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

How does a teenager rebel in a sun-worshiping and ultra-athletic family? By refusing to exercise. I love Ms. Jen’s recollections of her family and how she recoiled from exercise in her teen years:

• My Day with Nokia’s Sports Tracker – Black Phoebe :: Ms. Jen

Ok, I grew up in a family that was sports obsessed, esp. my first stepdad – my mom’s second husband. My childhood, from ages 3 to 13, was spent with the stepdad, mom, and various other mom-related relatives who were pathologically compulsive about exercising at every darned opportunity.

Beach volleyball in the evenings? Check. Olympic style kayaking and canoeing? Check. Surfing? Check. Running? Check. Skiing? Check. Hiking with a pace meter and stop watch? Check!

By the time I was 8 years old, I was hiding when the folks were ready to go out for yet another bout of daily evening EXERCISE! Me hiding with my mom yelling at me that it was time to leave. My high school rebellion was to cultivate super-white, never see the sun skin. To do this in an ultra-athletic, sun-worshiping family was even more rebellious than teenage pregnancy or drug use. I kid you not. The cousins that got knocked-up and/or were smoking pot were excused as long as they were in competitive sports and winning.

When she was asked to review Nokia’s Sport Tracker with her shiny Nokia N82, she resisted, but eventually took it with her on errands… errands that she ran in her car:

I dropped off the dogs at my brother’s house, turned the GPS on, started the Sports Tracker app, took a photo and off I went. As I took the photos, I sent them up to my Flickr photostream via ShoZu, so that each of the photos sent to Flickr would be mapped automatically. When I finished the whole errand lap, I turned off the Sports Tracker and asked it to send the collected data to its mothership.

Amusingly, Sports Tracker wanted to know what type of exercise I was doing – Other, as it does not list car travel in LA as a form of exertion (ha!). The other amusing parts that ShoZu or Lifeblog could not perform for me was to inform me that I had traveled a total of 110 km in 3 hours 19 minutes and 34 seconds. My top speed was 130 km/h (hee hee hee) and my top altitude was 41 meters (Orange), the low was near the beach in Sunset / HB.

I was more interested how Sports Tracker performed in walking conditions because it’s harder for GPS data to track a slow moving object. Additionally, it would be nice to know how it handled “urban canyons,” which are areas of the city that are surrounded by huge buildings, so it is more difficult to get a signal.

Even more interesting is Ms. Jen’s ability to continue rebelling against her family right down to the point of reviewing the Sports Tracker with her car instead of her feet. It makes me wonder about myself. What part of my own personality is just rebelling against my family? Has bingeing turned into just another way for me to rebel against my grandmother? I need to think about this for a bit…

Ward-O-Matic only gave us a glimpse of the Metropolitan Life’s Guide to Good Health that he found in his wanderings, but it’s a fun glimpse nonetheless.

Their helpful tips were barely passable as such:

• Get a doctor
• Don’t worry if your doctor orders a lot of tests
• Get a hobby
• Eat the right foods

Sadly, he didn’t scan in the whole pamphlet, but I would LOVE to see the thing in entirety.

Apparently, there were an entire series of Met Life Booklets. I just wish I could jump in and see the Food for your Family book!

It has been a long time since I’ve talked about Runner+ Challenges. I’ve stopped running completely. I couldn’t even tell you the last time I ran. I would have to look it up on Runner+, actually. I have been playing DDR five days a week for the last few months. It has been such a refreshing change of pace that for a couple of weeks, I forgot to host the weekly challenges, but they are back up and “running.”

If you exercise by running or walking, you can compete in the Starling Fitness Challenges on Runner+. All you need is an account at Runner+ (free) and you can log your miles there. If you have a Nike+iPod kit, then your runs will automatically be added, but the site will also allow you to add your runs manually. If you would like to compete against runners on your level, here are the links for next week’s challenges (starts Sunday):

Level 1 weekly challenge from Starling Fitness. This level runs between 0-10 miles a week.

