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

Sheldon’s grandpa has been using an online weight control program that is very similar to Weight Watchers. In this one, he talks about how he would rather do the online program than meet with people and talk about feelings.

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

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve cried while eating. I talk about it here:

• Starling Fitness » Crying, While Eating

Until I am able to deal with my emotions without food, I will always have problems getting to a healthy weight. This is something that I still haven’t mastered, so if any of you have any ideas (besides writing in my journal, because I do that A LOT) please leave them in the comments.

Dawn goes to Venice Beach to see if normal people have just as much of an obsession with size zero as the celebrities in Hollywood.

Dawn is on her second week of eating 500 calories a day in order to get down to a size zero. It’s affecting her mind a little:

“I’m in my own little world that is obsessed with body image. It’s all I can think about. It’s all I can see. I’m really kind of jealous of women who are a bit bigger than me at the moment because I’m thinking, ‘You lucky cow. You just let yourself go. You can have pie and enjoy a nice life.’ And then I see someone who is really skinny and I think, ‘You lucky cow. You’re really skinny.’ So I can’t be normally satisfied either way.”

Restaurants are hard. She has a calorie book with her at all times trying to stay within her 500 calories allotted each day.

“I’m just kind of getting used to the feeling of being hungry all the time. It’s a really weird feeling because usually I’d do whatever I could to prevent feeling hungry. And now I’ve gotten to this stage where I’m kind of proud of myself for feeling hungry.”

She went to see a holistic healer who has worked with Gwenyth Paltrow to get an evaluation. He was quick to tell her that she was obese and needed to take a bag full of supplements:

“I just find it a bit funny how the Olympic medics [Dawn’s medical team], probably the best in the country are quite happy to pass me off as body perfect and then some holistic guy mentions the word obese within twenty minutes. I had EVERY single test you could possibly have on your body at the Olympic place, and then I stood on a pair of scales and he told me I was obese. That’s dangerous. That’s dangerous for people who don’t have the support and who are going in there with a bit of a fluffy head, thinking they are fat.”

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

I found this seminar being held in Salt Lake City.

• Salt Lake City – Sensible Weight Loss Seminar at Salt Lake City (Thursday June 18, 2009) – Upcoming

It caught my eye, because I thought it might be a good way for people to learn how to lose weight. Weight Watchers could teach their entire plan in two days, I’m sure of it, so I thought this might be a reasonable alternative.

The first thing that shocked me was the price. Two thousand four hundred and ninety-nine dollars?!! At that price, you could attend Weight Watchers every week for FOUR YEARS!!! Why do they think they can charge so much?

It’s sponsored by ELITE Aesthetic Medical Training, so maybe it’s for doctors…

Yeah, it looks like it’s geared toward healthcare professionals. In particular, it appears to be for plastic surgeons. What do they recommend as “sensible” weight loss at this seminar? Here are a couple of things mentioned in the advertisement:

• Learn how to treat obesity (and not just localized fat) by developing a comprehensive weight loss protocol, including detoxification practices: Detoxification practices has been said to be a questionable practice: “Detoxification” with Pills and Fasting

The detoxification theory can enable con artists to gain great power over their customers by diagnosing and curing “potentially fatal” (but nonexistent) illnesses. “They have to invent the idea of toxins,” says Peter Fodor, president of the Lipoplasty Society of North America, “because that gives them something to pretend they can fix.”

• Learn how to develop an individualized nutrition program based on the client’s blood chemistry: This is a theory made popular by Peter J. D’Adamo, N.D. Here’s what Quackwatch has to say about this theory:

D’Adamo, unfortunately, offers little in the way of scientific evidence, relying instead on a collection of anecdotal reports and case histories. His speculation that the one gene responsible the ABO blood type could exert such a dominant influence over everything else is unable to stand on its own merits. In the end, D’Adamo adds the caveat that individual variations still occur within blood types, so you shouldn’t expect all of his recommendations to apply to you.

It’s no wonder that some people get some outrageous advice from doctors. Do you think it’s worth $2499 to get advice like this? The next time you’re tempted to attend a seminar about weight loss, think again.

Note to self: Next time I feel like bingeing, look at all the photos on this website. It makes me want to stay away from food and become a vegetarian all at the same time.

• Top 10 Disgusting Foods – The List Universe

Their list of the Top Ten Most Disgusting Foods are as follows:

1. Snake Blood and Bile
2. Balut – Duck Fetus
3. Bee Larvae
4. Spiders
5. Monkeys Brains
6. Rats
7. Caterpilla Fungus
8. Bird Spit
9. Ox Penis
10. Kopi Luwak: Rodent Feces

Their names alone don’t sound too bad, but when you see all the photos and the descriptions of what they are, it makes me want to stop eating for at least an hour.

