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

Every time I see an advertisement for a new kind of exercise machine, I just roll my eyes and wish they would just quit trying. This time, however, I got a little excited. I got an email about Real Ryder, which is an exercise bike that acts more like a real bicycle.

• Real Ryder-The Next Generation of Indoor Cycling

Introducing the RealRyder: It tilts, turns, and banks like an outdoor bike–works out the core, upper body, legs, cardio, and improves balance the way other indoor cycling bikes can’t.

Here is a video of it in action:

The biggest problem that I can see with the Real Ryder is that you can’t buy one. Just like so many other exercise products being advertised on the Internet, it’s not just a simple case of giving them your credit card number to get one. There is no price listed on their website and buying one isn’t as easy as filling out a form and waiting for FedEx. In fact, you have to contact a Sales & Marketing representative to even find out more information. Additionally, two of these “sales” people have the same last name. That smacks of nepotism to me, and I’ve found that it isn’t the best way to run a company.

The Real Ryder is a GREAT idea. I’d love to see it made into a video game controller so I could play motocross video games using this bike instead of buttons. I have so many good ideas that could work with Real Ryder, but if I can’t just give them my credit card and BUY one, I’m not going to believe they exist.

Update 07-22-12: It is nearly FOUR years later and the SHOP section of their website STILL says “Coming Soon.” I think I can safely assume that they’re never coming.

A couple of weeks ago, we were hit with the news that Starbucks was closing approximately 600 of it’s coffee shops.

• Business & Technology | Starbucks closing 5 percent of U.S. stores | Seattle Times Newspaper

The Seattle coffee company is cutting 5 percent of its U.S. locations as part of a wide-ranging effort to boost its bottom line and its stock price. The chain is accelerating international growth.

CNN itself gave out the advice to skip Starbucks when you’re trying to save money.

• How to save $2,425 a year – Skip Starbucks – CNNMoney.com

What about when you’re trying to save calories? The advice is the same. Starbucks coffee tastes so good because it’s packed full of milk and sugar. Even their “light” coffees are high in calories. For example, their 16 oz. Caffé Vanilla Frappuccino® Light Blended Coffee is 190 calories with 5 grams of fat.

So how do you make coffee at home that’s light in calories AND make it taste good? Here’s a quick list:

• Coffee: Good news, coffee is fat free and calorie free. Many grocery stores have coffee bean grinders right in the store, so you can get a small amount of freshly ground coffee every week while grocery shopping.

• Fat free milk: Many diets suggest a daily allowance of dairy products. You can get that into your diet easily by adding one cup of fat free milk for 80 calories. To heat milk in the microwave, use the 50% setting and heat for two minutes. All microwaves are different, of course, so watch it so your milk doesn’t bubble over.

• Torani Sugar-Free syrups: THIS is the secret ingredient that will make your coffee taste as good as a Starbucks coffee with no calories. Amazon has nine different flavors: vanilla, carmel, chocolate (doesn’t taste so good), raspberry, hazelnut, white chocolate, Irish creme, lemon and peppermint. You’re sure to find a flavor that can recreate your favorite Starbucks creation.

I gave up all forms of caffeine long ago, so coffee isn’t hurting my pocketbook or my food journal, but if your particular indulgence is coffee, here is a way for you to have your coffee at a lower price AND calorie count.

So much of eating fresh produce is KNOWING what to do with it. There are so many fruits and vegetables in my grocery store that I just have no idea how to peel them, how to eat them and even whether parts of them are poisonous. The Produce Picker Podcast is a great resource for learning about all kinds of fruits and vegetables.