• Challenge: Starling Fitness Level 1 (03-09-08) – RUNNER+

Level 2 weekly challenge from Starling Fitness. This level runs between 10-20 miles a week.

• Challenge: Starling Fitness Level 2 (03-09-08) – RUNNER+

Level 3 weekly challenge from Starling Fitness. This level runs between 20-30 miles a week.

• Challenge: Starling Fitness Level 3 (03-09-08) – RUNNER+

Level 4 weekly challenge from Starling Fitness. This level runs between 30-40 miles a week.

• Challenge: Starling Fitness Level 4 (03-09-08) – RUNNER+

Level 5 weekly challenge from Starling Fitness. This level runs between 40-50 miles a week.

• Challenge: Starling Fitness Level 5 (03-09-08) – RUNNER+

Level 6 weekly challenge from Starling Fitness. This level runs between 50-60 miles a week.

• Challenge: Starling Fitness Level 6 (03-09-08) – RUNNER+

Linda was a fat cat.

We knew she was getting sick because she started getting thin. In the end, she wasted away to a skeleton with fur.

When she was fat, we worried about her and put her on a restrictive diet. It never helped her get thin. It just made her a pest at feeding time.

When she finally died, I regretted every morsel of food I denied her. Why did we nearly starve her every day? It didn’t help make her thin?

She lived to be seventeen years old, which is a long, healthy life for a cat. The fat that she had back in 2001 didn’t make her less healthy. I should have just given her normal food and let her eat from a kibble dish like I did with Maggie.

Since September when Linda died, I’ve been thinking about this. What if it all is the same for me?

This clip from Penn and Teller’s television show called Bullsh!t! talks about the obesity epidemic and how it isn’t much of an epidemic.

Paul Campos, the author of the book The Obesity Myth, talks about the myths about what is going on.

Myth 1: Weight is a good proxy for health: You can’t tell what’s going on with a person’s organs just by looking at them.

Myth 2: If you take a fat person and turn them into a thin person, you will improve their health.

Myth 3: We know how to produce significant long term weight loss.

Glenn Alan Gaesser, author of the book Big Fat Lies, talks about the dangers of constant dieting:

It is far more dangerous to ones health to be chronically yo-yoing up and down in weight on one diet after another than it would be to be a stable weight. Even if that happens to be heavier than the charts say you should weigh. Fat people who exercise regularly are better off healthwise and have lower mortality rates than people who don’t.

These issues are real and they aren’t going away quickly. The biggest problem is that we are being judged by our government and the insurance industry based on our weight. They have the right to raise our insurance premiums if we gain weight and are even pushing for the right to deny payment for illnesses that they consider weight related. The best thing we can do is work our hardest to get within their recommended ranges until the insanity of this country subsides and a more realistic approach is adopted.

Each week, I will give you step by step instructions on how to get into a swimsuit this summer. If you’re short on time, scroll down to the end and read “The Short Version” to get your weekly tips.

Last week’s job was to buy a swimming suit. Did you do it? There’s still time to get into that swim suit by summer, but you need to act now. If you didn’t buy your suit and lovely sarong last week, get to the store TODAY and buy one now and then proceed with this week’s task.

If you did buy a swimming suit, the first thing you need to do is give yourself kudos. Good job for taking that first step to feeling like a goddess this summer.

This week’s challenge is simple. Wear your swim suit around the house for a total of seven hours. Now, you can do this however you want. If you want to come home from work each night and wear it for an hour, you can. If you want to wear it for seven hours in one sitting, that’s fine. However you want to do it is fine with me.

Personally, I think the best thing to do is wear it for an hour each night. That slowly eases you into the idea of wearing your swim suit.

Note that no one needs to see you wearing your suit. No family, friends or lovers need to glimpse you wearing it. You can put it on, lock yourself in the closet reading a book for an hour if you want. You don’t need to leave your room or bathroom.

