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

For all you low-carbers out there, here is a great recipe.

Ingredients:

• 1 package bacon
• 1 box of eggs
• Shredded cheddar, crumbled goat cheese, or any cheese you like
• Chopped herbs such as chives, dill, thyme

Directions:

• On medium heat, fry bacon on a skillet until slightly browned on each side, but still pliable – don’t let them get crispy
• Drain on paper towels and let cool
• Preheat oven to 400
• Line muffin cups (or ramekins) with bacon slices, making sure to cover the bottom too (tear off chunks of bacon to fill the bottom)
• Crack an egg into each cup
• Add cheese on top
• Sprinkle with herbs, salt and freshly cracked pepper
• Bake until set, approx 15 min
• Carefully run a knife around each to loosen from the cup and remove

Via: WIN!: Breakfast Cakes WIN – EPIC FAIL Funny Videos and Epic Fail Funny Pictures

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

I saw this Egg Man animation a couple of days ago and it made me truly think about eggs:

The whole reason we eat cereal for breakfast instead of eggs is because of one crackpot (okay, maybe two or three): Sylvester Graham. He was a dietary reformer in the 19th century. He wasn’t the first vegetarian or even the first prominent one, but he was America’s first vegetarian reformer. He believed vegetarianism was a cure for alcoholism and sexual urges (do we really NEED a cure for sexual urges? Isn’t that the OPPOSITE of what Viagra is for?). He was a strong proponent of the temperance movement and invented the graham cracker as a digestive biscuit. Graham was trying to find a healthy alternative to white bread, which is a problem in itself, but instead of turning to meat and eggs, he clung to his vegetarianism in an effort to stave off sexual depravity.

Sylvester Graham inspired another crackpot, John Harvey Kellogg and his entrepreneurial brother, Will Keith Kellogg. John Harvey was so intent on the cure of sexual urges and a vegetarian diet that he suggested that men who would not stop masturbating should endure circumcision WITHOUT anesthesia. His brother created Corn Flakes and served them to the unlucky souls who were sick enough to be in the Battle Creek Sanitarium. Charles W. Post was one of those unlucky souls and after a little snooping in their kitchens, stole their recipe for dry cereal and started a company of his own under his own name.

The whole reason I was raised on Captain Crunch and Fruity Pebbles is because of Temperance. The faulty reasoning that sex is bad AND eating less meat would make people not want to have sex (which might be the case, who knows) has shaped my body and my life. Instead of eating eggs and bacon for breakfast, I ate Fruit Loops.

How about we re-evalutate EVERYTHING that we’ve been told for over 100 years? We know that sex isn’t bad. Maybe vegetarianism isn’t good. Maybe Eggman is trying to tell us that we need to stop eating food made by a man who never consummated his marriage and used electricity to jolt urges out of the body. The more I learn about the origins of some foods and dietary ideas, the less valid they seem to me.

I’ve just discovered Sean Croxton and Underground Wellness. His videos are entertaining and have demonstrated exactly what has been brewing in my mind. For example, here is his video from April 2009 called, “Sugar Is A Drug.”

At the 3:30 mark, he talks about how crappy you feel when you first start eating low carb. It’s true. My energy level dropped. I wanted to binge on any kind of food I saw and many more that I could imagine. I snapped at Mike, the dog and even my sick cat. I felt tired and I just didn’t want to do anything except nap and eat. After it passed, however, I felt MUCH better.

I had experienced that effect before. I had tried the Atkins diet several times and quit before I got past that sugar withdrawal stage. There were other times when I tried Atkins and never got past that stage because I was eating the Atkins Nutritional Bars. I don’t care what they say on the package, those bars acted like pure sugar in my body and I never got past the bonking stage when I ate them.

The reason I liked Sean and this video so much is because at the 3:55 mark, he explains why it’s not a good idea to eat a little sugar when you get to that stage:

You’re going to have MAJOR sugar cravings, but think about this: If you had a friend, who’s addicted to heroin, or crack, or somethin’ like that, and they wanna get off it. You send ’em to rehab, and, you know, a day or two into it, they start jonesin’ for crack. You don’t go, well, “Alright, man. Imma take care o’ this. Here’s a little crack.” NO YOU DON’T SAY THAT! So you have to DEAL with it! You gotta DEAL with those sugar cravings because THEY WILL PASS!

I felt like standing up and shouting, “Amen!” at him when he said that. I don’t know about the other things he says about the supplement and the other causes of sugar cravings. I have NO idea if that is based on science or not, but I DO know that the withdrawal symptoms go away and I felt MUCH better after they did.

If you’re feeling like you couldn’t possibly cut your carbohydrates down to 20g a day, don’t give up hope. If you think it’s crazy talk to excise sugar, flour, potatoes and even some fruit out of your diet because we all have been told that moderation is the key, don’t disregard it. There is no such thing as moderation when it comes to poison. You wouldn’t recommend moderation when it comes to electrical shocks, either. Sometimes moderation is NOT the key and carbohydrates are a glaring example of that.

