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

After years of suffering in food service under the hand of food obsessed elitists, he gets a little nervous every time he goes into a Trader Joe’s Grocery Store.

• My Trader Joe’s Phobia | Waiter Rant

But let’s face it; many people are organic because they want to feel better about themselves. For them food isn’t sustenance, it’s a statement. It’s often a quick, easy and rather masturbatory piece of faux virtuousness. How else can you explain purchasing organic vodka? Are you kidding? You want to pickle your liver and stroke your social consciousness too?

I feel the same way. After years of being told to eat more whole grains, my digestive tract was bleeding me dry. The minute I disregarded the Food Taliban, I started healing. Fortunately, Trader Joe’s has options for me.

No matter whether it’s veganism, vegetarianism, organic proponents, or whole grain pushers, whenever someone thinks they have THE answer for everyone, I start to back away. Food elitism isn’t about being healthy. It’s a religion.

I’ve talked about this before:

• Starling Fitness: Compare Groceries
• Starling Fitness: When Food Snobbery Goes Beserk
• Starling Fitness: Food Snobbery

In 2010, I said:

Maybe it’s time to reconsider the idea that your diet is supposed to make you feel unique, special or superior. When they said that you are what you eat, I don’t think they meant that as a judgment of your personality, just as a guideline for food choices.

Using your diet as a statement of your political beliefs is just as disordered eating as anorexia, bulimia or binge eating. If you need to feel good about yourself, your diet isn’t going to make you feel any better than earning a lot of money, wearing the coolest clothes or exercising a lot. There is ALWAYS someone out there doing more than you and you cannot outdo the crazy people of this world.

In the end, there is no ONE way that is best for everyone. We are all the same species, but we evolved over vast distances, eating many different types of food. That’s the beauty of being human: we get to figure out what works best for our individual bodies. Even more interesting, our bodies are constantly changing and what worked for us at one stage of our lives might not work very well at another.

Whenever someone tries to tell you that they know the one secret to eating properly, be wary of them. Don’t spend seven years in horrible pain with a bleeding digestive system before you realize that the prevailing “wisdom” just doesn’t work for you, like I did. Be smarter than I was and reject any form of food elitism or snobbery within yourself or others.

Photo via: Flickr: Kathy at Trader Joe’s in Modesto – Day 94

Hunger is a strange thing. It’s far more powerful than any other digestive pain I’ve experienced. I was bleeding, bloated and doubled over with an intestine trying to process whole wheat at the insistence of the USDA food pyramid, but all that pain isn’t quite as insistent as hunger.

Yet, we are told to not let food control us. ALL THE TIME…

The images show up on Pinterest and Tumbler and Facebook, urging us to control ourselves and say no to food, despite the intense urging of hunger.

How are we supposed do that?

How do people suffering from anorexia do it? Do they not feel hunger the same way I do? Is it somehow easier for them? According to this article in Psychology Today, the answer is NO. People who have anorexia feel every urge and pang.

• Psychology Today – Five Anorexia Myths Exploded

Myth 2: Anorexics don’t feel hungry.

Of course they do. They’re only human, however much they like to pretend otherwise. Hunger is the point, after a while: it’s the great tormentor and the great addictive high. You’ll say you’re not hungry ad nauseam, but it’s an excuse that wears thin when you’re staring with eyes sunken into a skeletal head at the biscuit on someone else’s plate, of which you’ve just been offered one, and refused. (‘I’ve already eaten / just had a big lunch, thanks’, is the other implausible stand-by.)

So, even people who starve themselves feel hunger and deny it. If they can stop themselves from eating despite that physical urging of LITERAL starvation, why is it so difficult for me?

Don’t misunderstand me. I don’t want to suffer through the pain of anorexia. I just wonder why my I cannot do what every “fitspo” and “thinspiration” Tumbler urges me to do.

Part of the problem is eating the right foods. When I eat low carb, I tend to have less hunger than when I eat a higher percentage of carbohydrates. Then again, once I’ve been eating low carb for a while, I tend to have insane cravings that become downright obsessive.

According to this post, I just need to take control.

• Take Charge of Your Life: Don’t Let Food Cravings Get the Best of You

Think of the consequences. When you feel a craving surfacing in your thoughts, think of what would probably happen if you do give in. Will it reset your diet plan? Will it make fitting into your dress next to impossible? By focusing on the aftermath, you would be able to persuade yourself to save the munchies for later.

Hydrate. If you’re not particularly hungry, opt to drink water. It will make you feel fuller, and prevent you from going through with your bingeing plans. Besides, you could probably use more fluids anyway.

Eat with your five senses. If you keep rushing through your meals like there’s no tomorrow, you’ll be more likely to give in to your cravings later on. However, if you enjoyed your last meal, you’d feel a lot fuller.