You DO have to be conscious, however. Wearing your swimming suit to bed really won’t do the trick unless you like to lounge around in your P.J.s for an hour before you go to bed.

That’s all you have to do. Wear your suit for a total of seven hours this week. Have fun and see you next week!

The Short Version:

• Give yourself kudos for buying a swim suit last week.

• Wear your swimming suit around the house for a total of seven hours this week. Recommended: Wear for an hour each day this week.

• No one needs to see you. You can lock yourself in the closet, your bedroom or even the bathroom as long as you wear your suit for the allotted time.

Something about this DVD bothers me: Women’s Health: The Wedding Workout (2006). Wedding workout? Really? Is it any different than a general workout? What could be physically grueling about your wedding that would make you need a wedding workout to prepare for it? It all smacks of profiteering to me.

I’ve been disgusted with the wedding industry lately. I talked about it over on my personal blog back in November of last year:

• Pick Me! » Your Day, Your Way

I thought it was just Utah, you know? I thought that all those billboards all over the city telling people to spend a boatload of money on their wedding was a Utah thing.

Apparently not.

According to One Perfect Day by Rebecca Mead, the wedding industry has grown to be a 161 Billion dollar industry.

It looks like Women’s Health is trying to profit from that 161 Billion dollar industry. Wasn’t the multi-billion dollar weight loss industry enough for you? Is this a trend that I haven’t noticed or one that is just starting? Whatever it is, don’t get sucked into the hype.

A wedding is just ONE day and a perfect wedding is no indicator of a happy life. Instead of starving yourself to fit into that expensive dress, you’re better off saving the money for a down payment on a house. Don’t let them tell you any different.

When Super-Size Me came out, I had some major disagreements with the movie that I voiced here:

• Starling Fitness » Fast Food Nation the Movie

• Starling Fitness » Supersize Me Rebuttal

• Starling Fitness » Comment on Supersize Me Rebuttal

It looks like Tom Naughton had the same problems with the movie as I did and he made a movie to prove his point:

• FatHead The Movie Home Page

Here is their description of the movie:

Have you seen the news stories about the obesity epidemic? Did you see Super Size Me? Then guess what? … You’ve been fed a load of bologna. Comedian (and former health writer) Tom Naughton replies to the blame-McDonald’s crowd by losing weight on a fat-laden fast-food diet while demonstrating that nearly everything we’ve been told about obesity and healthy eating is wrong. Along with some delicious parody of Super Size Me Naughton serves up plenty of no-bologna facts that will stun most viewers, such as: The obesity “epidemic” has been wildly exaggerated by the CDC. People the government classifies as “overweight” have longer lifespans than people classified as “normal weight.” Having low cholesterol is unhealthy. Lowfat diets can lead to depression and type II diabetes. Saturated fat doesn’t cause heart disease — but sugars, starches and processed vegetable oils do.

You can see a trailer for the movie here:

You can see more clips from the movie at FatHead’s YouTube Channel or after the break. (more…)

I’ve talked about Kimkins before. It was a very low carb, low fat and low calorie diet that imploded in controversy last year.

• Starling Fitness » How Did Kimkins Fly Under My Radar?

It looks like a local Fox News affiliate did a story about it and you can see it here:

Click through to see parts two, three and four: (more…)

If you are one of the many people who have bought a Starling Fitness Yearly Journal, then you know that the quote of the month is about keeping your body healthy. If not, here it is:

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

• Thich Nhat Hanh

What did you do today to show gratitude to the whole cosmos? Did you get enough sleep? Did you exercise? Did you choose something healthy? These aren’t chores. They are the best way you can tell the universe that you are grateful for your most exquisite body.

If you would like to order your own Starling Fitness Yearly Journal, you can do so here:

• Starling Fitness » Order Your Starling Fitness Yearly Journal

If you order it now, you can choose the month you want it to start and it will last you a year from that date. You won’t have to throw away any unused days from the first of the year. You can start fresh now.