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

A long time ago, I told you about a recipe that I mistakenly called Toad in the Hole:

• Starling Fitness » Toad in the Hole

I learned last month that this dish is NOT called Toad in the Hole. That is a sausages in Yorkshire Pudding dish, which I have never made nor tasted. This dish is called Eggs in a Nest. Mike’s mom always called this dish Toad in the Hole, so that’s what I called it here (since he taught me to make it).

I love to make Eggs in a Nest, but eating it every day can get boring, so I made a variation of it that is a little like French Toast without the syrupy calories.

Eggs in a Nest

Ingredients:

• One slice of whole wheat bread
• One egg
• Non-stick cooking spray (or canola oil – add 1 Point per teaspoon)
• One packet of Stevia
• Cinnamon to taste

Directions:

• Spray the pan with non-stick cooking spray (or add the oil to the pan).
• Using a glass, cut a hole in the whole wheat bread and place the bread in the pan.
• Crack the egg into a bowl. Mix half the packet of Stevia and cinnamon with the egg and beat lightly. Pour the egg mixture into the hole.
• Sprinkle the rest of the Stevia packet and cinnamon over the toast and egg.
• Put a lid on the pan and cook for four minutes.
• Toast the round piece (or throw it away if you want to limit your Points).

Calories: Approx. 150 WWPoints: 3 (4 if you use canola oil)

You can see all of the photos here:

• Eggs in a Nest – a set on Flickr

I had a shock yesterday when I took out my measuring cups. I had been wondering how much water my coffee mug and my favorite water cup actually held. I counted the coffee mug as two cups and the tall glass as three cups based on an eyeball estimate.

Imagine my surprise when I pulled out the measuring cup, poured water into them and found that BOTH only held two cups of liquid. There is a little room at the top of both of them for about a quarter cup more water if I were willing to carefully lift them to my lips, but mostly, they only hold two cups.

This was a surprise to me because I had been counting the tall glass as three cups ever since I bought the cup full of alcoholic slushie in Las Vegas. Not only did I overestimate the calories of the alcoholic drink, I have been overestimating how much water I’ve been drinking ever since.

Instead of six glasses of water every day, I’ve been getting only four. In the case of the alcohol, I ended up counting more calories than I actually had, which is probably why I lost weight that week in Las Vegas.

Why should I measure? Because looks can be VERY deceiving.

Here is an amazing video from Jamie Oliver. At first, I was kind of bugged by him because he spent the first fifteen minutes trying to scare us about obesity. In fact, when he started showing the pictures of fat people in West Virginia, I was ready to just nix the whole video because it seemed like a useless scare tactic, and I REALLY didn’t need to see the wheelbarrow of sugar cubes. You stack up five years of ANYTHING, it looks like a lot, plus, if you notice, he had taped up the bottom of the wheelbarrow to make it look more full than it actually was.

If you feel like you already KNOW that we need to lose weight, fast forward to the 14:18 mark to spare yourself from the piousness of the beginning.

If you do like he suggested and learn to cook ten healthy recipes, that is enough variety to keep you from getting bored. He also suggested that people teach their children and friends how to cook these healthy recipes and these things will escalate to the entire nation. It’s a great idea and Jamie Oliver is on the right track. I find it ironic, however, that the next video on YouTube with Jamie Oliver is for Parmesan Chicken.

After watching, it looks like that piece of chicken has about as many calories as a typical hamburger. He put so much cheese and prosciutto on the large chicken breast that the fat content is about as high as a hamburger as well (and that was BEFORE he cooked it in oil). He added salt with the cheese and herbs and then put even MORE salt on while it was cooking. I understand that fresh food is better than fast food, but that recipe for Parmesan Chicken is no better than a McDonald’s chicken sandwich. Considering how many fingers he pointed at Main Street, school, home and even the workplace, he should have pointed a finger or two at himself.

Video via: nakedjen: When I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and it is all one.

I just came off two weeks of severe sickness. I’ve worn a indent into the couch in the living room and every garbage bin in the house is filled with tissues and empty Mucinex bottles. I’m still coughing and stuffy, but now I’m finally able to stand without dizziness and I have enough energy to turn on the computer and push a few keyboard keys. How did I eat while I was sick?

