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

Almost five years ago, Nike ran the “Make Yourself” ads. I wrote about them back then:

• Starling Fitness – 10/25/2010 – Make Yourself

Back then, I said,

I love these advertisements from Nike. They encourage me to be strong, to let myself shine and to become fit. Sometimes I need encouragement like this and these are the perfect ads to tear out of a magazine and put on my wall right in front of the treadmill.

I found another Nike ad from that collection, but I don’t quite like it as much as the other ones.

It says:

Make yourself proud

I have written about humility and how it has affected my weight loss journey MANY times. You can read some of the articles here.

• How To Be Humble
• Accepting Your Limitations
• Appreciating Others
• Rediscovering a Sense of Wonder
• Eat Train Sleep Be Humble

Time and time again, I have learned that when I’m humble, I lose weight. When I start to get proud, the weight comes back on. Humility is not about thinking I’m not as good as everyone else. It’s about thinking that we are all of the same value. You are not more important than me. I am not more important than you. We are BOTH important. There is room for BOTH of us to be great.

So, do I want to Make Myself Proud?

Strangely, no. I do not. I want to make myself humble.

I saw this ad for M&Ms a while ago. It was before I had started OA, so it was QUITE a while ago. When I saw it, I immediately wanted to go out and buy M&Ms.

Somehow that ad had triggered my desire for them and I didn’t know why. I took a screen shot of the ad, which was, ironically, in a health and fitness magazine, and didn’t think about it again until today.

I looked through my folder of ideas to write about Starling Fitness and saw this ad. I was going to write about how advertising triggers cravings, but I now know it goes further than that. This advertisement triggers the Artificial Scarcity craving. We want it because it won’t always be around. We want it because we think it’s scarce.

Do those M&Ms taste any different than normal M&MS? No.

Do I even like regular M&Ms? Not particularly.

Because those M&Ms are in special “Fall” colors, they won’t be around for long. This is a limited time product, so I better act now. They do the same thing at Christmas, Easter and even Independence Day. The same M&Ms, only in red and green, pastels and pink, or the old red, white and blue. They are desirable because we can’t get them all the time.

I talked about this before here:

• Starling Fitness – There’s No Pumpkin In Pumpkin Spice Flavoring

Back then, I said:

The problem is PERCEIVED SCARCITY. We could cook a turkey any time, but we only have them at Thanksgiving. We could buy that Torani Pumpkin Pie Sugar Free Syrup for our coffee at any time, but Starbucks has somehow convinced us that it is only available in the fall. None of these things are actually scarce. The food manufacturers use marketing and self-imposed limits to make them scarce and even create hoarding.

DON’T FALL FOR IT!

M&Ms in Autumn Colors. Don’t Fall for it…

I was looking through my saved images in a folder called “Starling Fitness Ideas,” and I found this one:

It reads:

The Cake Is A Lie Diet: Lose 17 pounds a week by changing your diet with this one simple tip!

Awarded for: “Watch an inspirational video on YouTube or TED.”

I have a vague memory of an app that I played with that gave me awards and kudos for doing good things in my life, but I cannot for the life of me remember where this came from or even why I saved it.

“The Cake Is A Lie” is a meme that came from the game Portal. In that game, the computer voice kept promising me that if I completed the tasks, that there would be cake at the end. About halfway through the game, you come to this creepy hallway and the phrase, “The cake is a lie,” is scrawled over and over on the wall.

At the end of the game, you realize that there is no cake and you have been doing all these things for nothing. The phrase “The Cake Is A Lie” has come to mean that a promised gift is being used to motivate you without any intent of delivering it. For a while there, I couldn’t log onto Facebook without seeing this image it was so popular.

The truth of the matter is, the cake IS a lie. Every time I eat cake, I am trying to recreate that intense feeling of ecstasy that I had the first time I ever ate cake. I am trying to get that same hit of dopamine that I got when I first had cake. The problem is that the more cake I eat, the less of a dopamine hit I get until I need to eat cake all day long EVERY day to just feel normal. The promise of the cake is a lie.

Then again, the promise of the “fit” life is a lie, too. I remember being at 150 pounds and being so close to goal and STILL feeling miserable. I had told myself that when I got skinny, I would be happy. I had told myself that when I lost the weight, I would love myself. That was a lie just as much as the cake was.

Eating the cake was a lie. Not eating the cake was a lie.

THAT is the sense of hopelessness I had when I stepped into my first Overeater’s Anonymous meeting. I hated myself when I was fat. I hated myself when I was thin. I couldn’t stop eating and I didn’t want to eat anymore. I was in a No-Win situation and I had no idea what to do. That’s why I got a sponsor. That’s why I did EVERYTHING she told me to do. That’s why I cleared the wreckage of my past and started fresh. That’s why I was willing to meditate every day and make a “God Box.”

