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

• RT @motivation: “The body is a sacred garment.” – Martha Graham http://tqpage.com/1493 #

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I know I should eat more fish because it’s protein that’s low in calories and has some cool fat in it (omega-3) that’s supposed to be super healthy. I KNOW this, but I haven’t really ever made it a habit in my life. I can’t even say that I eat fish more than once a month.

Part of the reason is that fish is difficult. Sure, canned tuna is easy, but after a summer of eating it almost every day, I have a hard time eating it more often than once a month. Frozen fish is so variable. Sometimes it tastes delicious, other times it tastes like fish long gone bad.

Fresh fish is even more difficult. Seeing heads and fins and eyes pretty much grosses me out. Oh yeah, and there are BONES. I found this video teaching me how to eat fish with bones in it, but the head of the fish just made me queasy.

Dining Etiquette: How To Eat Fish On The Bone

So, what am I to do? How do I get past all of these excuses? They are just excuses, I realize and I need to just get over them, so here’s my plan for eating fish at least once a week.

• Flavored Tuna: Lately, I’ve been enjoying the Starkist Hickory Smoked Tuna. Starkist makes lots of flavors including Lemon Pepper and Sweet & Spicy. These different flavors make it easier for me to eat tuna regularly.

• Frozen Cod Fillets: I haven’t been able to find these consistently at the grocery store, but when I do, I stock up. I have never had a frozen cod fillet that tastes really fishy. I can’t say the same for salmon or halibut. I love the buttery flavor of cod and if I defrost the fillet in the microwave for a minute and then put it on my George Foreman Grill, it turns out absolutely delicious without having to add any fat or butter.

• Salmon Burgers: I have found salmon burgers at Whole Foods and they are super delicious. I talked about them before: Starling Fitness » Health Food Stores Have Tasty Meat

I’m sick of letting excuses come between me and healthy eating, so I have made a plan to add fish to my diet at least once a week. If you have any other ideas on what I can do to make it work, please leave me a comment.

• Can’t wait for the farmer’s market to open up. Two more weeks! #

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Here is an interesting video from a college student about the Freshman Fifteen:

He takes you on a video tour of the student cafeteria at his school. The video pans over all the food and he says, “This is why I’m fat.”

I don’t like concepts like The Freshman Fifteen. It makes it seem like an inevitable outcome. Naming it like that makes it feel like it’s a natural part of growing up. I didn’t gain fifteen pounds when I started college. It took me three years to gain about twenty pounds, but I didn’t leave home to go to school. I was still living with my parents at the time. It wasn’t until I got married that my weight ballooned. Do I blame Mike for gaining that weight? No. Should students blame the cafeteria when they gain weight? Again, NO.

It’s not the food’s fault if I gain weight.

It’s possible to eat healthy and go to college. It’s possible to eat healthy and leave home for the first time. It’s possible to eat healthy and be a newlywed. Just like with every other aspect of my life, I need to be CONSCIOUS of what I’m eating, whether it’s in an attempt to avoid the Freshman Fifteen or the Middle Age Spread.

Swimsuit season is nearly upon us. If you are thinking that you’ll just forget about getting a suit this year, go read last year’s series starting with this one:

• Starling Fitness » Get Into That Swimsuit This Summer: Week 1

Why bother?

I don’t know about you, but too many summers of lost opportunities have gone by for me. I refused to participate in activities that I really wanted because I was “too fat.” Honestly, if I had found a swimsuit that I loved and enjoyed, I might have been more willing to participate.

If I had lived with that attitude my whole life, there are a myriad of wonderful experiences that I would have never had, like snorkeling in Hawaii.

I wrote an entire series meant to get you back into a swimsuit and feeling good about it. You can see all the episodes here:

• Starling Fitness » Get Into That Swimsuit This Summer: Week 2
• Starling Fitness » Get Into That Swimsuit This Summer: Week 3
• Starling Fitness » Get Into That Swimsuit This Summer: Week 4
• Starling Fitness » Get Into That Swimsuit This Summer: Week 5

Photo Via: Found in Mom’s Basement: Swimsuits for sale in the 1972 Sears catalog

I found Beeble Fitness a while ago and completely forgot to tell you about it. It’s a great website that has tons of little videos and descriptions to tell you how to do exercises properly. Form is extremely important when you are exercising because if you do everything correctly, you are less likely to get injured. Beeble Fitness has tons of little videos to show you proper form. For example, here is a link to only ONE of their exercises, the squat.

