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

I just read this article on Slate about a woman who went from 320 pounds, down to a size 12.

• From obese to chubby: How I lost the weight, and why you shouldn’t admire me for it. – Slate Magazine

Let’s say you had to starve yourself daily for bare maintenance of your health and physical appearance. Could you do it? Forever? And would you be happy? I doubt very much that you would. But still, it’s what I have to do.

THAT is the question. When I was at my lowest weight, I was STARVING. I thought about food all the time and I wasn’t particularly happy with how I looked.

I think I had blamed so much of my unhappiness on my weight that I was shocked that I was still unhappy with my appearance when I was so close to goal. The truth of the matter is, being thin doesn’t make me happy.

Neither does being fat.

Happiness and weight loss are two different things. If losing weight won’t make you happy, what are the benefits?

• You live longer: Whether those extra years will be spent in joy or misery is your choice.
• People respect you more: As much as we’d like to deny it, we do respect people who are thin. That girl from high school who is still physically fit is the belle of the 20 year high school reunion.

That’s about it, folks. If you think losing weight is going to change your life, you’re wrong. Losing weight will change your BODY. YOU have to change your life.

If you expect to be instantly happy because you’ve lost weight, then you’ll be disappointed. If you set concrete goals about living longer and basking in the glow of your accomplishment, then you’ll be much more likely to achieve your goal and stay there.

Via: Weight Loss and Happiness are Two Different Things « Low Carb Confidential

This video from Jenna Marbles is commenting on this article:

• LOCAL – Columnist blasted online after piece on ‘chestless, man-like’ female Olympians

Aytug said women’s associations should protest the Games and added that it was enough for him to “take a look at female swimmers” to reach that opinion.

“Broad-shouldered, flat-chested women with small hips; [they are] totally indistinguishable from men. Their breasts – the symbol of womanhood, motherhood – flattened into stubs as they were seen as mere hindrances to speed,” Aytug said. “I am not even talking about female javelin throwers, shot-put athletes, weightlifters, wrestlers and boxers,” Aytug said. “Their appearance is just pathetic.”

If you don’t want to watch the whole video, here’s the gist of it:

Oh hey! Don’t mind me. I’m just a 12 year old man-boy-girl-lady, here to ruin femininity in the Olympics for you.

What’s that 12 year old little boy doing here? ‘Bout to win a gold medal, m-er, f-er!

Oh hey! Just the same 12 year old man-boy-girl-lady… except I’m not wearing a sports bra.

Jenna is spot on. When we work out, we are there to do just that: WORK! A sports bra is very helpful in keeping everything in place when we are physically active. We’re not there to be ogled. We’re not there to turn you on. We’re there to break records.

Don’t let Aytug or any other person judge you based on your sexuality. You’re at the gym to kick some ass, not to be a piece of one.

Via: I CAN DO IT

I love these animated GIFs of Sarah Millican!

A male acquaintance of mine, with whom I have never had a dalliance, said to me, “You know what? If you lost a couple of stone…”

Lost a couple of stone means lost about thirty pounds, for all you U.S. readers…

I said, “The rest of this better be a f-ing equation.”

He said, “If you lost a couple of stone, we could probably go out.”

I said, “Only if the couple of stone I lost was me f-ing head!”

THANK YOU, Sarah Millican! Don’t ever let anyone judge you based on the size of your body. That guy was a class A jerk!

Via: WIL WHEATON dot TUMBLR, laughterkey: anothertroy: best. I LOVE Sarah…

I found this little animated GIF from A healthy fitness / weightloss blog

It reads:

Hungry for living not junk food.

Hungry for success not junk food.

Hungry for sexiness not junk food.

Hungry for confidence not junk food.

Hungry for health not junk food.

Hungry for strength not junk food.

Hungry for power not junk food.

Hungry for accomplishment not junk food.

Hungry for fun not junk food.

Hungry for flirt not junk food.

Hungry for rest not junk food.

Hungry for company not junk food.

Many times we are hungry, but we don’t know why. There were so many times when I felt REALLY hungry, even though I had just eaten. Now, some of the blame for that was the fact that I was eating a high carb diet, but sometimes, I was just bored or sad.

The next time you’re tempted to eat something when you KNOW you’re not really hungry, STOP yourself and find out what you’re really hungry for.

Amelia Ence posted this image on Pinterest the other day.

