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

I saw this LOL Cat this morning and it looked like the perfect breakfast:

Two servings of fruit and one serving of cute. Sounds like a perfect combination to me. Fruit for breakfast is a great way to start your day, but don’t forget about your soul. You need to feed your soul as much as your body when you are learning how to eat healthy.

Giving yourself some cute kitten time is the perfect recipe for your morning soul feeding.

Photo via: 2 servings of fruit . . . « Lolcats ‘n’ Funny Pictures of Cats – I Can Has Cheezburger?

I don’t care for peaches. Unlike apples, nectarines, pears and plums, I don’t like to eat that fuzzy skin on the outside. Having a slimy pit to deal with at the end is bad enough, but that fuzzy skin is just unappetizing.

Then again, I’m perfectly willing to eat apricots. I LOVE apricots and I miss the tree that my parents used to have in their backyard. I hated picking up the rotting and disgusting apricots that had fallen from the tree, but I DO miss the fresh fruit. The fuzzy skin on them doesn’t even phase me, so why don’t I like peaches?

Is it just the pit? With an apricot, I can pop it open and dispose of the pit easily, but with a peach, the fruit clings to the pit with a vengeance. I guess the combination of a slimy pit and fuzzy skin is just enough to push peaches off the list of favorite fresh fruits.

Canned, peaches, however… I LOVE those. I don’t like the kind that have heavy syrup, but packed in juice or water, they’re delightful. If someone else has gone to the trouble of removing that furry skin and gooey pit, I’m perfectly happy to eat a peach. Lucky thing, too, because adding peaches to my diet means that I won’t get sick of fruits and vegetables.

Are there any fruits or veggies that you don’t like to eat? If there are, try them prepared in a different way. It might make the difference between dieting boredom and dieting success.

Photo via: Found in Mom’s Basement: Vintage Georgia peach fruit crate labels

When I read the recipe for this chocolate cake, I was inspired:

• Chocolate Cake In 5 Minutes! | Dizzy Dee

After checking the WW Points for this recipe, however, I was a little less than happy. It clocked in at 19 Points! Since my biggest problem with a piece of chocolate cake isn’t the piece of cake, but the rest of it in my house, the idea of making one serving of chocolate cake sounded perfect. I wouldn’t have to worry about bingeing if I only made one piece of cake.

So I altered the recipe.

Ingredients:

• 4 Tablespoons self-rising flour
• 2 Tablespoon sugar
• 2 Tablespoons cocoa
• 1 Egg
• 3 Tablespoons milk
• 3 Tablespoons unsweetened applesauce
• 1 Coffee Mug

Directions:

• Mix the dry ingredients together in the coffee mug
• Add the egg and stir.
• Add the milk and applesauce and stir until mixed well.
• Cook in the microwave for 3 minutes on high (1000 watt).
• Allow to cool before popping the cake out of the mug.

Servings: 2
WW Points: 4

Despite the appearance of the mug, it didn’t make a mess in my microwave. The bubbling cake mixture never made it all the way down the mug before firming up. The cake will be spongy, but moist. It’s not sickly sweet like some cakes are. If you want a little more sweetness, add a tablespoon of frosting for an additional Point.

The cake is so large, I cut it into two servings. Allow it to cool before eating and it will be less spongy.

When I was a kid, microwaves were the cool new thing and they made cake mixes for the microwave. I could make a personal cake whenever I wanted. Honestly, I’ve missed that a little bit and it’s nice to know that I can make myself ONE piece of cake and not have to worry about throwing the rest away.

Via: Craftzine.com blog: 5 Minute Microwave Chocolate Cake

It seems that tasks that task your mind also task your appetite. Jean-Phillipe Chaput just released a study in the latest issue of Psychosomatic Medicine stating that intellectual work creates a destabilization of the blood glucose levels in the body and causes appetite spikes.

• ABC News: Does Thinking Make Us Fatter?

The participants burned only about three calories more during each of the two “knowledge-based” experiments than during the 45 minutes when they rested in a comfortable chair. So the caloric expenditures were relatively quite low for mental tasks compared to the period spent relaxing.

But the intake was significantly higher. Participants consumed 203 more calories after the reading experiment, and 253 more calories after the computer tests, than the resting participants. That’s an increase of 23.6 percent and 29.4 percent, respectively.

