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

One of the most surprisingly good apps for me has been iPeriod for the iPhone. You can download it here:

• iPeriod at iTunes

It’s a program meant to track your menstrual cycle, but I have been using it for tracking my weight, my moods and how often I exercise and stay on my eating program. You can add four of your own items to track (I added exercise, eating healthy and some work items). Additionally, it allows you to track your mood, so you can see if that affects your eating.

Tracking the weight is the best of any other app I’ve tried (including Edibles, sorry to say). Here is screen shot of my weight over the last month.

As you can see I have had some lows and highs. Once I get more data, I’ll be able to see if the trend is that I’m losing or maintaining. I’d LIKE it to be losing, so I can alter my program to match my goals.

I really didn’t think iPeriod would be that good for me, but what was meant to be a menstrual tracker has become so much more for me. Fortunately, they have MANY privacy features, including turning OFF its name so that no one knows that it has anything to do with my monthly cycle.

If you are looking for a good app to track your weight, try iPeriod and see how it works for you!

If I find myself at Wendy’s, it’s so easy to eat healthy. There are SEVERAL meals that I can have that are low in calories and yummy. Here are my favorite selections:

• Small Chili and a Side Salad: This is my absolute favorite meal to have at Wendy’s. For about 4 WW Points, I can have a full tummy and feel satisfied. Instead of using dressing on the side salad, I pour the small chili on it and it feels like a decadent salad.

• Kid’s Meal Hamburger, Fries and Tiny Frosty: This is substantially more calories with my estimate at 11 WW Points, but if I’m craving a classic hamburger, I get the taste of it without all the calories. For the same amount of Points as their Baconator, I can have a whole meal. Plus I get a toy!

• Plain Baked Potato with Light Classic Ranch Dressing: When I’m feeling like something different, I choose the plain baked potato and add the Light Classic Ranch Dressing for about 7 WW Points. This isn’t the best option for me because there isn’t any protein, but sometimes I just really want a baked potato.

• Grilled Chicken Go Wrap and a Side Salad: For 5 WW Points, you can’t go wrong with their chicken wrap and a salad. I ask for lemon to squeeze on the salad and use that instead of dressing.

You can create your own diet meal by reviewing the nutrition information before you go to the restaurant.

• Wendy’s® – Nutrition Facts & Topics For Healthy Eating

• Download the Wendy’s Nutrition Facts PDF Link

In the end, you can lose weight by eating at any restaurant. You just need to know what to order and how much to eat. You don’t need to cut any of your favorites out of your diet as long as you learn how to eat them correctly.

Last month, I wrote about this song and why I put it on my workout playlist.

• Starling Fitness » Monday Music Motivation: Week One

Everything You Know Is Wrong by Weird Al Yankovic: This song is kind of silly and the verses sing about everything EXCEPT working out (unless you count the Almighty running past your room in heaven). The chorus, however, reminds me that sometimes I believe things that aren’t true. If I’m feeling like I can’t finish my workout, listening to this song is really good at showing me that I might be wrong.

Apparently, this concept is new and can be a revelation to some. Here is a TED Talk about this very idea from Derek Sivers:

I love this quote from him:

I love that sometimes we need to go to the opposite side of the world to realize assumptions that we didn’t even know we had and realize that the opposite may also be true.

• Derek Sivers, TED Talk: Weird, or just different? Nov 2009

It’s the truth. Everything you know is wrong. If you think diets don’t work, then you’re wrong. If you think exercise makes you hungry, then you’re wrong. If you think your diet is the perfect one for everybody, then you’re wrong. If you think hard exercise is the best way to lose weight, then you’re wrong. No matter what you think about diet and fitness, you’re wrong. There is always someone out there who does well on a wacky diet. There is always someone out there who reacts to exercise differently. We are such a diverse species that there is a way for everything to work and there is a way for everything to fail.

You need to find what works for you and keep doing it until it doesn’t work anymore and then start the process all over again.

The next time that you feel like you can’t follow your diet anymore, repeat to yourself, “Everything you know is wrong.” The next time you feel like you are going to stop your workout before it’s finished, repeat to yourself, “Everything you know is wrong.” Make it your mantra any time that little voice inside your head is telling you that you cannot do something and you’ll find out all the different ways you have been wrong your entire life.

• ran 1.86 mi on 2/3/2010 at 5:27 AM with a pace of 18'46"/mi http://bit.ly/arfZ5Q #
• I just registered! Sign up with me for the Judge's 5K Run in June this summer!. http://tinyurl.com/yknxbh9 #

For the next few weeks every Monday, I’ll share a playlist of songs that I have in my Workout Playlist on my iPhone. I’ll include clips to listen to, where you can buy them and why I have them in my list. Just so you know, I do get a portion of the sales of these songs from Amazon, so if you buy them, you’re helping me out.

Shining Light by Annie Lennox: This is a great warmup song. I like to think that maybe someone thinks this about me. I love the lyrics, “You are a force, you are a constant source, yeah you are a shining light.” When I’m starting my workout, I like to listen to this song to get me ready to work hard.

Move It Like This by Baha Men: This song is so fun that I just can’t help but run a little harder on the treadmill when I hear it. I know they are talking about dancing, but it makes me want to do better.

Everybody But Me by Lykke Li: This song reminds me how hard it can be to be fat and want to have fun with everyone, but you don’t. “Everybody’s dancing. I don’t want to. Everybody’s joking. I don’t want to. Everybody’s laughing. I don’t want to. Everybody but me.” Pushing past that anxiety has been the most helpful thing I’ve done for myself and my health.

