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

Over the years, I have lost a lot of hair. Unlike most people, I’m a little grateful for the loss. I used to be an afro-freak child. Every trip to get a haircut ended with the statement, “Hey, Buffy, come over hear and get a load of this freak’s hair!” There are probably men out there who fantasize about having the hands of three hairdressers ruffling through their hair, but as a child, it just made me feel like a defective.

My mom said that having children is how she lost her hair, but I don’t think so. At the same age my mom had me and my sister, I lost a considerable amount of hair. I, however, had no babies to blame it on. I guess it’s just an age thing.

Over at Yahoo!, this article claims to be able to help you grow healthy hair:

• Better in ’07: Spring Nutrition Guide on Yahoo! Health

The recommendations are simple:

• Eat plenty of iron-rich protein
• Load up on Vitamin C
• Be sure to get your Bs (folate, vitamin B-6, vitamin B-12)
• Don’t forget the Zinc

I never know what to think about diets like these. Yeah, all those macro-nutrients ARE important for a healthy diet. Will it grow hair? Man, I’m to the point of skepticism with ANYTHING that tells me it will make me lose weight. I’m sure there are people out there who feel the same about promises of hair growth. It all sounds like snake oil to me…

Via: love and hope and sex and dreams: Eat Beef! (it’s good for your hair)

Cruising past Salt Lake City, Utah on the Race Across the USA! Despite the glitch in the Nike+ Website, we gathered enough miles to get us past Salt Lake and on to Omaha, Nebraska! Imagine yourself running past the mountainy forests of Wyoming and the vast sea of farmland that is Nebraska!

These are the cities we are going to see along the way:

• Los Angeles, California – Starting Point
• Sacramento, California – 384 miles
• Salt Lake City, Utah – 1,036 miles
• Omaha, Nebraska – 1,971 miles
• Chicago, Illinois – 2,439 miles
• New York, New York – 3,227 miles

You can see the full route in detail here:

• Race Across USA Route

Don’t forget that there are prizes for the top 10 finishers:

• 1st place – Most miles run – Four DVD set of Starling Fitness walking videos: Swami’s Beach, Sugarhouse, Moab and the as yet unreleased San Antonio Riverwalk.
• 2nd and 3rd place – Choice of three Starling Fitness DVDs.
• 4th and 5th place – Choice of two Starling Fitness DVDs.
• 6th through 10th place – Choice of one Starling Fitness DVD

Because of the glitch, the Top Ten have changed drastically. This race is still very much up for grabs. The current Top Ten are here:

There is still time to join up! To enter, you have to have a Nike+ and link it up to their online system. You cannot leave a message here to be sent an invitation. You must click on this link and ask to be added to the Race Across the USA on the Nike+ website:

• Race Across the USA

You will be invited to a Speed race of 3327 miles. We’ll add the miles of everyone together. I will check the mileage every day. As soon as I notice that we have achieved the goal of 3,227 miles, I will stop the race and prizes will be announced. The Race Across the USA started March 1st, so come walk across the USA with us!

Since Nike’s system isn’t set up for a cooperative event like this, you will need to check here at Starling Fitness for progress and winners.

We reserve the right to limit participation in the challenge due to our time constraints or the limits of Nike’s system.

This event is not sponsored by Nike or Apple. Starling Fitness will choose the winners based on total mileage. Our decisions are final.

Many thanks to Slashfood for bringing this to my attention:

• Half loaves of bread – Slashfood

Orowheat seems to have released a half loaf of bread. Instead of the nearly two pound loaves of whole wheat and other popular flavors, you can now buy just a handful of slices at a time. These loaves aren’t lacking in anything but the number of slices; the height and width of the bread is the same.

If you have found that you eat less bread now that you’re eating healthy, you probably also have my problem every week. You have to throw away half a loaf of moldy bread. Orowheat is willing to sell me a half a loaf a bread so that I don’t feel guilty for “wasting” food. I’m all for that.

I haven’t seen it in the Salt Lake City grocery stores yet, but I’m eagerly awaiting their arrival!

Nike’s website decided that we had all achieved the goal, even though three entrants hadn’t run the minimum yet. I have no idea why they did that, but we have to start the Race Across the USA all over again. I resent out invitations to all the participants and I will start adding the mileage daily again. Yesterday, before the race had been unceremoniously “finished,” our mileage was up to 917 miles. I’m going to add that amount to our daily totals, so we haven’t really lost the progress from Los Angeles and almost through the Nevada desert.

