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

This postcard from PostSecret could have been my own, so it’s comforting to know that there is another person out there who feels the same as I did.

It reads:

I blame all my problems on my weight…

This was one of the biggest stumbling blocks to getting healthy for me. Just like the person who sent in this card, I thought that my life would be perfect once I got thin.

And then I got thin, or nearly thin…

And my life still sucked. I was starving myself (and bingeing as well), and I was still miserable, even though I was so close to my goal weight. It felt so pointless to put forth all this effort if being thin didn’t solve the problem.

Ironically, when I solved my emotional and spiritual problems, eating healthy and exercising moderately became SO much easier. Now, I feel great AND I’m not starving myself. That’s why the twelve steps are so helpful because they solve those problems that make you miserable so that you don’t NEED to eat to forget them.

If you are feeling horrible and blaming everything on your weight, get yourself to Overeater’s Anonymous and work through the steps diligently with a sponsor. Be entirely honest and you won’t have as many problems to blame on your weight 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.

This quote reminds me that big resolutions don’t really help me.

It reads:

I have never been especially impressed by the heroics of people who are convinced they are about to change the world. I am more awed by those who struggle to make one small difference after another.

• Ellen Goodman

This is VERY applicable to me at this New Year’s Resolution time. I used to set New Year’s Resolutions and decide on life-changing diets and exercise regimes at this time of year. Over the last year, I have learned that the only New Year’s Resolution that has ever helped me was resolving to get my butt to an Overeater’s Anonymous meeting. All the other ones just sent me on the pathway to a binge.

I’ve learned that my eating disorder has TWO facets: bingeing and over-exercising. I would set up a restrictive diet and a strict exercise plan and then I would binge after a couple of weeks of restriction. I used to think that the restriction part of the cycle was the cure to my bingeing, but I was wrong. It was part of my disease.

This New Year’s Resolution is just ONE thing: I devote myself to the greater good. Whatever that entails, I will follow it. Eating healthy and exercising moderately is part of the greater good. Helping other people is part of the greater good. Being a better person emotionally is part of the greater good. THAT will be my question to everything I think of: Is this part of the greater good? Am I helping myself and others with this action? If not, I won’t do it. If so, I’ll do it to the best of my ability, asking for help when I fall short.

Let your only New Year’s Resolution this year be a dedication to the greater good. You will be shocked at the outcome compared to former years.

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.

Next week, it will be a year. I have lost sixty pounds in a year, which is just barely over a pound a week. I’m still not at a healthy weight, but I’m closer than I’ve been in a long time.

I just want you to know ONE thing about this year.

Change takes time. Be patient.

Whenever I tried to lose weight quickly, it just ended up in a binge. When I gave myself time, it came off. Whenever I tried to boot up my exercise, I just ended up injured and bingeing. Don’t try to hurry this. Be patient and give yourself the time you need.

This quote is so helpful when you are dealing with other people in the Overeater’s Anonymous program.

It reads:

Search others for their virtues, thyself for thy vices.

• Benjamin Franklin

When you sit in a meeting, you hear a lot about other people’s vices. They are GLARINGLY obvious to you. I’ve talked about this before here:

• Starling Fitness – An Understanding of Ourselves

Those vices that you see in others are vices within yourself that you need to work on. It’s part of the old principle:

If you spot it, you’ve got it.

If it makes you mad, you got it bad.

So when you are in a meeting or talking to another member of OA, remember that when they share and you get bugged by their vices, those are YOUR vices that you need to work on.

The flip side to this quote is the searching for virtues. Everyone has a good side. Everyone has an asset. FIND those assets in other people. TELL them about them. There is no wholly bad person on this planet. Every person has something good about them. When you are talking to other members, don’t mention how to fix their vices. Use their share to fix your own vices. When you talk to them, tell them about their virtues that you have noticed.

This is how we lovingly deal with each other. This is how we heal. This is how we recover.

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.

A funny thing happened to my thinspiration Tumblrs and RSS feeds. They turned into naked ladies and food. I don’t know what happened, but instead of inspiring images to help me stay on my program, all I see now are naked ladies and food.

Now, my biggest question is this: Did they change or did I? I used to see pictures of healthy, nearly naked women and get inspired to exercise. Now, they just look like porn to me. I used to see pictures of food and think that I could use a new recipe to mix things up. Now, they just look like food porn to me.

Did the nature of the photos change or am I different somehow? I don’t know, but all of my favorite Tumblrs are useless to me now…

Original Images Via:

• Fitness, Health, And Confidence ?
• Feel Good Inc. — beautifulpicturesofhealthyfood: Submitted…

I found a quote yesterday that explained the last decade of suffering to me quite nicely.

It reads:

Nothing is easy to the unwilling.

• Nikki Giovanni

I thought I was willing. I wrote down EVERY bite of food that went into my mouth, all 7000 calories each day. I went to Weight Watchers EVERY week, vowing to follow the program this time. Even during earlier times, I faithfully ate everything they told me, right down to the whole grain wheat that ripped and tore at my intestines until they bled. I thought I was willing, but I wasn’t.

I wasn’t willing to do what I needed to do.

I needed to be humble. I needed to believe that I didn’t know everything. I needed to just walk my fat butt into the doors of Overeaters Anonymous, even though I “knew” that the god stuff wouldn’t work for me.

