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

If you go into any coffee shop and order a steamer with fat-free milk, they will understand what you’re talking about. If it’s not a Starbucks, they’ll roll their eyes and sneer at you, but they’ll understand.

A steamer is warm milk heated to a frothy goodness using the steam valve on the expresso machine with a shot or two of flavored syrup. Since there are many sugar-free syrups to choose from, you can enjoy a wide variety of steamers for the same calories as a glass of milk.

Since many diets recommend two servings of milk a day, this is an easy way to get in your milk in one fail swoop. One 16 ounce steamer counts as two servings of milk. If you make sure to order the sugar-free syrup, then it’s no more calories than the milk.

You don’t need to shell out two bucks at the coffee shop to get a steamer either. Sugar-free flavored syrups are usually available in the coffee aisle at grocery stores. The selection of syrups is smaller than a coffeehouse, but you’ll be able to create a steamer by microwaving your milk with a shot of syrup for only one minute and much less money.

Torani has a list of steamer recipes that sound delicious. These recipes aren’t specializing in the sugar-free flavors, so make sure you get sugar-free syrups in order to avoid extra calories.

• Torani: Recipe Gallery

When I was a kid, my two biggest heroes were Nell Carter and Miss Piggy.

Seriously. This isn’t a joke.

My personality is 20% Nell Carter and 30% Miss Piggy. I have a little bit of Jo from the Facts of Life in there, but anything that isn’t me, is probably Nell Carter or Miss Piggy. Both of them were strong and independent women who KNEW they were divas. They knew it with all capital letters. It didn’t matter that Miss Piggy was a pig. She was a diva and she demanded the spotlight every week on the Muppet Show.

It didn’t matter that Nell Carter weighed over 200 pounds. She was the star of Gimme A Break! It should have been called the Nell Carter show, she was such a diva.

Miss Piggy will live as long as Frank Oz can still talk, but Nell Carter died in 2003. She died of heart failure complicated by diabetes and obesity. When the fat acceptance people say that fat doesn’t kill you, I know they’re wrong because we lost Nell Carter far too soon.

For some reason, my childlike mind made the connection between fat and strength. Since Miss Piggy and Nell Carter were such strong women, I assumed that all fat women are strong. When I started losing weight, I felt like I was losing my strength. I’m just as tough today as I was when I weighed 235, but now I can kick your butt and run away fast as lightning if I need too.

I need new role models…

I met Kathy Sierra at the South By Southwest convention in March and I’ve been reading her weblog ever since. She usually writes about making websites better, but she diverged from her basic theme the other day and talked about a diet that she has been trying, The Shangri-La Diet.

• Creating Passionate Users: The strangest, easiest way to lose weight

Here is her description of the diet and how it worked for her:

“You must MUST be able to find at least one two-hour time window each day where you have nothing but water. Nothing with any flavor of any kind is allowed–NO EXCEPTIONS–during that period, including brushing your teeth. For most people, two hours is no problem at all… but you have to be extremely careful or you risk not just eliminating the positive effect, but potentially ruining your chance of using it correctly in the future.”

“In the middle of that two hour window, you must ingest one of two things… either a tablespoon of sugar dissolved in water, or a tablespoon of extra light olive oil. If either of those are not do-able for you, you’re out of luck.”

“For me, in two weeks, it’s been working too well. I don’t have a weight problem, so I wasn’t interested in losing weight. I wanted to try it because it’s fascinating, seems impossible to believe, and MAINLY for the claim that by reducing cravings, it helps you make better eating choices. My goal on this “diet” was that when it was time to eat, I wanted to find carrots and broccoli as viable an option as Ben and Jerry’s. That hasn’t completely happened (although cravings have virtually disappeared), but within three days, I was actually forgetting to eat.”

Forgetting to eat is one thing that can trigger a binge, so this doesn’t sound like a good diet for me, but I’m sure there are people who this would work for. Click over to Kathy’s site and read her full review. It contains links to other reviews about the diet and more information.

McDonald’s has a new promotion right now. If you order one of their premium salads and a drink, you can get a Yourself! Fitness DVD. I can’t find anything about it on the McDonald’s website, but Yourself! Fitness is promoting it on theirs.

• McDonald’s USA – Food, Nutrition, & Fitness

• Yourself!Fitness: Choose Your Program

I got the Cardio DVD and the Yoga DVD the other day and I just finished doing a workout with the Yoga DVD. The workouts are very similar to the Yourself! Fitness game for the PC, PlayStation 2 and Xbox. Here is how a workout is different with Yourself! Fitness vs. the DVD.

• Maya is a little more talkative. She explains her movements a little more than she does with the Yourself! Fitness game.

• You cannot stop the workout and have the move explained in further detail. That’s probably why they include more explanation during the workout.

• The indicator is the same except it doesn’t tell you how much time is left on the workout like it does on the game. Of course, all the workouts are only 15 minutes long, so knowing how much more time is left is less of an issue. With the game, there is a counter on the left hand side that tell you how much longer you have. I find that really helpful and missed it on the DVD.