I’m not going to keep track of the old mileage, so any advantage you had against your rivals is lost. Sorry, but we’re starting from scratch as soon as you join the new race. Nike’s website is cool, but it is REALLY difficult to deal with all this stuff, so I am just going to go from the ranking on the new race. Any mileage from the previous race is merely added to our group effort. The winners will be judged when I end the race after we’ve reached New York.

Sorry about the glitch, but here is a chance to start fresh. If you want to get a jump on the person who was kicking your butt before, now’s the time to do it!

Since Nike’s system isn’t set up for a cooperative event like this, you will need to check here at Starling Fitness for progress and winners.

We reserve the right to limit participation in the challenge due to our time constraints or the limits of Nike’s system.

This event is not sponsored by Nike or Apple. Starling Fitness will choose the winners based on total mileage. Our decisions are final.

Even though I’m all about “loving yourself thin,” I have a low tolerance for hippie baloney. This article has a gratitude exercise that might help some to foster a more positive outlook, but it really wasn’t very helpful to me.

• You’ll Flip for These Mental Gymnastics

I’m not much of a gratitude person. I don’t really feel good knowing that the universe was perfectly aligned to create human life on this planet and I have a harder time feeling grateful that we are here. When I want to binge, I’m usually feeling pretty down, so it’s hard to come up with a list of things to be grateful about and when I read one I’ve written in the past, it sounds pretty stupid to me. It’s hard for me to remember how grateful I felt that I came into being on this planet when I wish I could just numb myself away.

What has worked better for me is the Happy Memories exercise. When I’m feeling happy and in the mood to reminisce, I write down various happy memories into a notebook. I write down a small description of the happy memory and then later, I write a whole page about it including all the five senses that I can. The thing is, I write the happy memories when I’m feeling happy, not when I’m feeling down.

When I feel down and I’m trying not to binge, I have been going back to my Happy Memories notebook. After reading a few of them, I remember how sweet life can be. Somehow, reliving the happy memories heals me a little bit and I can skip the binge.

I don’t know why that gratitude thing doesn’t work for me. It seems to work for Oprah and all the people who worship her, but it just kind of makes me angry when I’m in the bingeing mood. The statements of gratitude seem idealistic to me, even when they are my own words. The happy memories, however, were truly happy for me and my awful state of mind can’t deny their relevance.

Try both exercises and see what works for you. Fill your toolbox with as many techniques as you can!

Via: Curb overeating habits with gratitude – That’s Fit

After a heated discussion on whether we should cancel the Reader Meetup, we let the fortune cookie decide our fate. It said, “A man who dares to waste an hour of time hasn’t discovered the value of life.”

It’s not like we don’t want to spend an hour with our readers; we really do. Unfortunately, the few people who contacted us in Austin have either not responded to our email announcing the event or cancelled. No one has RSVP’d on the UpComing.org site, so the underwhelming response says: CANCEL.

If you live in Austin and were considering going to the Reader Meetup, contact me. Mike and I are are going to this event, which is open to the public, so you’re free to show up here as well.

Your Video Blog Can Save the World

Friday, March 9th, 2005 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm

Carver Museum Cultural Center (1161 Angelna Street). Google Map FREE admission, no badge or pre-event signup needed to attend this session.

I have always felt alone with my bingeing. Whenever I read about eating disorders, they always talked about anorexia and bulimia. It turns out that binge eating is three times more common than either of those eating disorders.

• Treatment Online: Binging is America’s Most Common Eating Disorder

So, if bingeing is more widespread than anorexia or bulimia, why doesn’t the media talk about it? This article has a clue:

In the public eye, binge eating springs from a faulty sense of self-discipline rather than a diagnosable physical condition, but it is very much a clinical disorder, often occurring in tandem with major depression and anxiety.

People believe that bingeing is a self-discipline issue, but anorexia is a mental disease. The entire weight loss industry hinges on the idea that obesity is a self-discipline issue and the idea that we might need to heal our brains before we can think about eating healthy would put a lot of fitness gurus out of work.

I got this exercise from Martha Beck’s book Four Day Win and changed it up a little for myself.