Last January, I became willing. So entirely willing that I pretty much did whatever my sponsor told me to do within hours of her telling me. I went through the steps so quickly that it was surprising, but that’s because I didn’t piddle around. I didn’t waste any time. I was so damn willing that I DID it.

If you are unwilling, you are like that huge rock in the picture. There won’t be anything that can move you. You might think that you are doing what you need to do to get healthy, but just like all my “willingness” in Weight Watchers, it won’t help you a bit. You need to do what WORKS. And for me, Overeaters Anonymous worked.

Overeaters Anonymous does not endorse anything on this entry or blog.

This postcard from PostSecret made me so sad for the person who sent it in.

It reads:

I can’t bear to tell my family I relapsed so instead I quietly suffer… alone.

I wouldn’t have thought this was about an eating disorder until I saw the “food+body wisdom” circle pasted in the middle. After a little research, I found that it is for Opal, which is a clinic in Seattle, Washington for those with disordered eating.

The person who wrote the postcard is not only aching from the relapse and all the pain in which that encompasses, but from the exorbitant cost her family paid to put her through Opal in the first place. They might accept your health insurance, but they are VERY clear that they are a paid facility with the comment, “Prior to receiving services, every effort will be made to verify insurance eligibility and benefits and educate clients about possible financial obligations. We accept check and credit card for any out of pocket financial obligations.“

There is a way to get help without admitting yourself to a facility that is going to bankrupt your family. Get yourself to Overeaters Anonymous. Find a meeting here:

• Overeaters Anonymous – Find a Meeting

You might not be able to be honest with your family, but you are sure to feel more at home with a room full of people who have the same problem as you do. Binge Eaters, Bulimics, and Anorexics are all welcome there. Your only requirement is that you want to stop being sick about food. You don’t have to burden your family with “financial obligations.” You can get help with us.

Overeaters Anonymous does not endorse anything on this entry or blog.

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 saw this image on Pinterest today and it kind of pissed me off…

It reads:

It takes 21 days. 21 days of healthy eating and working out and it will become a habit.

All I could think when I saw this was:

LIARS!!

I have been eating healthy and moderately working out every day for almost a year and it’s STILL not a habit. If I don’t diligently write down the phrase, “Walk dog 20 minutes” on my to-do list every day, I will blow off my workout. The only thing that’s even close to a habit is writing that phrase on my to-do list.

If I didn’t have my Fitbit vibrating my wrist every two and a half hours, I would FORGET TO EAT. That sounds like a great problem to have until an hour and a half later when I am bingeing on whatever food is nearby. It’s vitally important that I don’t skip those meals, but I definitely would if I didn’t have my Fitbit warning me. The closest thing to a habit I have about eating is to make sure I wear and charge my Fitbit.

I have an eating disorder. Sadly, I will ALWAYS have an eating disorder. Twenty-one days won’t cure it. A lifetime won’t cure it. I will have to watch myself carefully for the rest of my life and a little yellow image telling me that I can create new habits in a mere twenty-one days just sets me up for failure.

Don’t believe the hype. It might be easier for you after twenty-one days, but you won’t have any magic habits to make your life better. You can’t depend on that. If you do, it will only set you up for failure.

This quote reminded me of how I used to think.

It reads:

I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority.

• E. B. White

I grew up watching The Jetsons and Disney’s cartoons about the House of the Future. I was told that I would have “Better Living Through Science.”

And I do.

I sincerely do have a better life because of a myriad of scientific discoveries and technological breakthroughs. But some of the promises turned out to be harmful instead of helpful.

For example, take that miraculous Monsanto Wheat that can grow in the winter. It has saved thousands from starvation, but I truly believe that it is part of the reason I was so sick for so long. Maybe the pre-GMO wheat would have made me just as sick, but now I cannot even eat that without pain.

Or perhaps, that idea that we’ll be able to eat all our meals in a single pill. That IS true. We could eat three or four protein bars a day and have almost all the nutrients we would need to stay alive. But eating to stay alive isn’t what I have ever needed to do. I was eating to feed something else.

I have found that when I “taste the sweetness and respect the seniority of Nature,” I enjoy life more and FEEL better. I used to eagerly await the day when machines would spit out the exact calories and nutrients I needed for my own personal system. Now, I just grab an apple and some almonds.

I saw this video yesterday and it kind of riled me up.

I don’t think soda should be taxed. I also don’t think cigarettes should be taxed. It’s hard to stop drinking sugary drinks. It’s hard to quit smoking. But I don’t want the government sticking its nose in my business. I KNOW huge corporations are trying to sell me sugar water. It’s kind of OBVIOUS. There are commercials for it EVERYWHERE!!

That doesn’t mean that I want the government to step in and tax it.

What I want is to be able to choose on my own. I CHOOSE every day not to drink sugary drinks. I VOTE every day with my pocketbook. I don’t like the idea that the government thinks it needs to make food decisions for me because the minute anyone makes a food off-limits, all I can do is think about the food that I can no longer eat. If the government were to ban broccoli, I would suddenly want to eat a lot of broccoli.

So, how do I feel about big corporations trying to stop a soda tax? Man, I hate to say it, but this time, I’m on the side of the corporations.

Via: robertreich: Berkeley vs. Big Soda I got a call… – Hank’s Tumblr