It looks like it’s for a product called the Abhancer. It’s supposed to make your stomach look as if you have strong abdominal muscles showing under the skin when it actually is just making marks on your stomach with what looks like a shelf out of your kitchen pantry.

The box reads:

New! Abhancer! Get a six-pack in seconds!

Dramatically enhances abs.

Adjustable straps.

Light-weight frame.

Fits beneath clothing.

Recommended by pseudo-athletes.

“I couldn’t believe how effective the Ab-hancer was. Chicks dig it!” – Jeff

As far as I can tell, this product doesn’t exist. A quick search on Amazon turns up nothing and a Google search just has posting after posting making fun of the product without really researching whether it is real or not. I DID find this product: The Boneless Belt on Inventor Spot: Break Up Fat, Relationships with the Bizarre Japanese Dieting Belt.

According to the website:

The structure of the rubber belt is a large mesh grid that splits the dieter’s belly, side and back fat into easily manageable blobs. This allows for increased metabolic consumption of calories and raises the propensity for increased blood flow values. More blood flow = more heat = more burning of fat.

Cutting off the blood flow to your body might affect your resting metabolic rate, but it would be by such a small amount that it’s doubtful that it would helpful at all. Taking a twenty minute walk outside would help you FAR more than wearing an uncomfortable belt all day.

You could always create that effect with a shelf from your kitchen:

In the end, the only thing that will make your abs look like a six pack is exercise and diet. Your body fat needs to be so low that there is literally NO fat between your skin and your muscles. A silly gadget or belt (whether real or imaginary) can’t replace the hard work and determination that you need to look that good.

Additional research and photos via:

• Museum of Hoaxes: The Mystery of the AB-hancer
• AB HANCER | The Buck and Rob Show!

Here is the complete playlist for the BBC documentary, “The Men Who Made Us Fat.” It’s worth a watch.

Now, the blame for the obesity epidemic isn’t the fault of the farmers who are trying to make a living. Too much food isn’t the problem. The WRONG food is the problem. HFCS AND sugar are bad for us. If our consumption of soda that had been sweetened with sugar had increased as much as it did with HFCS, we would have gained the SAME amount of weight. They BOTH have fructose.

I don’t know about everyone else, I snacked between meals because I was STARVING. I felt hungry all the time because I was eating sugar all day long. Even when I was on Weight Watchers, and losing weight, I did it with fruit smoothies, whole wheat bread and Kashi cereal. I was eating high carb all day long and it made me SO hungry. Once I started eating low carb, my need for snacks throughout the day evaporated.

I don’t believe that the palatability of food caused this constant hunger. I eat good foods now, but avoid carbohydrates. My food tastes delicious, but I’m not obsessed with food anymore. It’s not the fact that food tastes so good that causes people to overeat. It’s the carbohydrates.

I also don’t agree with taxing food manufacturers. They are just trying to make yummy food and sell it. It’s OUR responsibility not to buy it.

This is a pretty good documentary, but it goes overboard on laying blame and doesn’t spend enough time tell people what to do about it. I’m less worried about blame and more worried about how to get healthy.

via: Don’t Miss BBC Two’s Documentary ‘The Men Who Made Us Fat’ « Jimmy Moore’s Livin’ La Vida Low Carb Blog

I was reading Retrospace and it showed me something I hadn’t seen since I was a kid. It was the Total Body Shaper and my parents had one in the Seventies.

It hung on the door to the crawl space and furnace room for YEARS. My parents used it sometimes, but mostly, it was just an irritating pile of strings on a door handle.

Now, it’s all well and good to laugh at that old exercise product. Weren’t my parents funny back in the Seventies? They didn’t realize how silly that thing was.

Sadly, they STILL sell exercise equipment like this today. This is the Body Exerciser at Amazon.com

Just in case you thought it was a fluke, there are LOTS of these products available. Even Bally Total Fitness makes one: Bally Fitness Pilates Door Knob Rope Excerciser

They cost about the same money as they did back in the Seventies, but I don’t think they will give a better workout to you than they did to my poor mom and dad. Don’t let companies take your money with promises. Sure, they’ve changed the name from Total Body Shaper to Pilates Workout, but in the end, they’re still selling the same thing: empty promises.

I found this video on YouTube called Sweet Misery: A Poisoned World. You can see it in full here:

There are interviews with doctors, but the only proof that they bring to light is anecdotal. They show person after person who blames their problems on aspartame, but they don’t mention any peer reviewed studies.

