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

In the left corner, weighing it at 105 pounds, you have Vanity. In the right corner, weighing in at 250 pounds is Gluttony. Who will win in this Battle of the Deadly Sins?!

Vanity

My whole life, I was told that being vain is wrong. Maybe vanity was never properly defined for me, because I feel vain whenever I care about my looks. Is merely looking into the mirror a deadly sin? The dictionary defines vanity as an inflated pride in oneself or one’s appearance. Is it just the inflated part that is wrong with vanity or is it any pride in one’s appearance.

Does dieting count as vanity?

Gluttony

Is the fact that I’m fat mean that I’m a glutton? What about all those days that I starved myself? What if I’m fat and I don’t eat today. Am I still a glutton? The definition for gluttony is more simply defined as excessive eating or drinking, but the simplicity doesn’t make it any easier for me. Is drinking fifteen glasses of water a day gluttony? Is gluttony a permanent thing? What if a skinny person eats a lot of food all the time?

The Loser

The true loser is humanity. The seven deadly sins were first coined by Evagrius Ponticus, a 4th century monk. Nowhere are they listed in the bible. Focusing on the sin aspect of pride and eating has been the biggest detriment to humanity.

It’s alright to care about what you look like.

It’s alright to eat when you’re hungry or even eat for pleasure.

It’s when either of those aspects of life start to threaten your health or happiness that they can be detrimental to you.

Don’t worry so much about your looks that you’ll have risky surgical procedures or starve yourself.

Don’t eat so much that it is wasteful or harmful to your body.

We do so much better when we look through life without the coloring of sin. If you are hungry, eat. If you feel attractive, rejoice in it.

There have been so many warnings about boredom and eating. Ever since I was a child, I have been accused of eating when I was bored and it was true. I STILL catch myself walking to the fridge when I’m feeling a little bored.

This article from the New York Times got me thinking, though:

• Mind – Boredom May Let the Brain Recast the World in Productive, Creative Ways – NYTimes.com

They say that boredom is the mind’s way of organizing our thoughts.

Yet boredom is more than a mere flagging of interest or a precursor to mischief. Some experts say that people tune things out for good reasons, and that over time boredom becomes a tool for sorting information — an increasingly sensitive spam filter. In various fields including neuroscience and education, research suggests that falling into a numbed trance allows the brain to recast the outside world in ways that can be productive and creative at least as often as they are disruptive.

So, how can I avoid overeating when I’m bored? When I find myself at the fridge looking to eat, even though I’m not really hungry, I need to remember to sit down and zone out. I need to give my mind the rest it is asking for. Filling that rest time with food keeps my mind numbed, but if I allow it to rest without the food, it will also get what it needs.

I think that’s why people recommend a hobby for people who are trying to lose weight. A repetitive hobby like crochet, knitting or woodworking can give your mind the rest it needs without filling yourself with food.

This postcard from PostSecret on MySpace reminded me of my own secret.

When I used to go to Krispy Kreme on a regular basis, I used to bring in a paper with all the donuts that I wanted listed on it. Then when I went in, I would read them off as if I was picking up the donuts for a whole office of people instead of just for me. Of course, I did this because I wasn’t willing to go in EVERY day and order two donuts for myself.

Ironically, if I watch my points, I can work in two donuts a day and STILL lose weight.

Even worse, sometimes I’d end up eating more than just one or two donuts a day because the box full was siting there.

If I could somehow extract all the shame from my eating habits, I think I’d be a thinner person.

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.

I remember my grandma wearing girdles like these. I’ll never forget how she described them, “I feel like a sausage.” I imagined what a sausage would feel like and to this day, her description has warned me against wearing girdles.

It’s easy to forget what a sausage feels like when I look at advertising, though. They never show girdles being worn by women who need them in advertisements. If they did, we would never buy one because I haven’t noticed that they do much more than make me feel like a sausage.

No matter what I wear, I can’t hide that I’m fat. The ONLY way to look better is to lose weight. No amount of money spent on undergarments will ever make me look as good as when I am thin.