If I am only making a few slices of bacon, my George Foreman Grill is the absolute BEST way to do it. Since I’ve started eating low carb, I’ve found the joy of eating bacon again. I can put the grill on high heat, put three or four strips of bacon on the grill and set the timer for ten minutes. When I’m done, most of the grease has drained into the pan under the grill and the bacon only needs a dab of a paper towel to be perfect. It’s ideal: no turning, no draining the grease and no grease splatters all over the stove.

However easy the bacon is to cook on the George Foreman grill, I was still reluctant to write this entry. Here is a tip to make cooking bacon easy, clean and fast, and yet, I was unwilling to post that picture of my own grill stacked high with bacon. Why?

Because bacon has been considered an evil for my entire life.

High in fat and calories, bacon was a guilty pleasure for me. It was avoided when I was “on program” and a binge-worthy desire when I was off. Now that I’m eating low carb, bacon can be an every day breakfast. I can’t even write the words that I should write: bacon is a HEALTHY breakfast.

I’ve lost TWENTY pounds since I started eating low carb in June. That’s TWICE as much as I lost all last year while I was starving on Weight Watchers. That kind of reduction in weight is considered a GOOD thing for my health, and I did it by eating plenty of bacon.

So, YES! Bacon IS a healthy breakfast.

I should feel no shame in writing that, yet it goes against everything I have been told for my entire life. Of course, everything they told me ended with me starving and paradoxically obese, so maybe it’s alright to just do my best to put all that old “wisdom” out of my mind.

If you want to easily cook bacon, here are a selection of George Foreman Grills at Amazon. My favorite is the first one (pictured at the right) and lucky you, it’s MUCH cheaper now than when I bought it several years ago.

• George Foreman GRP90WGR Next Grilleration Electric Nonstick Grill with 5 Removable Plates
• George Foreman Next Grilleration 4-Burger Grills with Removable Plates
• George Foreman GR20B Family-Size 60-Square-Inch Nonstick Grill
• George Foreman GR10B 36 Square Inch Nonstick Countertop Grill, Black

My friend. Mindy, found this soda can in an old wall on her property. It’s a Weight Watchers Lemon-Lime No Sugar Soda can.

Somehow, seeing this made me remember what Weight Watchers has been all along: a business first. The leaders of Weight Watchers are dedicated teachers doing their best to help the members, but the entity of Weight Watchers is a business. They sell frozen dinners and ice cream treats. They lend their proprietary points system to other food companies. They no longer sell soda, but they do profit from the food they sell.

Why did I ever trust them?

This is the same company that brought me Slender Quenchers:

• Starling Fitness » Wendy McClure rescues old Weight Watchers recipe cards, circa 1974

Why should I trust them now when I wouldn’t put those old recipes anywhere near my lips?

After spending ten years on Weight Watchers with little to no progress, it’s hard not to feel bitter. I was hungry all the time and all I wanted to do was eat. I only lost weight when I was ravenous. They helped Jennifer Hudson lose weight by giving her the secret: stay away from carbs. Why didn’t they let me in on it? Why did they let me stagnate for so long?

I know it wasn’t my leader’s fault. She would have told me exactly what to do if she only knew. They didn’t tell her either.

Did they WANT me to stay fat so I would keep paying them? Why did they sell me frozen dinners with more than a day’s worth of carbs in one meal when they had their celebrity loser eat low carb?

I know it’s not healthy to stay so bitter about this, but I can’t help but blame them for the years that I struggled, starved and stagnated. It feels as if I were the one stuffed into that old wall on my friend’s property for all those years instead of that Weight Watchers Soda Can.

This photo reminded me of the phrase, “You are what you eat.”

One of the commenters said, “I am glad my tummy is not transparent.”

But the more I thought of it, the more I realized that while our stomachs are not transparent, it is quite obvious to everyone around us what we are eating. Orson Welles said it best:

Gluttony is not a secret vice.

Whether my abdomen is transparent or not, everyone around me can see what I’ve been eating for my entire life. It’s plastered on my body in the form of bulges and fat. I may not be an ant with a see-through gut, but the idea that I can hide my years of eating is gone.

Photo via: Tasting The Rainbow: The Ants Whose Multi-coloured Abdomens Show Exactly What They’ve Been Eating » Design You Trust – Design and Beyond!

The other day, we were all at Craft Lake City. Mixed in among the art was a booth for GeekyCookies. Staring at me were Star Trek cookies and Pacman cookies. They even had Browncoat Brownies. Mike made a joke about how each time we go to the planet we have to eat a red shirt cookie and we all laughed. Then Mike bought a Pacman cookie.

“Now you know what it feels like when someone eats you, Pacman!” he said while biting into the sugar cookie.

I haven’t wanted a sugar cookie for AGES, but Pacman tempted me. Why?

Part of the reason is the artificial scarcity. It’s not every day that I could eat a Pacman cookie. Sure, it’s just a sugar cookie, but it’s a sugar cookies shaped like Pacman (or a Star Trek shirt or a Invincibility Star). It doesn’t taste any differently than a normal sugar cookie, but it seems rare because it’s something I don’t see every day.