This episode shows us how to cut open a pomegranate:

The steps are:

• Put a towel down on your cutting board to help prevent staining.
• Cut off the top and bottom of the pomegranate.
• Make four scores along the tough skin of the side of the pomegranate with your knife.
• Fill a large bowl with water.
• Break the pomegranate apart into four sections in the bowl under water.
• Pull the skin and pith away from the seeds.
• The seeds will sink to the bottom of the bowl, while the skin and pith will float.
• Skim the pith and skin off the top of the water.
• Empty the bowl into a strainer with holes small enough to catch the seeds.
• Transfer the seeds to whatever storage container you want.

As a child, my dad used to get a pomegranate. He would just open it up like and orange and we’d pick the seeds out with our fingers to eat it. The Produce Picker method is MUCH cleaner, because pomegranate juice really stains your fingers and clothes.

My friend, Nami, came from Iran, where pomegranates grow naturally. He would eat one by squeezing and squeezing it until it was soft and mushy. He then would poke a hole in the skin and drink the juice. I always thought he was missing out on the yummy pulp that way, but he also missed out on crunching the seeds.

However you eat a pomegranate, they are supposed to be super healthy for you and they fulfill one of your fruit/veggie requirements for the day, so get one and eat it today!

Sheldon’s grandpa has decided to lose weight online. He’s using the “Points Watchers” system, which is suspiciously similar to Weight Watchers Points system. He has a bunch of comics where he talks about losing weight online. Here is a link to the first one.

• Sheldonâ„¢ Comic Strip: Daily Webcomic by Dave Kellett

I love reading Sheldon, but I especially love it when Dave writes about things I’m so intimately familiar. Weight Watchers has been a part of my life since January 2002. The only times I have ever lost weight was when I was religiously following the Weight Watchers plan. It has changed over the last seven or so years, but in the end, it’s still the only thing that works for me.

This week, Dawn poses as a modeling agency who wants to hire girls. How far will these girls go to get a modeling job?

Dawn is in her fifth week of the 500 calorie restriction and she isn’t feeling well:

“I feel like I’m drunk all the time. I just want some food.”

During this episode, she tries the Master Cleanse lemonade diet and the Cabbage Soup diet. The soup didn’t work well for her:

“I’m so bored of this. And sure, I probably lost a few pounds, but my tummy is so swollen. And the side effects are slightly unsociable. I’ve got terrible farts. My cat won’t sit with me and she certainly won’t sleep in my bed.”

At week six, she has a skinny Christmas and a dire conversation with her doctor. The doctor wants her to stop the diet, but she wants to continue the experiment until the end.

Tune in next week to see what Dawn has collected from newspapers, tabloids and magazines.

This postcard from PostSecret is so true of anyone with an eating disorder:

It reads:

Your anorexia is changing you into a person I don’t know.
I miss you… the old you.

Anorexia isn’t the only disordered eating that changes you. Binge eating makes me do crazy things. Sometimes I see the look on Michael’s face and I KNOW that I’m doing something insane and that I should stop, but I do it anyway.

I just want to be the person I was before food became so weird in my life.

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.

I was looking for an image of a book called No Fat Chicks, so I looked at Google’s Image Search. Instead of the book cover I was looking for, I found a huge pile of derogatory images.

The sign reads:

Nudist Beach: Fat chicks prohibited beyond this point.

I’m sure this is a photoshopped sign, but it just made my blood boil. There are guys with horrible acne and bad breath that laugh at this sort of thing and never once think for a moment that they need to look within. EVERY man I’ve seen with a “No Fat Chicks” bumper sticker on his jacked up pickup hasn’t been the image of perfect manliness himself. What gives these guys the right to degrade anyone like that?

Of course, women aren’t the only ones on the “laughing” block. I found this image on the same page.

It reads:

Can’t find your penis?
We’ve got two solutions for you:
For a smaller gut: go to a spam website
For a big dick: go to a spam website

This was supposedly a spam email that was making the rounds for a while back in 2007.

Both of these images are so infuriating because they treat overweight people like objects. They say that the only way we are considered worthwhile human beings is if we fit into the seats on an airplane.

THIS IS NOT TRUE!