Keep calm and carry on. According to WebMD, cravings kick in especially when we feel stressed or anxious. We may find ourselves craving for carbohydrates because they boost our serotonin levels, which in turn, make us calm. We may also crave for a combination of fat and sugar which supposedly has the same effect on our body.

Set specific limits. If you must give in (meaning you can no longer concentrate on work unless you satisfy your craving), keep your consumption to a minimum. Instead of a whole slice of chocolate cake, eat only half.

Is that all it is? I don’t have control, whereas thin people do? Is it really that simple?

Somehow, I think it’s more than that. I believe that powerful physiological factors are at work, not to mention some psychological ones. Only once we learn how to control THEM can we actually get in control of our hunger, and sadly every human body is a little different. Getting your hunger under control is going to take individual experimentation from every person struggling with this issue, including me. And, sadly, once I find out what works for me, it really will only be the answer for ME.

Images via:

• You make your own choices.  – bikini dreams
• Live Like A Fitness Pro
• Flickr: Lemon Layer Cake
• Partners in Wellness

The other day I was needing some inspiration, so I typed the word, “thin” into the search on Pinterest. This is what I found (click the picture to see it full-sized):

Tons of links to “Thin Mint” treats isn’t really the kind of dieting and exercise inspiration I wanted, but it sure made me laugh!

For the kind of Pinterest motivation that actually HELPS, here are my Pinterest boards:

• Starling Fitness Low Carb
• Starling Fitness Motivation

In Jennifer Lawrence’s Elle Magazine interview, she said that Hollywood makes her feel like she is “fat.” So when she was training for Katniss, she kept one thought in mind:

“I’m never going to starve myself for a part… I don’t want little girls to be like, ‘Oh, I want to look like Katniss, so I’m going to skip dinner. That’s something I was really conscious of during training, when you’re trying to get your body to look exactly right. I was trying to get my body to look fit and strong- not thin and underfed.”

Hollywood really needs a kick in the pants if they think she is “fat.” Most people dream of looking as good as she does.

The next time you look at yourself in the mirror and wish that you looked more like an actress, remember that your idol is under EXTREME pressure to literally STARVE herself to look like she does. Don’t judge yourself by Hollywood’s insane standards.

Images via:

• WIL WHEATON dot TUMBLR, karenhallion: lifewithkitty: …
• I CAN DO IT

This week on PostSecret, they recognized Eating Disorder Week. They posted a bunch of postcards about eating disorders.

It reads:

Eating make me feel vulnerable. Starving give me strength.

It reads:

My favorite habit is putting red lipstick on after I throw up. Nobody knows I’m bulimic.

It reads:

My friend is bulimic. I’m scared to confront her about it. Instead, I made this postcard for millions of people to see. I am a coward.

It reads:

I was called an elephant in school for being so fat.

It reads:

I became a vegetarian to have a reason for the weight loss caused by the eating disorder.

It reads:

If I were honest about my eating disorder when my mom asked me about it when I was younger, I could have saved myself from 8 years of hell.

It reads:

Even though it made me completely miserable & sickly, I miss my anorexia every day.

The National Eating Disorders Association has a quiz you can give yourself to see if you have disordered eating. They have some support options to help you and refer you to a professional, so if any of these secrets ring true to you, please contact them.

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 picture of Stanley Green, The Protein Man, and it intrigued me.

According to Wikipedia, Stanley Green stood on the streets of London every day, peddling his book, Eight Passion Proteins with Care. If you’d like to read it, here is a PDF:

• Eight Passion Proteins with Care by Stanley Green 1975 Edition

He proselytized that eating protein was bad because it stimulated sexual desire. He wasn’t wrong. Several studies have shown that to be true, with dire warnings to vegetarians to watch their protein levels.

• BBC NEWS | Health | Sex drive warning to vegetarians and elderly

Poor Stanley, however, thought sexual passion was a bad thing and suggested that eating less protein would “increase discretion.”

At some time in our twenties, when the body comes to adult perfection and size, we cease to require protein for body building, and so passion gets a bonus of protein, if we do not eat less of protein, correspondingly.

The book continually refers to a “sexual friend,” who appears to be someone with whom you experiment sexually.

…it might be very hard to be well behaved with a sexual friend, and to be headstrong in one’s lonely bed: HARD to follow a responsible moral-code, in the unmarried years. -Use your unaided will, for as long as you can, to develop your character; but do not let passion defeat you, ALONE, nor with a sexual friend.

It’s more disturbing when I read this paragraph:

Some will not be lucky enough to marry, and others are conditioned AGAINST MARRIAGE; but they would find the essence of happiness, in having gentle passion all the time: free of fleshly longing, particularly at bed-time.

Those who are “conditioned AGAINST MARRIAGE?” Who are they? Is he talking about homosexuals?