We are celebrating another Valentine’s Day the healthy way. You can read how to do it here:

• Starling Fitness » Have a Healthy Valentine’s Day

• Starling Fitness » Valentine’s Breakfast In Bed

• Starling Fitness » Choose a Healthy Valentine’s Dinner

So many times, we try to love each other by feeding. It’s a basic human drive to want to feed the ones we love. Our tribe must endure and if there is an abundance of food, they should eat as much as they can because we want them to be able to survive a famine.

Fortunately, our nation hasn’t seen a famine for a LONG time. The irony of our biological instincts is that sometimes they don’t work. In this case, it might be more loving if we DIDN’T feed our loved ones.

Remember that this holiday!

It looks like Sheldon finally noticed that Cookie Monster doesn’t eat cookies anymore. While I categorically disagree with removing that bit of Sesame Street lore from the beloved children’s show, I’m not against changing fairytales in general. Check out this comic from Dave Kellett:

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

In the fairytale of Hansel and Gretel, the children are lured into the clutches of a bad witch with a gingerbread house. Something BAD happens to them when they eat too much candy and sweets. That’s one fairytale that doesn’t need revamping for a healthy lifestyle.

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 7

The Short Version:

• Reduce your daily caloric average 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 mileage. Walk 2.0 miles five days this week. You are allowed to increase your speed to the point of sweating, but if you are sore the next day you MUST go slow again.
• Give yourself kudos for coming this far.

This week’s US Weekly reads:

Jessica’s Agony
Bullied For Her Weight
Her rage over ‘fat’ insults
Suddenly back with a trainer
Tony’s reaction and did he cheat?
How she’s tortured…

Do they think that we don’t remember? Did we forget WHO is bullying her?

Just in case we did, last week’s US Weekly got left behind. US Weekly isn’t some “nice” tabloid that’s trying to protect poor Jessica Simpson. They were the ones who were perfectly happy to post the photos and repeat the “Jumbo Jessica” insult.

Bad form, US Weekly, bad form.

This week, Dawn Porter goes to Los Angeles to further her goal to get to a Size Zero.

She goes to Barry’s Boot Camp in West Hollywood to see how the celebrities workout. She also interviews Debbie Matenopoulos, who has been a size zero on how she maintains her weight. She said:

“The thinner that people become the more roles [in Hollywood] that they seem to get. Right now I’m a size 2-4, but I was a size zero. I’m a size 25 jean.”

She stands up and shows Dawn her waistline. Dawn asks, “How do you maintain that?” Debbie replies,

“You don’t eat. It’s a HARD thing. It’s so easy to get caught up in it. I went on a fast for 18 days and did not eat food. Not an ounce. I was drinking these Chinese herbs, this brown water, and doing yoga and being very sad. And I kept saying, ‘I’m very calm. Food just distracts you from really what’s going on.” All my friends kept saying, ‘You don’t have oxygen going to your brain. That’s why you think this.'”

THAT’S what people are doing to get to size zero.

Next week, Dawn goes to Venice Beach to see if normal people are just as obsessed with being size zero as the celebrities in Hollywood.

I got this question in the comments the other day:

Hi,
I am type 2 diabetic.May I use organic cane sugar as a sweetener instead of splenda?
Thanks
manoucher

Dear Manoucher,

Firstly, it’s NEVER a good idea to get medical advice from the Internet. My favorite quote from Chasing Windmills is true in every case:

If you trust Google more than your doctor then maybe it’s time to switch doctors.

Jadelr and Cristina Cordova, Chasing Windmills, 08-21-06

That said, it seems the question is whether organic cane sugar will affect a diabetic the same as NORMAL sugar. Can you use organic cane sugar instead of Splenda?

The answer to that question is NO.

Just because something is organic doesn’t automatically mean it’s healthy. Organic cane sugar is still SUGAR. It has the word right in its name. It will effect you the same way as white sugar or high fructose corn syrup or any of the other foods that are restricted for diabetics.

The reason why so many people prefer organic cane sugar to high fructose corn syrup is because they think it TASTES better. I’m not sure whether that’s true or not. Personally, I can’t tell the difference between USA Coca-Cola (made with high fructose corn syrup) and Mexican Coca-Cola (made with cane sugar), but a lot of people say they can tell the difference.

If you’re diabetic, however, organic cane sugar acts exactly the same in your body as beet sugar or corn syrup. They are all simple carbohydrates that break down easily in the body and wreak havoc on insulin levels.

Remember to talk to your doctor, but if you’re diabetic, I think you should stay away from ALL sugars.

Good luck,
Laura Moncur