There have been MANY famous and influential fat people throughout history:

• Famous Fat People List

The sad truth is, however, that there are people out there who believe this. They make decisions about whether we get a raise, pass a class, or get health care. If there was any reason to lose weight besides health, getting away from the discrimination should be number two on your list, because people who laugh at these jokes are in power to decide our lives.

No Fat Chicks via: No Fat Chicks Sign | Funny Pictures

Can You Find Your Penis? via: Laughter is the Best Medicine » Blog Archive » Funniest Spam Ever!

The media is quick to call us all lazy and unmotivated because many people don’t play with their Wii Fit anymore. Check out this article:

• The Truth About Wii Fit And Weight Loss – Video Game Feature – Yahoo! Video Games

Don’t blame Nintendo for people’s sloth, observers say. The company has marketed its new cash cow brilliantly, and it’s not responsible for whether consumers play the game or not. Nintendo declined to comment for this article, but Wii Fit creator Shigeru Miyamoto has previously gone on record and said that the game is less about people losing weight and more about broadening the videogame market. Still, it seems a little disingenuous for Nintendo to heavily market a fitness tool that’s sitting in more than a million American living rooms collecting dust.

I say the fact that I haven’t played Wii Fit for months is most CERTAINLY Nintendo’s fault. Wii Fit isn’t really the be-all fitness game that we all were hoping it would be. It’s fun, but my heart rate rarely gets high enough to hit the cardio level unless I do the running or hula hoop. There is only so much hula hoop and running in place that I can do before I get BORED!

Not to mention the inordinate amount of time I end up pressing the A button to get to the next exercise. For every 30 minute workout I’ve done, it has taken me 55 minutes of real time. That’s half the time working out and half the time standing on the Wii Balance Board watching a stupid animation or the virtual trainer tell me something that I don’t need to hear. If I spend the same 55 minutes on the treadmill, I burn twice as many calories.

And of course, the daily ridicule didn’t help. If you play every day, the Wii Fit calls you obese and if you don’t play, it bugs the other players wondering where you are!

Sure, I liked the yoga and the balance sections, but those were really games more than a good workout. I can’t wait for a SERIOUS company to create a real fitness game for the Wii Balance Board. I wish Konami would create something for that controller. After ten years of DDR, Konami knows how to make fitness games. Honestly, I’ve been playing DDR for over five years now and I still LOVE it. It’s my favorite active game.

What about you? Are you still playing with your Wii Fit? Is it because you’re lazy like Yahoo Games accuses us? Or have you been doing something else for exercise because the thought of doing any more Wii Fit stepping just makes you cringe with boredom?

Via: An email tip from Iportion.

This postcard from PostSecret made me so happy inside.

It reads:

Whenever I make my husband a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, I secretly draw a heart in the peanut butter.

My whole life, I’ve felt that food made by someone who loves me tastes better. Now I know why.

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.

Last year, I wrote a weekly plan to get you on track for a healthy and active life. If you followed the plan last week, then here is the link to this week’s plan:

• Starling Fitness » New Year’s Resolutions: Week 8

The Short Version:

• Get support and accountability: Join Weight Watchers, Overeaters Anonymous, or some other support group. Find a friend who will hold your feet to the fire.
• If you aren’t at your recommended daily caloric average, reduce it by another 100 calories. Write down EVERYTHING you eat including measurements and calories.
• Choose lean protein and whole grains.
• Save enough calories to eat two teaspoons of healthy oil each day.
• Avoid the feeling of deprivation by finding non-food activities to nurture yourself EVERY day.
• Eat five servings of fruits and vegetables every day.
• Save enough calories to eat two servings of dairy products each day.
• Increase your speed. Walk/run 2.0 miles five days this week. Remember consistency is more important than speed, but you need to make sure you’re pushing yourself.
• Give yourself kudos for coming this far.

This is the last week of this program, that’s why it’s essential to get a program for support and accountability.