I knew the cake was a lie and I knew that I couldn’t stop eating it.

Overeater’s Anonymous does not endorse anything on this entry or blog. I speak only of my personal experience and not for OA as a whole.

The other day, I wrote this entry about old exercise machines:

• Starling Fitness – Old Exercise Machines from the 1979 Argos Catalogue

The whole point of the entry is that exercise equipment hasn’t changed much in the last fifty years. For the last fifty years, our population has only been getting FATTER, so don’t bother buying any of those exercise machines that are available today because they won’t help you.

After I wrote that entry, I promptly spent the next hour researching stretchy fitness bands on Amazon and YouTube. I found the best resistance band exercises video. It’s short, simple and shows you the proper form for ten exercises.

I found an awesome printable poster for exercises for resistance bands from FitnessHealth.co.uk that you can just fold up and put in your traveling case.

I had JUST written an article about how simple exercises like yoga and walking have helped me way more than intense exercises like weight training and running. I had just written an article about not letting the health and fitness industry steal your money and here I was SERIOUSLY considering dropping the thirty bucks to get this resistance band set: BalanceFrom Heavy Duty Premium Resistance Band Kit with Improved Safe Door Anchor, Ankle Strap and Carrying Case at Amazon.com. Despite the fact that I ALREADY own a resistance band set!

I realize now that my disease took over a little bit at that point.

The sad truth of the matter is: my eating disorder loves to fantasize about exercising. Ever since the age of ten, I was told that if I just exercised that I wouldn’t be fat anymore. If I wasn’t so lazy, I wouldn’t be fat.

It was a lie I believed. It’s a lie that I still catch myself believing, even though I know what has helped me and what has hindered me.

After YEARS of research on my own body, here is what I KNOW for a fact:

• Weight training makes me binge
• Running makes me binge
• Skipping meals makes me binge
• Stuffing down my feelings, instead of dealing with them in a healthy manner, makes me binge.

Yet, I’m still tempted to weight train, run, skip meals to “save calories for later,” and just ignore my feelings. I keep catching myself thinking:

• This time, I won’t train so hard
• This time, I will only run a little bit
• This time I will be able to keep my food under control
• This time my feelings aren’t that big of a deal

“This time” isn’t going to be like “last time.” That is probably the biggest lie I say to myself: “This time, I’ll be able to do it.” Just like the alcoholic who tells himself that this time he will just have one drink.

My eating disorder loves to fantasize about exercise just as much as an alcoholic loves to fantasize about being able to drink moderately. It’s a fantasy that I need to discard and accept the fact that exercise will not make me thin. It will just make me binge.

This postcard from PostSecret was interesting.

It reads:

I take off the ring that you gave me when I grow up. I’m not sure if it’s because I don’t want to ruin it or because I know how disappointed you’d be.

I was never able to throw up to rid myself of my binges. I wished that I could, but I could never really do it. It’s just a different way my disease could have harmed me that never came to pass and I’m grateful.

The reason why we binge is because there is something wrong with our brains. The reason why we purge is because there is something wrong with our brains. Science hasn’t entirely figured it out yet, but there is hope. Get yourself to Overeater’s Anonymous and be entirely honest with yourself, your group and your sponsor. You don’t have to take off the ring anymore…

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.

Overeater’s Anonymous does not endorse anything on this entry or blog. I speak only of my personal experience and not for OA as a whole.

Retrospace had a post about Argos Catalogues from Great Britain which was pretty much just about looking at half-naked women, but one page really caught my eye. It was the page from the Health and Fitness section of the catalogue.

There are some fairly typical things, like these weights and springs. The springs have been replaced by plastic stretchy cords in a variety of colors, but this equipment is still available today.

Even these body weight machines are still available today. Companies have slapped the word “Pilates” on the label, but other than that, they’re still the same. I talked about that here:

• Starling Fitness: Pilates Exerciser: Just A Pile Of Strings On A Door Handle

Even the stationary bicycles are still around. They look different, but they are still something that is recommended for losing weight.

The thing that bothers me is that we have been doing this for over fifty YEARS and we are just getting fatter. Don’t waste your money on the new versions of these products, they are just as silly as the old ones. Exercise can make you stronger. Exercise will help your heart, but I have never lost weight from exercising. In fact, it just made me hungrier. Don’t let them steal your money. Take a walk outside for twenty minutes a day and save yourself money and grief.