I found myself reacting the same way when I saw these Donut Kitties.

They are just donuts, but I wanted to eat one just because they are so darn cute!

The next time you’re tempted to eat something that you wouldn’t normally eat, stop and think why. Is it just because the food is cute? Is it because you think that you may never get a chance to eat something like this again? Take the time to really analyze how you are feeling and don’t let the appearance of food affect your judgement.

Related article: Starling Fitness » Patriotic Food Can Screw Up Your Eating

I originally downloaded Lose it! last May when I first started going low carb. I don’t think I used it for more than one or two days before abandoning it for two months.

The main reason I stopped using it was because their food list is kind of limited. I couldn’t find myzithria cheese (no matter how I spelled it) or a taco salad without the shell. There are other apps with far greater food lists and I used them.

The one thing those other apps don’t have, however, is support.

I’m not talking technical support. Quite honestly, Lose It! is so easy to use, I haven’t had to contact tech support. I use both the website and the iPhone app and they work seamlessly together (Hello, WW! Are you listening?! Your app sux!).

I’m talking about weight loss support. There are TONS of people using Lose It and if you make some of them your friends (and set up your privacy settings), they can see your workouts, your weight losses and your food log. They can give you kudos for getting out there and exercising. They be a shoulder to cry on if you show a gain on the scale. They can even be an inspiration to you when you see that they exercised their butts off when you sat on the couch yesterday.

It’s everything that WW promised me about their meetings, but I never got. That’s a bit of a lie. I had one friend at WW and seeing her every week was the only thing that kept me going that last year. I’ve kept in touch with her via email, but I really do miss seeing her in person every week. All the people on Lose It! have filled that void for me.

There are so many people using Lose It! that I have been able to find a whole group of friends that are eating low carb. It has been refreshing to have a group of people who eat the same way I do without the constant lecturing about the “benefits” of whole grains and fruit.

Lose It! isn’t a program for people following low carb. It tracks calories, but it also allows you to watch other macronutrients, so I have it tracking calories AND carbs. Lose It! isn’t about dictating a diet to you, it’s just a tool that allows you to formulate a diet of your own that works specifically for you.

I absolutely LOVE Lose It!’s reports. I can analyze my nutrients so that I am sure that I’m eating a high fat, moderate protein and low carb diet. I’ve never been able to do that analysis before, so it gives me a piece of mind to know that I’m on the right track. There are many other reports for exercise trends, favorite foods, and calorie expenditures that give a visual reminder to keep on track or change course. I adore how they crunch my data for me so I don’t have to pull out a spreadsheet.

And the badges! I love getting little prizes for working toward goals and Lose It! badges are PERFECT for that. I’ve earned a couple of small badges, but seeing all the things I could earn on other people’s profiles makes me want to work harder. One of my friends had earned these badges and I am on a mission to earn them as well.

I love how they reward you for exercising regularly and tracking your food consistently. It’s so inspiring to me!

Once I’ve earned those badges, I can order a t-shirt with one of them on it. When I get that Die Hard badge, I’m definitely getting a t-shirt. Oh, and the Goal Achieved badge, too. In fact, I’ll have to order a t-shirt for the Exercise King badge, as well. I can’t wait until I can do that!

Of course, if you’re shy about sharing your information, Lose It! has privacy settings that allow you complete secrecy. Your friends can only see what you allow them to see, and the rest of the world is blind. Or the entire world can be blind to you. You have that option and I love Lose It! for it.

In the end, I have been extremely happy with Lose It! If you feel like your diet is getting a little stale, log onto their site and see if it helps you as much as it has helped me.

• Website: Lose it!
• iPhone App: Lose It! – iPhone
• Android App: Lose It! – Android
• Book in Paperback: Lose It!: The Personalized Weight Loss Revolution at Amazon.com
• Book at the Kindle Store: Lose It!: The Personalized Weight Loss Revolution at Amazon.com

Update 09-20-11: I’ve found two more badges that I’d like to earn: The Pool Shark and Om badges.

Of course, neither of them have gotten me to swim or do yoga yet, but they are even more badges that I can work toward.

I watched the movie Fat Head on Netflix the other day. It is a satirical look at Morgan Spurlock’s Supersize Me. Tom Naughton spent a month eating nothing but fast food and he LOST weight and his blood levels improved. He did it by limiting his carbs. It’s not all about Supersize Me, though. It talks about why low carb works when low fat really doesnt. It really helped me realize why I was STARVING on Weight Watchers all those years. This clip is kind of goofy and the animation is something out of a bad comedy routine, but it DOES explain why I was so hungry all the time:

The movie trends a little on the conspiracy theory side. I don’t believe the government is trying to make us fat. I don’t believe the food industry is trying to make us fat. I think they are all just trying their best to recommend the healthiest diet, but they didn’t have all the information. They could have chosen low fat or low carb and they chose the wrong one to recommend.

If you are feeling hungry all the time, even though you’re supposedly eating enough calories, watch Fathead. It might give you some ideas to tweak your diet in a manner that will keep you feeling fuller AND losing weight.