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

I may have left Weight Watchers, but I still get their magazine. As betrayed as I feel, I still find motivational things in every issue. Take this poster, for example.

It reads:

Not worrying about how I look is so liberating. I can finally walk on the beach and just appreciate the beauty of it.

• Lisa M., WWM Reader

I have never in my life not worried about how I look. I try to take the zen approach and assume that I look bad no matter what, so I shouldn’t worry about it, but that hasn’t worked very well for me. I wonder what it would feel like to just be so comfortable in my skin that I didn’t think about my tummy, legs or upper arms. I wonder if I will ever be able to do that, even when I am at my goal weight.

Maybe being comfortable with my appearance has more to do with my state of mind than my body.

Update 08-14-2011: Please read the comment from Benjamin Young, the CEO of Nexercise, below. The reason the app doesn’t multitask (and allow you to lock your screen) is because Apple doesn’t allow it with the current OS.

The new update of the app DOES allow unverified time, but it has crashed so many times on me that I’ve stopped using it. Perhaps the next update will fix those crashes.

I did win a $5 Amazon gift card while testing the app. That was a nice surprise and made me want to use Nexercise more, despite the bother it is to use it.

Update 08-31-2011: I’ve continued to try Nexercise with my workouts and I stand by my review. They do allow unverified time and it only beeps at me if I click away to take a picture or see my Runkeeper stats. The crashes, however, make it not worth the while. Just today, I had a 53 minute walk that failed to be submitted. It just sat there spinning, failed and then disappeared from my calendar.

NOT WORTH THE BOTHER.

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I’ve been trying a free app on my iPhone called Nexercise. The premise is brilliant. It logs your physical activity and for every fifteen minutes you exercise, you get a chance to win prizes and badges.

Unfortunately, the execution isn’t as brilliant.

It’s easy enough to run the program and it doesn’t suck down my battery while it’s running, but it does NOT multitask. It’s kind enough to go into “sleep” mode so exercising with it doesn’t turn it off, but pushing the normal sleep button will pause the program.

Additionally, if I answer a call, it pauses the program. If I take a picture of something beautiful on my walk, it pauses the program. If I don’t run Runkeeper BEFORE I start Nexercise, it pauses the program. What is this? 2009? iPhones have been able to multitask for a while. Why doesn’t Nexercise?!

The lack of multitasking is irritating enough, but Nexercise also has the additional problem of pausing itself because it thinks you’re not moving enough.

I wouldn’t be bothered by this problem if it didn’t happen about once or twice each walk. Sometimes it’s because I have stopped to scoop doggie poo, but rather than waiting for me to let my dog do her business, it beeps me with an annoying sound with a reprimand.

Other times, it thinks I’m not moving enough for no reason whatsoever. Maybe I don’t jiggle enough when I walk or they’ve set the sensitivity wrong, but there have been times when it has paused for inactivity in the middle of a walk when I haven’t stopped moving. It’s the same irritating problem that Nike+ had without the benefits of tracking that Nike gave me.

Worst of all, when it has paused and I didn’t notice, sometimes it won’t give me any credit for my walk at all because it didn’t log fifteen minutes of activity while I was walking. Sure, my walk was an hour long, but the stupid thing paused itself and I didn’t happen to hear the irritating beeps.

To be fair, I’ve had a couple of walks with no pausing, but the added problem of loading up an additional app and dealing with the lack of multitasking just makes Nexercise not worth it.

As far as those rewards go, I haven’t won one. I HAVE earned a couple of badges and I have to tell you that it felt good to earn them.

Are the badges and the promise of gift cards worth the extra hassle? No, they’re not. If they get multitasking to work or if they change the sensitivity of the app so that it won’t pause itself, maybe Nexercise will be worth it. Until then, I’m not going to bother with it.

This photo from Two-Heel Drive is so beautiful, it made me want to get out there and take a walk.

I have been taking morning walks with Nina and not a day goes by when I don’t feel better for it. It’s like getting out into the sunlight and moving my body makes a great start to the day.

Via: Go toward the light | Two-Heel Drive, a Hiking Blog

This video of twin three-year-old boys playing Just Dance 2 on the Wii is so adorable! Watch the boy on the left at the 1:58 minute mark. He’s just the CUTEST!! If you play on Xbox 360, there is Just Dance 3 for Kinect, but it won’t be out until this October. I haven’t played any of my dancing games for a long time, but watching these kids play makes me want to play again.

Via: Littlest, Yellowest, Differentest

These patriotic cookies look tempting and delicious, but they give me pause. We are coming up on Independence Day and the grocery store is full of red, white and blue pastries and candies, tempting us at every turn. If you offered me these cookies, my first instinct is to take one (or maybe two because those stars are so very little). If you asked me if I wanted a normal sugar cookie, I can pretty much say no without any reservations, but the red, white and blue cookies are a definite temptation.

When I think about it, though, how are these cookies different from normal sugar cookies? They AREN’T.

The only reason the patriotic cookies are attractive to me is because they aren’t always available. How often am I offered cookies? Quite often, actually, so I don’t really feel like I’m missing out if I don’t eat one. Patriotic cookies, on the other hand, only come once a year. Even though they taste EXACTLY the same as normal cookies, they seem rare.

This is called Artificial Scarcity. Do not let artificial scarcity screw up your eating!

Do patriotic M&M’s taste any different than normal M&M’s? NO! Just because they are only available this time of the year, doesn’t mean that they are any more delicious. Creating red, white and blue packages of M&M’s (or Easter colors or Halloween colors), doesn’t change the fact that all that sugar and chocolate can derail your goals. They do it as a marketing ploy and, honestly, it works really well on most people. Don’t let it derail you.