This postcard from PostSecret was posted a couple of weeks ago and it reminded me of my past.

It reads:

I pray to get anorexia.

I, too, wished I could “catch” anorexia nervosa. I remember in my final meltdown, when I talked to Mike about my bingeing.

• Starling Fitness: Refeeding: A Treatment for Obesity?

“I’m hungry all the time. I think about food all the time.” I was lamenting to Mike, my husband, about why it’s so hard for me to follow my program for more than an hour or so.

“That’s because there is something the matter with your brain. For whatever reason, it tells you that you’re hungry all the time.” He was trying to help me, but his words were anything but consoling. “You’re like an anorexic, except backwards.”

How many times had I wished I could be anorexic? How many times had I wished I could be free of this desire to eat all the time?

Mike continued talking, “What would you do if you WERE anorexic?” I cried and laughed at the same time. “I’d be so damn happy and not eat for a year. I’d finally be skinny.”

He nodded and asked, “And then after you were skinny, what would you do? If you didn’t eat, you’d die, so what would you do?”

I knew EXACTLY what the treatment for anorexics was: refeeding. Food is introduced in small quantities at regular intervals. They have to eat when the timer goes off, even though it’s the last thing they want to do. I explained it to Mike and he nodded knowingly, “That’s EXACTLY what you need to do. You have the SAME problem as an anorexic. You need to eat a small meal every couple of hours whether you feel hungry or not. You need to NOT eat in between times. Your hunger mechanism is just as broken. You can’t trust it. You just need to set a schedule and eat when the schedule tells you to.”

That is EXACTLY what I have been doing for the last year and a half and I have LOST 65 pounds. By FORCING myself to eat about 200-300 calories 5-6 times a day (every two and a half hours), I have LOST weight. I eat those tiny meals whether I feel hungry or not. My hunger is just as broken as an anorexic and I can’t trust it.

I find it so ironic that I wished for so many times to be anorexic and the cure that they use for anorexics happened to be the cure I needed for my obesity and bingeing.

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.

This postcard from PostSecret showed up during Eating Disorders Week.

It reads:

The worst thing about self-destructive behaviors is when no one notices.

Sometimes our eating behaviors can hide. I wasn’t able to hide mine, although I ate upwards of 5000 calories a day during my worst, so perhaps my exercise was hiding some of my eating problems. There are many people who suffer who don’t LOOK like they have a problem and it doesn’t help that our society prefers to look at people who are scarily thin.

If you have a problem with eating, get help. Just because your family and friends and maybe even your doctor hasn’t noticed, doesn’t mean that you aren’t in trouble. Get into Overeater’s Anonymous. We will welcome you with open arms because we understand.

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.

Overeater’s Anonymous does not endorse anything on this entry or blog. I speak only of my personal experience and not for OA as a whole.

This postcard from PostSecret broke my heart.

It reads:

I never gave anyone these because I thought I was fat.

When I saw these photos, I imagined the person who didn’t get them. There was SOMEONE in love with this girl. I don’t know who that person was, but they did not get the photo. That person wished that she would give them a photo. That person cried when the photos came out and didn’t get one because they believed that someone else got all the pictures instead of them hiding in a box somewhere.

If you think you’re fat, STOP DOING THIS! If you KNOW you’re fat, STOP DOING THIS! There is someone out there RIGHT NOW, who loves you. That person WANTS a photo of you in all your “fatness.” Whether your fatness is real or imagined, don’t let it stop you from getting the love you deserve. There is someone out there who wants to love you. Don’t disappoint them. Don’t push them away. Give them the photos.

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.

My Facebook page is filled with posts from my friends talking about putting butter into your coffee. Here is a link to an article that is an example:

• Latest coffee trend is to put butter in your coffee | Fox News

The latest trend in coffee may boost your energy and help you lose weight. Or maybe you’ll just throw up.

Go ahead, put some butter in your joe.

Well, not just any butter, and not just any coffee.  The butter has to be unsalted and grass-fed, and the coffee beans have to be low-toxin – not the ones you find at the supermarket or Starbucks.

This trend is supposed to give you a little extra fat in your diet, which is really what many of us DO need to inch out the carbs in our diet. The problem is, butter? Why butter?

For hundreds of years, we have been doing this. We have been putting “butter” in our coffee. It’s called CREAM. You DO know what butter is made of, right?

You wan’t a “creamy” latte? How about this radical idea? PUT CREAM IN YOUR COFFEE!

Bulletproof Coffee is just a food trend. It’s not a magic thing that will help you lose weight. It’s a fad. If you need a bit of fat added to your diet, add some cream to your coffee. Steer clear of the fad.