• You can’t stop a movement and ask Maya to make the workout easier or more difficult. Once you choose a difficulty level, you’re stuck with it for the entire workout. In the game, you can stop it at any time and ask for a more difficult workout or easier. It’s a great feature of Yourself! Fitness.

• You can’t choose your workout environment or music like you can with the game. The Cardio DVD uses the Urban workout environment and the techno music every time. I really like being able to change the venues.

• The DVD is actually a little bit better as far as stretching after the workout is concerned. It still only stretches the hamstrings and the quads, but it allows for more time stretching after a workout. I really recommend doing the Yoga DVD when your finished with the Cardio DVD so that you get a full stretch after your workout.

The ways in which the game and the DVD are similar:

• Maya is still very cut and dry. This is a great feature. She just explains the moves and stays quiet the rest of the time. There is none of that silly workout patter.

• There is still an indicator telling you which move you are going to do next and how much longer you have on the current move. That is really helpful on the Cardio workouts when the movements change rather quickly. I tend to really worry about keeping in step and the indicator really helps for that.

• You get to choose the intensity of your workouts. You can choose “Ease Me Into It” or “I’m Up For A Challenge.” On the Cardio workout, you can tell Maya whether you have a step-bench or not for different workouts.

I’m so glad to see Yourself! Fitness get this opportunity. I want to see them release a second version of Yourself! Fitness that fixes some of the minor problems with the program and add new features. This might be the promotion that they needed to get that done.

You can find out more information about Yourself! Fitness here:

• Starling Fitness » Yourself! Fitness for the Xbox

• Starling Fitness » Silver Status on Yourself! Fitness

• Starling Fitness » Yourself! Fitness for Playstation 2

• Starling Fitness » Gold Status on Yourself! Fitness

• Starling Fitness » Workout 35 on Yourself! Fitness

• Starling Fitness » Yourself! Fitness and Xbox 360

I live in Salt Lake City, Utah. They have decided to sponsor a get fit program. It’s not very well organized and it’s kind of silly how they have teams that collect points based on how much you exercise. There’s not really a way to compete individually and it’s all on the honor system.

There is one cool thing about the program, though. They have set up a bunch of walking maps. At various parks across the city, they have set up maps that show the route and how many miles they are:

• Welcome to Salt Lake City Gets Fit Together: Maps

I have been wishing for this for years. I don’t know why the Salt Lake County Parks and Recreation didn’t have this years ago.

If you have been bored with your walking or running routine, you should look up your local parks and recreation site to see if they have updated their website recently and added something informative like these maps for Salt Lake City.

If not, you can always create your own walking map at a local park using the Google Pedometer.

If you’re getting sick of raw veggies, here is a quick recipe for frozen broccoli that sounds delicious.

• A Veggie Venture – Broccoli with Rice Wine & Oyster Sauce

Every time I start getting sick of what I’m eating, I turn to healthy recipes. It’s easier to eat healthy when I have something to look forward to, even if it’s my broccoli side dish.

After two weeks out of town, it feels good to be back home. There is a lot to be said for routine. The minute I stepped into our house, I suddenly lost all urge to overeat. After two weeks of eating poorly, I no longer had any desire to go to restaurants. All I wanted to do was hide in my house and eat fruits and veggies.

Of course, that feeling didn’t last longer than a day, but I’ll never forget how comforting it felt to walk in the door and suddenly enjoy the comfort of eating healthy again.

Pedia Loss was a product that was marketed to parents who are worried about their obese children. Instead of helping children lose weight, however, the FTC says that all the product did was cost a lot of money.

• Sellers of Children’s Weight-Loss Product Settle FTC Charges

The media is quick to scream about childhood obesity rates. They have made parents so desperate for a solution that we are easy prey to companies that are trying to take advantage of us. Don’t let yourself become a statistic. If a company is promising that they can help you or your children lose weight without diet or exercise, then they’re lying. If they say you have to follow a strict diet and exercise regime in order to lose weight, then you should just follow the diet and not spend the money on their product.

Via: Consumer Health Digest, April 18, 2006

There are times when we “fall off the wagon” and eat poorly or fail to exercise for a couple of weeks. Sometimes it’s because of holidays or traveling. Other times, it’s spawned by a feeling of deprivation.

What do you do to get yourself back on track with healthy eating and exercise?

What phrases do you tell yourself to keep motivated those first few days after eating poorly or not exercising for a while?

The Question of the Week is meant to be an Inner Workout for you. Find some time during the week and allow yourself to write the answers to the questions posted. You can write them on paper, on a word processor or here in the comments section. Whatever works for you as long as you do it.

Keep writing until you find out something about yourself that you didn’t know before. I’ve also heard that it works to keep writing until you cry, but that doesn’t really work for me. Whatever works for you. Just keep writing until it feels right.