• Learn how to do the Squat – Body Weight exercise with videos, muscle pictures and instructions

It’s really easy to do the squat incorrectly, so Beeble Fitness has a large list of to do’s and NOT to do’s. I also love the little video showing you exactly how to do it. Next time you read about a workout and you’re unsure of how to do the exercise, head on over to Beeble Fitness and see if they have a video for that particular exercise. It helps me so much to have a clear visual example.

Sometimes, getting five servings of fruits and vegetables is difficult. Sometimes it feels like a chore to eat that many. When I start feeling like that, I break out the Bloody Mary glasses and make myself a Virgin Bloody Mary.

Ingredients:

• Margarita Salt
• Ice
• 1 small can of V-8 juice
• 2-10 drops of Tabasco Sauce
• 1/4 cup lime juice
• Ground pepper to taste

Directions:

• Wet the lip of the glass and dip it into the margarita salt.
• Add ice, V-8, Tabasco sauce and lime juice to the glass and mix well.
• Grind some pepper on the top of the liquid.

You can also add olives and celery, but I usually don’t have those sitting around my house when I’m in this situation, so I just drink it with a straw. For some reason, dressing tomato juice up like this makes drinking my serving of vegetables a little easier. It makes me feel like I am having a treat.

Last February, my good friend, Braidwood, took me to the Slow Food Mixer at the Wine Vault in San Diego. I had been religiously following the Weight Watchers program, so I was a little nervous going to an event that focused so heavily on food.

I shouldn’t have worried. Instead of a binge-fest, it was a pleasant gathering of interesting people. Every bite of food was a intriguing delight of goodness.

They fed us tiny amounts of food. Each item was no more than one or two bites. I didn’t get to taste everything, but I did get a photo of every thing. What I loved so much was being able to have so many different flavors without eating a lot of food.

The focus of the event was choosing organic and locally grown food. They showcased the best that southern California had to offer.

Of course, locally grown food is a lot easier to come by in a place that has a growing season like California does. Back home in Utah, we’re stuck with apples and potatoes all winter if we only eat local.

The thing that surprised me the most is how filling everything was. Each item was only a bite or two, but I felt full after an evening of talking and eating. I ate tiny amounts of really good food and I felt much more satisfied than I would have if I had eaten a huge meal at McDonalds.

The next time you’re hungry, cook yourself up some glamorous appetizers in tiny serving sizes and have one of each. You may find that you get fulfilled on far fewer calories than you would have if you had made a single entree.

To see all the photos:

• Slow Food Mixer at Wine Vault & Bistro – a set on Flickr

I saw Stephanie Klein speak at SXSWi 2009 this year and because of it, I bought a copy of her book, Moose: A Memoir of Fat Camp. In the book, she relates the tales of being sent to fat camp every summer.

I really expected her experience to be similar to mine. Every summer, my sister and I were sent to Montana to stay with our grandparents. Every summer, we dropped weight because our grandma was starving us and sending us to so many active classes that our bodies had no choice but to get slim. I ended up scarred with bingeing behavior built right into my personality, but Stephanie’s experience with fat camp was completely different.

Instead of damaging her self-esteem, it seemed to help her be stronger. Here are some of the awesome quotes I gleaned from her book:

I’d heard it all the time, ‘Live in the moment.’ But if I did that, I’d weigh more than a dump truck. Losing weight wasn’t about the moment at all; it was about having faith in the future. It was about knowing there would be another meal in a few hours.
– Stephanie Klein, Moose, 2008

I already knew to eat clean and listen to my body, to only eat when I was in a calm mental state. Everyone knew. But when you’re fat in the head, it’s never about knowing the answers. It’s about living them. – Stephanie Klein, Moose, 2008

When we die, no one remembers us for what we weighed. Our weight isn’t etched into our headstones.
– Stephanie Klein, Moose, 2008

That’s the thing about being a former fat camp champ: when asked if I’d change my past if I could, I always answer no. The pain of being an overweight kid, the humiliation, make you think twice before ever cutting anyone else down.
– Stephanie Klein, Moose, 2008

There’s something almost perfect in the ugly duckling syndrome. Because a sensitivity is tattooed on a part of you no one else can see but can somehow guess is there.
– Stephanie Klein, Moose, 2008

If you have been looking for a good summer read, check out Moose: A Memoir of Fat Camp by Stephanie Klein. It was great fun for me to read and even healed my damaged soul just a bit.

Sometimes I wake up and I just don’t want to exercise, but watching a video like this is enough to get my butt on the treadmill or out the door.

I have to admit that when I was running outdoors in all sorts of weather, I was much more able to handle any extreme. Now that I depend on my treadmill so much, I tend to be more of a wimp during extreme weather.

Next time you are feeling like skipping your workout, take four minutes and watch this video. It will get you moving!

Via: Quadrathon: The often asked question…