy black and white pictures. Quite literally, the class was “No Sweat” for me.

Now, I wish I had paid more attention. I also wish the teacher had cared a little more. It would have only taken one checkup to see if we were actually running around the auditorium instead of sloughing. We were always back in time to change out of our gym clothes, but we never looked like we had been running for 30 minutes straight. He didn’t care. As long as we beat our Maxs, he was happy.

I have been doing the circuit training at 24 Hour Fitness for the last month or so and I’m enjoying the progress. It feels so good to be able to lift more weight than I did a couple of weeks ago. Sure, there is pain, but it’s not as bad now as it was the first two weeks. If I had known the sense of accomplishment that I would get from weight training, I might not have been so quick to run off to the Photography Lab.

I guess it wasn’t my time to learn that lesson…

Steve Pavilina has finally written something coherent since he started his polyphasic sleep experiment. For the last three or four months, all of Steve’s entries have been long and rambling, but this one is succinct and to the point.

• Feeble Excuses

He talks about the excuses people use to delay personal growth, such as:

• I don’t have enough time.

• I don’t know how.

• I don’t have the money.

I’ve heard all of these excuses used as reasons not to start a healthy lifestyle. His post tells you what those excuses REALLY mean and how to get past them.

The title for this post has been sitting in my queue for months. The truth of the matter is that it was pretty difficult for me to find an exercise that I enjoy. The only real advice I have for anyone who hates exercise is this:

Try something different.

That’s it. If you hate your workout, then try something different. For YEARS, I thought that I had to do aerobics to get thin. I think it’s because I watched so much Richard Simmons when I was a kid and then I was a teen during the Jane Fonda era of physical fitness. Every second that I did aerobics, I HATED it. The teachers rarely explained the moves well enough so that I would know what I was doing, so I ended up just fumbling around. I can’t clarify enough how much I despised aerobics.

Even Denise Austin, wasn’t enough to make me like aerobics. She is so clear when she explains what she wants me to do. She is good enough not to be too repetitious, so her videos don’t irritate me with the same phrases over and over again. I was able to do Denise Austin workouts for a summer in 1992, and she will always hold a soft place in my heart, but I just don’t like to do aerobics.

About six years ago, I knew that I wanted to start exercising because I wanted to improve my cardiovascular health. It wasn’t about losing weight. I knew that the studies had only proven that exercise helps heart health, not necessarily weight loss. I thought back to all the different exercises that I did in gym classes over the years. The only one where I enjoyed it enough to actually EARN an A in the class was a jogging class I took the first semester of high school. I decided that I would run.

Luckily, it worked out for me. It was painful. It wasn’t easy, but there were no teammates to complain about my performance. There were no competitors to pass me by. It was just me, running around my suburban neighborhood or on my treadmill. Running worked out for me and strangely, it led to other exercises that I enjoyed like bike riding and even weight training.

So many of my friends stay in shape with aerobics. There was a kickboxing class at the community center that my sister just loved. When I attended it, I wanted to punch the teacher in the face for assuming that all her students knew what she was doing. Halfway through the class, I stopped trying to follow along and just stepped up and down on the step over and over until it was over. If I had insisted on using aerobics as my way of getting fit, I wouldn’t have a story to tell you today.

If you hate exercise, STOP DOING IT! I don’t think any other health and fitness person will tell you that, but I’m here right now to tell you that it’s okay to stop doing whatever it is you hate. The only thing I ask is that you try something different. I don’t care what it is, but try something else and stick with it for a month or two until you know whether you like it or HATE it.

I promise you. If you keep looking and trying new things, you will find an exercise that you love.

If you are so lucky that you have someone who loves you enough to go to a restaurant on Valentine’s Day, then show that person that you love them by taking care of yourself tonight. They don’t want you to overeat just to prove you’re having fun. They want you to be feeling great so that when you go home, you’re not doubled over with a stuffed stomach.

Here’s how I eat healthy when we go to restaurants:

• Order whatever you want: Seriously. Quit trying to tell yourself that you can only have salad or chicken breasts. If you want a steak, order it. If you are dying for some pasta, stop denying yourself.

• Ask for a box with your entree: I try to make it a joke, “If you don’t bring me a box, I’ll eat the WHOLE thing, so I need the box when my food comes.” Valentine’s Day is a busy night, so they might not remember the box. Ask the water person or the guy bussing tables to bring you a box. Don’t get testy at the waiter, but DO get what you need.

• Do your best to estimate the calories: This is the hard part, because you don’t really know what they put into your food that makes it taste so good. I usually calculate the total calories for the ingredients and add 50-100 calories for whatever it is that is making the food so yummy.

• Divide out what you have the calories for: If that’s half of the entree, cut it in half. There have been times when I’ve only eaten a third of my entree because that’s all I had left in my day. It’s okay. Once the rest of the food is hidden in the take home box, it doesn’t matter. It will feel like you have a whole plate of food.