One of the people being interviewed stated it clearly:

My doctors will NOT come out and absolutely put down in writing that this is caused by aspartame. They will NOT do it. They won’t put it in my record.

He goes on to say that they will give him an “aside” saying, “Thank god you’re off NutraSweet.” The reason why his doctors won’t put it in writing that his symptoms are caused by aspartame is because they don’t have the PROOF of it. Another interviewee stated that there was no real evidence that aspartame caused his brain tumor, but that it was only circumstantial, which might be enough to convict a murderer in a court of law, but science has a higher standard than law.

Their biggest arguments seem to hinge on the fact that the studies proving aspartame’s safety were all funded by Searle (the company who invented it). What these people don’t point out is that’s how ALL testing on new chemicals is funded. It’s the company’s responsibility to prove safety, whether the product is a food additive, drug, a new carpet fiber or a new mixture of gasoline.

When I worked at a research facility, we tested all of these sorts of products for safety and toxicity. The fact that the company funding the research wanted the new products to do well didn’t change the fact that sometimes the new carpet fiber caused horrible skin irritations or the new drug caused tumors. We were required to report all those findings otherwise the FDA or EPA would shut us down. The fact that NutraSweet research was funded by Searle isn’t an indication of wrongdoing. It’s the industry standard.

I’m not saying these people didn’t have an alleviation of symptoms when they stopped eating aspartame. I’m just saying that WE DON’T KNOW. Personally, I try to avoid the flavor of sweet, no matter what sweetener is used because I have a harder time avoiding bingeing when I’ve eaten sweet things, even if they are calorie-free.

Does aspartame cause brain tumors and other horrible neurological symptoms? The research available says no. Does it help you lose weight? The research on that ALSO says no, so the case for using artificial sweeteners isn’t very strong.

When I was a kid, I used to watch cartoons that promised that in the future, food would come to me in the form of a pill. I would be free from food and science would provide for my nutritional needs in one simple processed food patty. The older I get, the more I realize that I don’t WANT that promise. Real food hasn’t been chemically altered to please me as much as processed food, but it seems to fulfill me more. Should I eat food with aspartame in it? Maybe not. But I’m beginning to think that’s the case for ANY processed food.

Video via: ATLCX (Episode 18): The Truth About Sweeteners | Dr. David Getoff « Jimmy Moore’s Livin’ La Vida Low Carb Blog

This photo of a donut queen from Found in Moms Basement just highlights bad food to me. Every day I am bombarded with images of beautiful people eating food that is poison to me. Some reptilian part of my brain believes that if I eat that food, I would be thin and beautiful, too.

Maybe I could even be the Donut Queen.

The saddest thing is, the Donut Queen doesn’t become the queen by eating the donuts. She becomes the queen because she DOESN’T eat the donuts.

If you think this is a fluke, this Donut Queen thing went on for quite some time. I’ve seen photos from 1948-1951.

In fact, National Donut Week is still an event in the UK, supporting The Children’s Trust. Buying donuts to help children is an oxymoron. It would be better to just donate the money to The Children’s Trust outright than to go through a middleman like a donut bakery.

If you want to help people, donate money directly to them.

If you want to be the donut queen, you can never eat donuts.

What a strange world we live in.

The next time you see a Victoria’s Secret model and wish you could look like her, remember this. That girl is starving herself. The pre-show diet of one of the models is so extreme, it made Anderson Cooper’s Ridiculist:

Here are the details of Adriana Lima’s diet before the Victoria’s Secret Show, which she revealed in her Telegraph interview:

“It is really intense, it’s not really the amount of time you spend working out, it’s the intensity: I jump rope, I do boxing, I lift weights, but I get bored doing that. If I am not moving I get bored very easily.”

She sees a nutritionist, who has measured her body’s muscle mass, fat ratio and levels of water retention. He prescribes protein shakes, vitamins and supplements to keep Lima’s energy levels up during this training period. Lima drinks a gallon of water a day. For nine days before the show, she will drink only protein shakes – “no solids”. The concoctions include powdered egg. Two days before the show, she will abstain from the daily gallon of water, and “just drink normally”. Then, 12 hours before the show, she will stop drinking entirely.

“No liquids at all so you dry out, sometimes you can lose up to eight pounds just from that,” she says.

What you see on stage (and in commercials and magazines) aren’t healthy women. They are women who have been starving themselves for DAYS before the show (or shoot). They are hungry and dehydrated and should NOT be emulated.

Via: Shoebox » Newsdroppings 11-11-11