Quite poorly, actually…

I usually stay away from juices because they have a lot of calories and don’t really fill me up. While I was sick however, I craved orange juice. It was one of the foods my mother gave me plenty of when I was sick because the vitamin C was thought to help with colds back in the Seventies. While I lay on the couch, unable to do anything more than read some comic books and gossip magazines, I drank almost a gallon of orange juice.

Probably not the healthiest choice available to me.

What should I have done? Shouldn’t I just stop trying to diet when I’m sick? No. Following my diet plan would have probably helped me get healthy quicker, but I abandoned it at the first moment of ailment. Why?

Comfort.

Comfort food has its name for a very important reason. It makes us feel a little better. Did the orange juice and the Tyson Chicken Cordon Blue Bites make my sinuses drain? No. Did the french fries and cheeseburger make my muscle aches go away? No. Did the macaroni and cheese ease my dizziness? No. How exactly did all that food make me feel better?

It didn’t. Comfort food makes my BRAIN feel better not my BODY.

So, how do I fix this? How do I make my brain feel better without abusing my body?

The New Comfort

There are several ways to comfort myself without stuffing my face. Firstly, is to nurture myself WITHOUT food. Here is a list of things that make me feel comforted.

• A warm bed: A heated mattress pad or cuddly husband, either will do.
• A SOFT blanket: Not the scratchy afghan I huddled under on the couch. I should have found a soft blanket that makes me feel hugged by a cloud.
• Quiet music: Instead of watching endless episodes of South Park, I should have listened to some soothing music. It would have helped me sleep, which is what I needed more than anything.
• Light reading: I got this one right. I curled up with a stack of comic books and gossip magazines. Not enough intellect to tax my mind, but just enough entertainment to distract me from the pain.
• A purring kitty: Maggie, purring, warm and kneading on my shoulder was another comforting moment in my day.
• A humidifier or vaporizer: The new vaporizers are a lot safer than they used to be when I was a kid, but the vapor in the air is different, somehow. I’d like to find an old Vicks vaporizer that risks burning me every time I fill it just to get that thick and watery humidity in my room.

Giving myself this sort of nurturing will help me need comfort food less. What do I do about those cravings for comfort food, when they do come?

The New Comfort FOOD

Macaroni and cheese, chicken soup and orange juice used to be the foods that I ate when I was sick. In fact, they were the staples of my diet this last time around. They don’t actually cure me, however, although there is a case for chicken soup. All they do is make me feel better emotionally.

The only way to solve the comfort food problem is to teach my body to crave new comfort foods.

Next time I’m sad, sick or upset, instead of turning to high fat, high carb and high salt foods, I need to turn to healthy foods. If every time I got sick, I ate apples, I would start to crave apples every time I got sick. Comfort food isn’t some magical combination of ingredients that makes me instantly calm. It’s the mere act of repetition that makes it comforting to me. I need to retrain my body to crave healthy food instead of what it currently craves.

I suspect this will take a while before the new cravings take hold and override the years of abuse I’ve done to myself. As soon as I’m able to make that leap, I’ll tell you about it.

A special thank you to Braidwood at Authentic Threads for reminding me of Alanis Morrisette’s song, Thank You.

In the first verse, she sings, “How ’bout stopping eating when I’m full up.” In fact, everything she says in the song is a healthy way of living, no matter who you are (unless those antibiotics are keeping you alive).

When that video came out, I remember thinking that Alanis was so brave for being willing to show herself to the world, nearly naked. She has said that she fought anorexia and bulimia when she was in her teens. She wrote the song, Perfect, to express how it felt to struggle with eating disorders.

She is a runner and completed the New York City Marathon last year in 4 hours, 28 minutes. She said running a marathon is, “An unbelievably harrowing and beautiful and moving and serene experience.”

Thank YOU, Alanis, for giving me another hero to remember when running and eating healthy gets difficult.

A special thank you goes out to Johnny Wander for showing us all the Ultimate Clementine Peeling Technique.

Here is the Ultimate Clementine Peeling Technique:

• Gently puncture around the top of the peel with your thumb.
• Start peeling in an even spiral.
• Continue to peel in a single ribbon until complete.

That’s a little different than the technique I usually use:

• Pull off the peel in a star shape around the fruit.