• Make sure you’re feeling in a pretty good mood. Are you hungry? If so, make sure you go eat something a little decadent. It doesn’t have to be a large portion, but right now, go eat something that you have been denying yourself.

• Make a quick list of your happiest memories. Just get a clean notebook and on the first page write all the happy times in your life. One memory per line, list them out. Keep writing until you can’t think of any more. If you have less than five, you’re probably not in a good enough mood to do this exercise, so try again a different time. Shoot for a list of fifty or so memories.

• Each day, when you’re feeling most comfortable and happiest, go back to the notebook. Take one page per memory and write out the full memory in as much detail as you can. Use all five senses to write your memories. What did the air smell like? How did his lips taste? What color was the sky? How did it feel against your skin? What music was playing at that moment? Sight and smell are the most powerful memory joggers, so make sure you at least cover those two senses.

• After a month or so, you will have a book full of happy memories that you can use as a resource when you’re feeling like bingeing. When you can feel a binge coming on, give yourself a few minutes and read through some of your favorite happy memories.

This exercise has been really powerful for me and I have only been doing it for a couple of weeks.

One caveat: I’m a writer, so writing is the way I relate to the world, but there are MANY ways to do this exercise. You can use pictures from the past and create a scrapbook. You can draw your favorite memories and use the pictures to reminisce. You can take film clips that remind you of your favorite memories and make a video of your favorite times of your own life. You can even just go through a box of old belongings and mementos that you have saved over the years.

We humans are so diverse in our abilities, however you can do this Happy Memories exercise is wonderful as long as it works for you.

We just passed Sacramento on the Race Across the USA! With only four days of running, that is freakin’ awesome!

These are the cities we are going to see along the way:

• Los Angeles, California – Starting Point
• Sacramento, California – 384 miles
• Salt Lake City, Utah – 1,036 miles
• Omaha, Nebraska – 1,971 miles
• Chicago, Illinois – 2,439 miles
• New York, New York – 3,227 miles

You can see the full route in detail here:

• Race Across USA Route

Don’t forget that there are prizes for the top 10 finishers:

• 1st place – Most miles run – Four DVD set of Starling Fitness walking videos: Swami’s Beach, Sugarhouse, Moab and the as yet unreleased San Antonio Riverwalk.
• 2nd and 3rd place – Choice of three Starling Fitness DVDs.
• 4th and 5th place – Choice of two Starling Fitness DVDs.
• 6th through 10th place – Choice of one Starling Fitness DVD

The current Top Ten are here:

There is still time to join up! To enter, you have to have a Nike+ and link it up to their online system. You cannot leave a message here to be sent an invitation. You must click on this link and ask to be added to the Race Across the USA on the Nike+ website:

• Race Across the USA

You will be invited to a Distance Goal race of 1 mile. You’ll be able to achieve that goal quite easily, but keep running. We’ll add the miles of everyone together. I will check the mileage every day. As soon as I notice that we have achieved the goal of 3,227 miles, I will stop the race and prizes will be announced. The Race Across the USA started March 1st, so come walk across the USA with us!

Since Nike’s system isn’t set up for a cooperative event like this, you will need to check here at Starling Fitness for progress and winners.

We reserve the right to limit participation in the challenge due to our time constraints or the limits of Nike’s system.

This event is not sponsored by Nike or Apple. Starling Fitness will choose the winners based on total mileage. Our decisions are final.

How many things have promised us that we’ll be thin, only to fail on the promise?

• Bulimia
• Meal Replacement Shakes
• Smoking
• Diet Pills
• Diets

What else would you add to the list? This secret from PostSecret hit home with me because I always felt ripped off that I had the bingeing but couldn’t purge. Somehow I felt if I could just purge, I wouldn’t be fat. The truth of the matter is, not even bulimia can keep up with some bingeing. I can eat more in a few minutes than I can work off on the treadmill all day. I don’t even think barfing and laxatives could keep up.

Learning how to nurture myself without food has been the best step toward healthy eating in a long time.

If you have been tempted by any of those things that promise to make you thin, just let them go. Have the courage to take an inner journey and find out what you need to do to take radically good care of yourself. Loving yourself isn’t a quick fix weight loss solution, but I truly think it’s the only one that works.

PostSecret‘s beneficiary is the National Hopeline Network. It is a 24-hour hotline (1 (800) SUICIDE) for anyone who is thinking about suicide or knows someone who is considering it.