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

Here is yet another article about Spain’s rejection of models that are too thin, but with a twist. It suggests that the United States has an obsession with weight loss and that our energies could be focused elsewhere.

• CITIZEN-TIMES.com: The American obsession with weight loss is unrealistic; moreover, it’s also harmful – by Kim Barto

Kim states that all of our bodies are different and trying to make us all look like super-models is unrealistic.

“In reality, a wide variety of body types are normal, depending on one’s bone structure, metabolism and genetics. It is fruitless and misleading to expect everyone to conform to the same weight. Whether you are naturally muscular, chunky, twiggy, curvy or tiny, trying to change your body can be frustrating and even dangerous. When people try to make the body thinner than it is genetically programmed to be, it retaliates by becoming ravenous and vulnerable to binge eating, according to ANRED (Anorexia Nervosa and Related Eating Disorders), a nonprofit organization against eating disorders. “

Kim has a point. The diet industry rakes in at least $30 billion a year. How many museums could we build with 30 billion bucks? Think of that huge number next time you’re tempted to buy some exercise gadget or weight loss pill. What should we do instead?

“Rather than focusing on weight loss at any cost, we should aim for good health at any size. Too many dieters harm their bodies and psyches by skipping meals, purging and popping pills in the quest for skinniness. We should eat for nutrition and well-being, not solely to lose weight. Amidst all the deprivation and guilt associated with eating, we often forget that fresh, simple food is a joy in itself.”

You can have a healthy and strong body and you still may never look like you want. It’s a sad truth, but learning to love your body now is the best way to loving it when you have reached a healthy goal weight.

Via: Big Fat Blog: That’s Not News!

This month’s Wired Magazine has an in-depth article about weight loss medications and the drug companies that are spending millions of dollars trying to convince you that being even slightly overweight is a disease of epidemic proportions.

• Wired 14.10: The Thin Pill

They are trying to have Metabolic Syndrome classified as a disease so that they can promote their pills to “cure” it. In reality, Metabolic Syndrome is just another name for obesity.

“But some wonder if metabolic syndrome really identifies anything new. Skeptics, which include the American Diabetes Association, suggest that researchers, physicians, and pharmaceutical companies have been so hasty to embrace the disease (each for their own reasons), they’ve overlooked evidence that the science behind the diagnosis is flimsy and conjectural. These critics say that so-called metabolic syndrome lumps together risks we already recognize and monitor – or worse, that it’s just a fancy way to describe obesity. By accepting it, we medicalize a lifestyle condition that we already know how to treat: with diet and exercise.”

Don’t let the pharamaceutical industry take away your will. You have everything you need to become healthy and thin. Eat less and move more. It’s free. If the pharmaceutical companies are willing to spend millions of dollars just to create a disease, then you can just imagine what they will charge for a pill to “cure” it.

You can lose weight on your own without fancy pills or exercise gadgets. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Infomercials used to be the staple of late-night television, but it seems like I can watch infomercials twenty-four hours a day. With so many channels on television, there is ALWAYS an informercial playing. Most of the time they are selling weight loss pills, equipment or some cream that is supposed to make your cellulite go away. Can you believe them? According to Dateline NBC, don’t waste your money.

• Infomercials: From the inside out – Dateline NBC – MSNBC.com

What Dateline found is what I’ve suspected all along:

“The Federal Trade Commission has launched an on-going crackdown targeting ads after the FTC found deceptive weight loss ads running ‘rampant’ and more than half of all weight loss ads studied contained at least one false claim.”

If they are willing to have one false claim, how can you trust all their others?

Dateline NBC made pills out of Nestle Quik and tried to see if they could get an infomercial made. They not only did, but the infomercial company even found a dermatologist willing to stand by it for a mere $5000. They also had people on the infomercial giving testimonials, but they were just actors who had been paid $50 each. In the end, no one even noticed that the pills were made out of Nestle Quik during the filming.

Next time you’re tempted to try the new diet pills, remember this Dateline undercover investigation. You could be paying $30 a bottle for Nestle Quik.

Via: Consumer Health Digest, September 26, 2006

Hewlett Packard has added a feature to its cameras that allows you to make a centered subject appear thinner.

• Slimming photos with HP digital cameras – HP Digital Photography Center

This isn’t new. It’s something that Photoshop experts have been doing for a long time. I thought I would try it out myself and see if I could create a slimmer version of my Before Pictures.

Using Photoshop, I created the “after” photo by changing the image size without constraining the proportions. You can tell because the fish above my head is much “thinner” than it was before. The photo makes my before photo look a little thinner, but it does nothing for my lumpy parts. I think that’s why HP used models that didn’t really need slimming in their example pages. Sure, it can make you look a little less wide, but it can’t shave off the soft and bumpy bits.

In the end, there is no software that can make you look better. You have to do the work to look better. I have never had a better photo taken of me than the quick clicks of friends when I am healthy and strong. This picture was taken by Betsy the Devine at SXSW last March and it’s the best I’ve looked EVER. Don’t waste your money on cameras that say they will make you look thinner. Getting thin is free, all you have to do is put in the effort.

I thought that I left bullying long behind me when I left high school, but I got a big surprise during the Bosu Incident a few years ago. It seems that bullying at the gym happens to adult women all the time. Lisa Williams talks about her latest incident with it here:

• Learning The Lessons of Nixon » Why do women do that?

After a childhood of torment, she still encounters women who believe that life is a fashion show:

This morning I went to the gym. As I was leaving, a woman in a powder blue car and stopped me and said, I’m sorry to be personal, but it’s not just me, I talked to the other women in the class and you wear the same clothes every time, don’t you wash them?