Photo via: Found in Mom’s Basement: 1971 ad for Lovable girdles

Usually when a supplement company is found guilty of violations, they are required to pay a fine. It appears that Metabolife founder, Michael J. Ellis, has been sentenced to six months in prison in addition to his fine of $20,000.

Consumer Health Digest has the story:

• Consumer Health Digest, June 10, 2008

In November 2007, Ellis pled guilty to federal charges of lying to the FDA. Metabolife’s ephedra-containing diet pills triggered thousands of complaints from customers who had experienced adverse effects. Yet in 1999, while the FDA was considering prohibitions, Ellis knowingly told the FDA that the company had a “claims free history.” The FDA later banned ephedra as an ingredient in dietary supplements. With Metabolife 356 as its flagship product, the company became one of the largest retailers of products marketed as dietary supplements. Ellis’s indictment, the FDA ban, hundreds of personal injury lawsuits, and falling sales due to adverse publicity led the company to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2005.

Remember all those people who took ephedra and had heart problems because of it? The fact that Metabolife is out of business doesn’t change the fact that they still have heart problems. Next time you’re tempted to try a diet pill, remember Metabolife and save your money. That company might not be around when they find out how dangerous your supplement is.

The advertisement for Lucky Strike cigarettes says:

To keep a slender figure
No one can deny…
Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet.

Is it true? Does smoking make you thin?

Almost a year ago, there was news of a study that researched that:

• FOXNews.com – Study: Smoking Does Not Aid Weight Loss – Health News | Current Health News | Medical News

Researchers conducted the study on mice over seven weeks. Half the mice were exposed to smoke from four cigarettes a day for six days a week, while the other half were smoke free.

The study found smokers lost muscle mass, which gave them the appearance of being thinner, but the fat instead was stored around their vital organs.

I don’t know about clinical research, but I can tell you that when I was in college, I decided to try smoking to lose weight. I didn’t lose weight. I got bronchitis and I realized that if I kept smoking, I would feel like that ALL the time. So I quit. While I was quitting, I gained ten pounds.

Smoking made me GAIN ten pounds.

What about you? I remember my girlfriends telling me that if I just smoked, I would lose weight. Is it just me? Does ANYONE lose weight by taking up smoking?

Photo via: Found in Mom’s Basement: 1930s Luck Strike cigarette ad promises you’ll “keep a slender figure”

This article from the New York Times got me thinking. A mother in search of a placebo to give to her child instead of medicine was stymied by the fact that you can’t actually buy a placebo pill. She has created a company called Efficacy Brands and released a “drug” called Obecalp, which is placebo spelled backward. It’s the drug you give your kids when you know they’re not really sick and just need to feel comforted.

• Experts Question Using Placebo Pills to Treat Children – NYTimes.com

Sometimes, the placebo effect has been shown to minimize symptoms better than drugs. Could diet pills help you lose weight, even if they are just sugar pills? What if you KNOW they’re just sugar pills? There is some thought that maybe they could:

At least one study has shown that placebos can be effective even when the patients know that they are inert. In a study in 2007, 70 children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder were asked to reduce their medications gradually by replacing some of their drugs with placebo pills. The children and their parents were explicitly told that these “dose extender” pills contained no drug.

This article from Mind Hacks, delves further:

• Mind Hacks: Placebo is not what you think

Placebos are not ‘ineffective’. In fact, when three condition trials are run (no treatment vs placebo vs medical treatment), placebo consistently out performs ‘no treatment’ and of course, not uncommonly, the medical treatment condition as well.

Furthermore, studies done in the 1970s showed that when heroin users inject water (sometimes done deliberately to alleviate cravings when drugs are in short supply), they can experience drug-like euphoria and have been observed to show opiate-like physiological signs such as pupil constriction.

I have long said that spending money on diet pills is just wasting your money, but I never took into account the placebo effect. What if I put some Skittles into a bottle and tried to convince myself that they were diet pills that would help me lose weight? Would that work, even if I knew that they were just candy in a bottle?

All of this just makes me think that losing weight is voodoo. Is it really all belief? If I believe I will lose weight, I will lose weight. What if I believe I will lose weight and still eat pizza every day? Do we really know so little about the human mind and body?