Beautiful by Moby: If Lykke Li reminds me of how being fat can be, Moby wrote this song to make me feel beautiful. I prefer the Benni Benassi remix, but this one has the same lyrics and upbeat mood.

Working Overtime by New Order: This song reminds me that if I concentrate on work so much that I neglect myself that I’ll be like the guy in this song. It’s alright to take an hour a day to exercise. It’s worth it.

Think I’ll Go To Saks by SkinnySongs: I love this song. I’ve never been able to shop at the expensive stores like Saks or Neiman Marcus because those clothes just never came in my size. I love the idea of being able to try on the clothes in those stores, feel them fit me perfectly and just not buy them.

With Every Heartbeat – with Kleerup by Robyn: This song has a great beat to run to, but I really love the lyrics. “So I don’t look back/ Still I’m dying with every step I take/ But I don’t look back/ Just a little, little bit better” It doesn’t hurt that it has the word heartbeat in the lyrics, so it reminds me that it’s okay to hear my heart pump a little harder.

Movement In Still Life by Bt: “Dance to the beat! Shuffle my feet!” I don’t know why songs that tell me to dance get me running, but they work every time.

Don’t Give Up by Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush: This is a great cooldown song. I really like how she tells him to keep going, “Don’t give up because you have friends. Don’t give up, you’re not beaten yet. Don’t give up, I know you can make it good.”

Listen to the clips for these songs. If you find just one song this week that motivates you to exercise, then buy it and make it your powersong when you’re working out this week. I bet you’ll find that you’re more willing to get your butt to the gym and your workouts are easier.

What happens when being a vegetarian isn’t enough? When there are so many people out there who are also vegetarian, it doesn’t make you feel special enough, so you need to take it one step further.

You become a vegan.

But what happens when being a vegan isn’t enough? When there are so many people out there who are also vegan, it doesn’t make you feel special enough, so you need to take it one step further.

You become a raw food vegan.

But what happens when being a raw food vegan isn’t enough? When there are so many people out there who are also raw food vegan, it doesn’t make you feel special enough, so you need to take it one step further.

You become a freegan.

At this point, you find yourself rummaging through a dumpster to find your daily meals.

Maybe it’s time to reconsider the idea that your diet is supposed to make you feel unique, special or superior. When they said that you are what you eat, I don’t think they meant that as a judgment of your personality, just as a guideline for food choices.

Using your diet as a statement of your political beliefs is just as disordered eating as anorexia, bulimia or binge eating. If you need to feel good about yourself, your diet isn’t going to make you feel any better than earning a lot of money, wearing the coolest clothes or exercising a lot. There is ALWAYS someone out there doing more than you and you cannot outdo the crazy people of this world.

If you feel some sort of superiority from your diet of choice, it’s time to re-evaluate your emotions and find a way to aid your self esteem that doesn’t involve being better than other people.

Otherwise, you’ll find yourself eating out of a dumpster.

This hilarious commercial is from the movie The Invention of Lying. What if Coca-Cola couldn’t lie in their commercials. I suspect they would sound a lot like this:

The announcer says:

Hi, I’m Bob. I’m the spokesperson for the Coca-Cola company. I’m here today to ask you to continue buying Coke. I’m sure you’ve been drinking it for years and if you still enjoy it, then I’d like to remind you to buy it again sometime soon.

Basically, it’s just brown sugar water. We haven’t changed the ingredients lately, so there’s nothing new I can tell you about that. Uh, changed the can around a little bit, though. You can see that the colors are different there and we’ve added a polar bear so the kids’ll like us.

Coke’s very high in sugar and like any high calorie soda, it can lead to obesity in children and adults who don’t sustain a very healthy diet. And that’s it, it’s Coke. It’s very famous, everyone knows it. I’m Bob, I work for Coke and I’m asking you to not stop buying Coke.

If any soda was forced to advertise at this level of honesty, I don’t think anyone would drink it.

Video via: What If Advertisers Couldn’t Lie?

This postcard from PostSecret gave me a new motivation to get fit and thin.

It reads:

I often wonder if I’ve ever been caught in an obesity news segment.

The thought of seeing myself on the news as an example of the obesity epidemic made my stomach turn. I know they have the right to film people in public and show them on television as long as they don’t show their faces, but it just seems cruel and wrong to me.

It’s just one of the those reasons for me to get my butt on the treadmill every day. If eating healthy and exercising every day is what I have to do to keep myself from that embarrassment, then I’m ready and willing to do it.

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 November, we took a trip to Houston to see the NASA control center. They sold these bracelets there.

I bought myself one because I had just heard the story about Apollo 13 again.

After four days of nail-biting tension, the Apollo 13 command module Odyssey splashed down into the Pacific Ocean. Astronauts Jim Lovell, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert had safely returned to Earth despite an explosion that took out much of their service module during their aborted trip to the Moon.

And although he never actually said the words back then, it was the Kranz character in the Ron Howard movie “Apollo 13,” who said aloud what everyone at NASA believed during those tough days in 1970: “Failure is not an option.”

Every time my workout gets a little hard or I’m tempted to eat when I don’t really feel hungry, I look at this bracelet. Failure is NOT an option. Keep on running. Walk away from that dessert. Get enough sleep and drink another glass of water.

I am so impressed by this video of an Olympic skier’s fall save.

If you are thinking of skipping a workout or eating more than your program has allowed, remember this skier. Instead of falling, do your best to stay on track, even if that means waggling your arms and riding down the hill on one ski for an incredibly long time. Do everything you can to stay upright.

And if you do fall, get up immediately, brush yourself off and start trekking down the hill again.

Video via: * Your daily gif blog *: Skiing Fall Save