I have a lot of black t-shirts and black bike shorts. It’s true, in one sense, that I always wear the same clothes to the gym: but they’re copies of the same clothes.

The woman offered that she and the other women were trying to be helpful.

Uh huh. To whom? To people like you, for whom people like me exist only to make you feel superior?

After my incident with bullying, I cancelled my membership to that gym and started running on the treadmill at home again. It took a couple of months to let the dream of a gym of adults who actually acted like adults die, but it die it did. I still have a gym membership at a different gym, but I rarely go there. I run outside alone. Ride my bike outside or on the trainer alone. All my exercise has become a solitary event because of bullying at the gym. I don’t even exercise with Mike very often.

I wish I knew what the answer was…

Sometimes I wonder what is going on in the heads of people who find this kind of stuff inspirational.

This video shows Julie Moss crawling across the finish line to take second place in the Ironman competition. She keeps falling and none of her coaches or anyone else with her has the sense to just tell her that she needs a doctor. No race is worth injury. What is the matter with runners when they find performances like this inspiring?

Guess what, you don’t have to kill yourself to win in the game of life.

So many of us see productions like this from ABC Sports and think that we have to go overboard just to live a healthy life. We don’t need to crawl across the finish line. We need to make the small and healthy decisions every day. Life isn’t a race. It’s a journey. If your body is shutting down from the competition, you shouldn’t keep crawling across the finish line. You get help. Julie Moss shouldn’t be held up as a hero for crawling in second. Kathy McCartney should have been held up as the hero for pacing herself well enough to finish strong.

Via: Via YouTube: Julie Moss Competing in the 1982 Hawaii Ironman Triathlon » Complete Running Network

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) protects workers from being discriminated against because of their disabilites. Employers are required to list any specific requirements of a position (i.e. must be able to lift 50 pounds) in order to prevent arbitrary discrimination. If you are morbidly obese, should the ADA protect you from being fired?

According to a recent ruling, you must be able to prove that the obesity is caused by a physiological disorder in order for you to get protection under ADA.

What do I think about this?

On one hand, I’ve experienced discrimination in the workplace when I was fat. I was continually accused of being lazy despite high production rates.

On the other hand, too many people go running to the law courts when they run into troubles. I don’t think the government or law suits are the answer.

For me, I left the job. I didn’t want to work for a company so blind that they couldn’t see what a good employee I was. If all they could see was my fat, then I was going to take my fat and highly productive self to a company that appreciated me. Sometimes, I think that’s the answer. When companies discriminate, they end up limiting their supply of good employees. The people who won’t put up with discrimination leave. They die a death of their own making because they can’t keep good employees.

Should the ADA protect fat workers? I don’t know. I think it’s more important to protect ourselves.

Via: Big Fat Blog: Fat Not Covered Under ADA

It has been a while since I’ve seen an exercise product that makes me laugh. The interactive commercial from Brookstone states that horse-riding is the one of the best forms of exercise.

Sure, it might build a little abdominal strength, but there are hundreds of better exercises to do for your abs that don’t require a silly machine or a horse.

This Asian advertisement for the product says what they’re really trying to sell:

I suspect that in five years, anyone who buys this product is going to shake their head at this commercial and wonder why they have an iGallop in their basement.

Via: iGallop: Great Abs While Sitting Down?

My SELF magazine came with a supplement this month called Fashion Rocks. I pulled it out and walked to the recycle bin (those supplement things are ALL advertisment, no point reading it), but the girl on the cover caught my eye. The waif standing next to Jamie Foxx was Beyonce Knowles.

Beyonce was the girl who was happy to have “a little junk in her trunk.” She was never fat and her bottom was the envy of women all across the nation. Now, she’s just another stick with arms so skinny they look like teenaged boy arms.

How did she do it?

Apparently, she is touting the Lemon Juice and Maple Syrup Diet.

• Diet of maple syrup the latest celebrity fad – 16 Aug 2006 – Lifestyle & Leisure

What few people are quoting is the side effect of a fast such as this. Beyonce lost the weight for a movie role. Here is her account of her eating after the movie was finished:

“At the wrap party the day after filming they had these cupcakes and I ate about twelve.”

“After that I ate waffles, fried chicken, cheeseburgers, french fries, everything I could find.”

“That was the best time of my life. I’ve gained twelve pounds.”

Don’t be fooled by these fad diets. They do make you lose weight because of the calorie deficit, but the risk of bingeing afterward is so great that it’s not worth it. Choose a healthy diet with a moderate calorie deficit and you will lose the weight AND keep it off.

Via: Diet Blog: The Maple Syrup Diet Fad

Keith left a comment on this old entry.

• Starling Fitness » The Biggest Loser: That’s it?!

Keith said,

“Bottom line is that they will not possibly be able to keep the weight off, if your losing 10+ pounds in a week then you will put it on then some after a few months.”

Sorry, Keith, but you’re wrong. Do you know how I know you’re wrong? A lot of the people in the original Biggest Loser, who also lost 10 pounds a week, have not gained the weight back. They have made permanent changes to their lives.

The “You’ll Gain It Back” argument has been thrown at me so many times by so many people that I don’t even listen to it anymore. It’s the excuse that people say when they are jealous of your weight loss. It’s the “friendly” warning that they give you when they think you’re losing too fast. It’s the admonition they say when you are thinner than they think you should be.

Don’t listen to them.

Worse still, the “You’ll Gain It Back” argument is something that I say to myself when I’m not feeling like following the program. I say, “What’s the point? It’s impossible to maintain at this weight. I’ll just end up fat like I was before.” Sometimes it’s harder to disregard these words because they are hiding within myself.

Don’t believe the “You’ll Gain It Back” argument. It’s not true. If you eat healthy and exercise, you will maintain the loss.