The headline on the National Enquirer was pretty dramatic. It claimed that the Biggest Loser diet had turned deadly. What was going on here?

Paul Marks weighed 303 pounds when he started with The Biggest Loser. He was eliminated back in February and has since had some medical problems.

According to the National Enquirer:

“Paul is fighting for his life. He’s had five surgeries since being voted off the show, and has had a bout with gangrene. And it’s all because of ‘Biggest Loser.'”

Of course, the quote from the show tells another side of the story:

“It is our understanding from sources close to Paul, and from Paul himself, that his doctors believe that losing weight on the show may have saved his life.”

The article doesn’t say WHY Paul had five surgeries and nine inches of his colon and appendix removed. Weight loss alone couldn’t cause a problem like that, could it? He must have had a problem with his colon that was separate from the weight loss. The only other mention of this was a brief interview on TV Guide’s website:

• For Biggest Loser’s Kelly Fields, Ex Marked the Spot – Celebrity and Entertainment News | TVGuide.com

He is really, really sick. In the past two months he’s spent six weeks in the hospital. He’s had ruptured diverticula and he got a colostomy, which got gangrenous. He’s had [several] surgeries.

What do you think? I know that the doctors at The Biggest Loser watch the contestants like hawks and any little thing that happens, they ship the contestants off to the hospital. Do you think the weight loss caused Paul’s sickness?

This comic from Joy of Tech made me feel just as angry at those fat kids as I was at the skinny kids that made fun of me when I was little. When I was a kid, they used to call me Chug-A-Lug. I wrote about it here:

• Starling Fitness » Chug-A-Lug

It’s funny to me how much it hurt when I was a child to be made fun of because of my weight. Of course, if they hadn’t made fun of me because of my weight, they would have found something else to torment me with. They would have called me stupid or loud or made fun of my hair because it was brown, whatever.

Are fat kids the new norm? I don’t know. As an adult, we can’t see that world. We can never again step into that small hell that children inflict on each other. I’m sure kids are made fun of because they are thin. I remember kids calling a girl in grade school String Bean. She didn’t like that name anymore than I liked being called Chug-A-Lug. Children have taunted and teased each other for far longer than this supposed obesity epidemic.

I saw this advertisement on Facebook the other day and it made me crinkle my brow. It says:

Drop 20lb for summer
Try Life Support Diet and lose up to 20 pounds in 6 weeks. Recommended by Oprah.

I clicked over to the site and it was for Life Support Herbal and Hoodia diet pills. Here is a screenshot of their site.

Now, the advertisement said that a diet was recommended by Oprah, but all they showed is that O Magazine had written a little blurb about hoodia saying that it “may” help you lose weight. In fact, all their “Featured in” mentions had NOTHING to do with Life Support Herbal and their product. They only mentioned hoodia.

Firstly, the cactus, hoodia gordonii, has not been proven to help you lose weight. The Wikipedia entry on Hoodia gordonii sums it up perfectly:

There is no published scientific evidence that Hoodia works as an appetite suppressant in humans. The safety and/or effectiveness of Hoodia Gordonii as a dietary supplement must thus be considered as unsubstantiated.

While the cactus hasn’t been proven to help you lose weight, there is absolutely NO proof that some pill that says it contains hoodia could help you lose weight. Just because a news program talked about hoodia doesn’t mean it’s a miracle drug. Just because O Magazine wrote an article about hoodia doesn’t mean that it’s recommended by Oprah.

Secondly, Life Support Diet? Really? You’re going to name yourself Life Support? When I read their name, I immediately thought of my grandma after her stroke on life support. They fed her through a tube that ran through her nose, down her throat and into her stomach. When it was obvious that she was never going to recover, they took her OFF the life support diet. It’s not really an image of health and vitality to go on a life support diet.

There are tiny ads for weight loss pills like these EVERYWHERE on the Internet, even on Starling Fitness. Just based on the fact that I write about health and fitness, ads for products like these show up on my site. Don’t believe them.