Clementines are so easy to peel that you CAN pull them off in one single ribbon. I’ve talked about them many times before, so read up on these great fruits.

• Starling Fitness » Clandestine Clementines
• Starling Fitness » Clementine Season
• Starling Fitness » Clementine Season Is Here Again

If I find myself at Wendy’s, it’s so easy to eat healthy. There are SEVERAL meals that I can have that are low in calories and yummy. Here are my favorite selections:

• Small Chili and a Side Salad: This is my absolute favorite meal to have at Wendy’s. For about 4 WW Points, I can have a full tummy and feel satisfied. Instead of using dressing on the side salad, I pour the small chili on it and it feels like a decadent salad.

• Kid’s Meal Hamburger, Fries and Tiny Frosty: This is substantially more calories with my estimate at 11 WW Points, but if I’m craving a classic hamburger, I get the taste of it without all the calories. For the same amount of Points as their Baconator, I can have a whole meal. Plus I get a toy!

• Plain Baked Potato with Light Classic Ranch Dressing: When I’m feeling like something different, I choose the plain baked potato and add the Light Classic Ranch Dressing for about 7 WW Points. This isn’t the best option for me because there isn’t any protein, but sometimes I just really want a baked potato.

• Grilled Chicken Go Wrap and a Side Salad: For 5 WW Points, you can’t go wrong with their chicken wrap and a salad. I ask for lemon to squeeze on the salad and use that instead of dressing.

You can create your own diet meal by reviewing the nutrition information before you go to the restaurant.

• Wendy’s® – Nutrition Facts & Topics For Healthy Eating

• Download the Wendy’s Nutrition Facts PDF Link

In the end, you can lose weight by eating at any restaurant. You just need to know what to order and how much to eat. You don’t need to cut any of your favorites out of your diet as long as you learn how to eat them correctly.

What happens when being a vegetarian isn’t enough? When there are so many people out there who are also vegetarian, it doesn’t make you feel special enough, so you need to take it one step further.

You become a vegan.

But what happens when being a vegan isn’t enough? When there are so many people out there who are also vegan, it doesn’t make you feel special enough, so you need to take it one step further.

You become a raw food vegan.

But what happens when being a raw food vegan isn’t enough? When there are so many people out there who are also raw food vegan, it doesn’t make you feel special enough, so you need to take it one step further.

You become a freegan.

At this point, you find yourself rummaging through a dumpster to find your daily meals.

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.

If you feel some sort of superiority from your diet of choice, it’s time to re-evaluate your emotions and find a way to aid your self esteem that doesn’t involve being better than other people.

Otherwise, you’ll find yourself eating out of a dumpster.

This hilarious commercial is from the movie The Invention of Lying. What if Coca-Cola couldn’t lie in their commercials. I suspect they would sound a lot like this:

The announcer says:

Hi, I’m Bob. I’m the spokesperson for the Coca-Cola company. I’m here today to ask you to continue buying Coke. I’m sure you’ve been drinking it for years and if you still enjoy it, then I’d like to remind you to buy it again sometime soon.

Basically, it’s just brown sugar water. We haven’t changed the ingredients lately, so there’s nothing new I can tell you about that. Uh, changed the can around a little bit, though. You can see that the colors are different there and we’ve added a polar bear so the kids’ll like us.

Coke’s very high in sugar and like any high calorie soda, it can lead to obesity in children and adults who don’t sustain a very healthy diet. And that’s it, it’s Coke. It’s very famous, everyone knows it. I’m Bob, I work for Coke and I’m asking you to not stop buying Coke.

If any soda was forced to advertise at this level of honesty, I don’t think anyone would drink it.

Video via: What If Advertisers Couldn’t Lie?

I’ve talked about making weight loss a game in the past:

• Starling Fitness » Turn Dieting Into a Game with Weight Watchers

Here is a teenager, Taylor LeBaron, who took that idea to new levels. Like any game, he identified his enemies, his allies and his points system. He calls his caloric intake his “money” and he pointed out who his true enemies are: Inactivity, food choices, large portions, liquid calories, and stress.

You can find out more from his book: Cutting Myself in Half: 150 Pounds Lost, One Byte at a Time by Taylor LeBaron.

Here is Taylor on the Today Show:

Here is his story:

Via: How a 17-Year-Old Video Gamer Cut His Weight in Half