He continues to rant about wives needing to eat less protein so their husbands aren’t overwhelmed by their “married-love” duties.

Married-love takes its toll of men as well. And for how many is it the last straw? -Do you find it hard to satisfy your husband, or is it an anxiety for YOUR HUSBAND to know how to keep YOU sweet, with enough married-love?

In World War II, Stanley was appalled by his co-sailors constant talk about their wives and sweethearts and what they wanted to do once they got home. Considering that he never married, I’m beginning to think that he may have been “conditioned AGAINST MARRIAGE.” Perhaps he had been enticed by an encounter with a “sexual friend” only to find shame in his budding homosexuality. Never able to accept it, he chose to deny his nature and suppress his desire, and, in turn, urging others to do the same.

And, once again, there we have it. Dietary advice from a man trying to squelch his natural desires. Just like Kellogg, Graham and Post, poor Stanley Green spent his life railing against healthy sexual desire and blaming an essential nutrient in our food for it.

The next time someone tells you that you should be a vegetarian, remember where this obsession for vegetarianism came from and know that it’s not really a way of eating meant to make you happy or even healthy. It was a Puritan effort to squelch sexual desire in a society that was uncomfortable with it.

Via:

• Stanley Green – The Protein Man – Retronaut
• The Protein Man | John Guy Collick

This image from work sweat achieve is something I want to believe.

It reads:

Run your self doubt into the ground.

I’ve always been plagued by low self esteem and self doubt. It gives me hope that if I run long and hard enough that they will both be trampled into the ground. Could I somehow pound my self loathing into a pulp while running? I think I might actually might be able to do that. When I was running regularly, I felt much better about myself than I do now. I still hated myself, but I felt better. For all I know, I was one run away from finally crushing my self doubt into nothingness if I hadn’t quit.

Why should I exercise every day? Because it gets me one day closer to conquering self loathing for good.

I found this funny card on Fit Villains the other day.

It reads:

Losing weight is hard…

And the last time I checked, calling someone “fat” does not make it any easier.

It’s so true, but the person who keeps berating me is within my own head. As the saying goes:

It is hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head.

-Sally Kempton

I just need to remind myself constantly that calling myself “fat” OBVIOUSLY doesn’t help. If it did, I would be stick thin after thirty years of this abuse. Every time I catch me berating myself, I need to stop it and remember this.

It seems that everyone has an opinion about Santa’s weight on this week’s The Joy of Tech comic called Santa’s Cookie Crumbles. Here is just a glimpse.

You can see the full comic here:

• The Joy of Tech comic called Santa’s Cookie Crumbles

At this time of the year, it’s important to remember that we are all on our own journey with eating and fitness. Scolding someone’s food choices is NEVER appropriate. Focus on YOUR choices and leave the choices of everyone else to them with no comments or rolling eyes.

Oh, and don’t forget to have a Merry Holiday!

I’ve talked many times about caffeine and how it affects my mind. I said it best when I wrote about it here:

• Starling Fitness – Fitness, diet, and health weblog » Avoid Caffeine

Why should you avoid caffeine? I don’t necessarily think you should. Caffeine affects ME negatively, but that doesn’t mean that it will affect you the same way. The most important thing during this whole journey is learning how to listen to your body.

That’s why when I saw the title for this episode of the Sci Show, I thought I was going to get mad at them. So many people (like me) have such a negative reaction to caffeine withdrawal that they become a little didactic and demand that NO ONE should be consuming the stuff. Instead, it was a wonderfully scientific treatment of the subject.

What did I learn? Well, caffeine is NOT an addictive substance. Unlike heroin, it doesn’t CHANGE your brain chemistry permanently. Additionally, it’s nearly impossible to overdose on the stuff. I’ve used the word addiction for caffeine many times and I’m cringing now for using that word so lightly.

In my defense, the way caffeine affects me is so powerful that I feel as if I have no control with it. One cup of coffee a day will escalate to two and suddenly I find myself drinking several cups a day and having trouble getting to sleep at night. Even now, I am struggling to keep my consumption at one cup of coffee a day. Going off it completely doesn’t solve the problem, either. THEN, I can smell coffee or even a Coke Zero from a mile away. The temptation to start again is constant.

To compound the problem, caffeine is EXCELLENT for staving away my monthly migraines. Now that I’m gluten-free, my migraines have trickled down to one or two a month and they are so minor that a cup of coffee or two coupled with two naproxen sodium is enough to tame them.

So, is caffeine bad for me? Yeah, kinda… Is caffeine good for me? Yeah, kinda… Like any drug, it has its uses and can be abused. I am riding that thin line every day, trying to keep within my limits.

If you’d like some pointers on how to get OFF caffeine, I have some here:

• Starling Fitness » How To Quit Soda