• Don’t take home the box: It’s Valentine’s Day. You don’t need to worry about leftovers on Valentine’s Day. Just “forget” your take home box at your table. They never taste as good reheated as they did that night anyway.

One further note of advice. Avoid garlic, onions or any other strong flavors that might impede the flow of the evening. This night is all about AFTER the Valentine’s dinner. Make sure that’s the special part.

I have been trying to think of what to write for Valentine’s Day and I can’t say it any better than I did last year.

• Starling Fitness » Have a Healthy Valentine’s Day

You deserve a healthy and happy Valentine’s Day. Go ahead and have it and don’t believe those lies you tell yourself.

If you are looking for a way to surprise your loved one tomorrow, here is an idea for a Valentine’s Breakfast in Bed.

• About.com – Breakfast in Bed on Valentine’s Day

I’ve never been one to spend much time in bed. There are some people who have fantasies about lying in bed all day just reading or eating food. The only times I’ve done that was when I was sick. So sick I couldn’t really get out of bed. I don’t entertain fantasies like that. If you want to charm me, feeding me heart shaped pancakes might do it, but let me get up pee first.

It was a huge study that spanned over eight years. 20,000 overweight, post-menopausal women participated in a study that researchers are reluctant to call a failure, even though they know little more than eight years ago.

• CNN.com – Low-fat study leaves little to chew on – Feb 8, 2006

After eight years, they have found that there was little difference in the rates of breast cancer, colorectal cancer and heart disease for the participants on a low fat diet versus those who didn’t change their diet at all.

“[The results] are somewhat disappointing. We would have liked this dietary intervention to have a major impact on health,” said Dr. JoAnn Manson, chief of preventive medicine at Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a co-author of the study.

There are many reasons suggested why they might have found these results, many of which blame the participants of the study. Such as, the diet was not designed for weight reduction, and many of the women stayed overweight, which is considered a risk factor for cancer. Additionally, there was no distinction made between so-called “good” fats and “bad” fats. All fats were cut indiscriminately. They might have seen different results if “good” fats were allowed in the diet.

This just goes to show that we don’t know what is healthy and what is not yet. Researchers are still trying to find out what the optimal diet for human beings is. I suspect that in the end, they will find out that there is no one optimal diet and there are a wide variety of diets that will work for people to both keep them fit and healthy. Until then, we’re on our own.

Orlistat, the generic name for Xenical, is closer to being approved for over-the-counter status. It might be that you would be able to walk into any drug store and buy Xenical without a prescription.

• CNN.com – Diet pill gets closer to store shelves – Jan 24, 2006

I’m not the kind of person who is attracted by weight loss pills. I always feared that once I stopped taking the pills, I would end up gaining the weight back. It looks like that is the case for most people taking Xenical.

“The pill’s effect ends once its use is stopped,” said Dr. Julie Golden, a medical officer in the FDA’s division of metabolism and endocrinology products. “A previous study showed a progressive weight gain in patients after they stopped using orlistat.”

Orlistat is only recommended for a six month time frame. If this product goes OTC, then there is no doctor involved to limit the dosage to six months. This drug is supposed to teach the patient new ways of eating during that six month time frame. It’s a very expensive training tool.

You can lose weight on your own without expensive weight loss medications, whether they are over-the-counter or prescribed by your doctor. Don’t let the marketing of the drug industry tell you any differently.

I’ve talked a lot about fat acceptance lately, but even more harmful to my motivation to stay fit is Thin Hatred, Fit Prejudice or what I call Skinny Bitches. You know what I’m talking about. Skinny Bitches have a bowl of candy on their desk to make everyone else fat. Skinny Bitches go to the gym and barely break a sweat in the aerobics class. Skinny Bitches need to be the girl in the center of attention.

All these thoughts are damaging to me. I have an “Us Vs. Them” mentality that is standing in my way. If I want to be thin and healthy, how am I going to do it if I think that all thin women are Skinny Bitches? Will that make me a Skinny Bitch?

Fit Prejudice shows up in a ton of places in my life. I look at pictures of thin celebrities and think, “That Skinny Bitch needs to eat a sandwich.” I have heard Salma Hayek talk about the years she was tormented because she was too skinny as a child and teen. It was just as damaging to her as the torments I endured as a child because I was fat. In fact, every time I think, “Feed that girl a sandwich!” I am adding to someone’s pain.

I need to work on being loving and accepting of thin people without prejudice or discrimination. That girl with the candy on her desk is lonely. She puts the dish there because it attracts people. That girl at the gym has been working out every day her entire life to get to the point where she doesn’t break a sweat. She’s worried that she’ll gain weight if they don’t make a class vigorous enough for her. That girl who needs to be in the center of attention is just like me except she uses her appearance to get there instead of her wit.

We are all the same inside and the sooner I learn that, the easier it will be for me to get to my final weight goal. When I get there, I’ll just be Laura, not some Skinny Bitch.