Next time you feel yourself reaching for food when you’re working at the computer, remember that you haven’t really burned the calories you’re craving. Instead of a snack, take a brisk walk or a run up and down the stairs. That’s the pick-me-up that your body truly needs.

Via: Thinking Makes You Fat – Geekologie

Braidwood, from Authentic Threads, has decided to eat nine vegetables a day. She used to do it a few years ago and she really liked the results:

• My new eating goal: 9 servings of vegetables a day | Authentic Threads

My goal is to eat 9 servings of vegetables a day. I did this once years ago for three days and my skin GLOWED. It was an amazing and very noticeable difference. I looked SO healthy. I don’t know why I stopped doing it, but I’ve wanted to do it again ever since.

She provides a complete list of vegetables if you want to glow as well, so head on over to her blog and get yourself on the way to a healthier diet!

If you are plagued by food cravings, even when you’re not hungry, then you might want to try a low-carb diet. I have severe problems with bingeing and have found myself eating even when my stomach is full. When I go low-carb, however, those cravings go away.

If you want to be free from food cravings, here is a guide that should help you get through the first week of living low-carb.

• First Week of a Low-Carb Diet – Challenges and Rewards When Starting to Eat Low Carb

The first five days, here are her suggestions:

• Eat lots of fiber and lots of fat.
• Don’t go hungry!
• Plan delicious things to eat.
• Be good to yourself.
• Get Support.
• Drink lots of water.

Honestly, these are really good tips no matter what diet you are starting. If you want to be able to eat food like a normal person, limit your carbs and make sure you eat enough protein. I found that my constant desire to binge just drifted away and I was free!

According to a study that was published in the Sept. 16 issue of Radiology, researchers at John Hopkins University have found a new way to curb hunger. They inject a chemical that destroys the main vessel carrying blood to the top section (fundus) of the stomach. About 90 percent of the body’s ghrelin originates in the fundus, which requires a good blood supply to make the hormone.

Suddenly, your body is only able to create 10 percent of ghrelin that it used to be able to create and your hunger pangs are lessened.

• Researchers Suppress ‘Hunger Hormone’ – US News and World Report

Dr. Aravind Arepally is the clinical director of the Center for Bioengineering Innovation and Design, and associate professor of radiology and surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He explained the procedure:

“With gastric artery chemical embolization, called GACE, there’s no major surgery. In our study in pigs, this procedure produced an effect similar to bariatric surgery by suppressing ghrelin levels and subsequently lowering appetite.”

I don’t know if I want part of my stomach destroyed. Considering all the negative effects of gastric bypass surgery, I wouldn’t be the first in line to try this procedure. Let them experiment on someone else.

Have you seen the commercials advertising High Fructose Corn Syrup? I hadn’t until The Diet Blog showed them to me. Here they are:

Both commercials repeat the same mantra:

“It’s made from corn, doesn’t have artificial ingredients and, like sugar, it’s fine in moderation.”

HFCS is just as safe as sugar? That’s the best they can do? Moms all over the world have been warning their kids of the dangers of sugar for decades. It all smacks of baloney to me.

The Diet Blog did the research and has the facts about HFCS for you here:

• Diet Blog: The Real Truth About High Fructose Corn Syrup

Here are their Take Home Points:

• Implicating a single food in causing weight gain or disease is folly and takes the focus away from the big picture of our diets.
• We eat way too much high fructose corn syrup. Even if it isn’t an independent factor in our growing waistlines and poor health, it is at the very least displacing healthier food choices.
• Calories still do matter – fructose levels do not seem to make a difference within the context of a reduced calorie diet.
• Rather than taking a magnifying glass to every ingredients list to find the “evil” ingredients, focus instead on eating minimal ingredient foods.
• Oh, and those commercials are correct in that it probably isn’t any worse for you than table sugar, but I would love to hear how they define “moderation”. (Hint, it’s not 78 lbs a year).

Personally, I have been avoiding anything sweetened for a while now. When I lowered my carbs, all sweeteners, artificial or not were cut out of my diet and now things taste far too sweet for me most of the time.

Whatever your stance on HFCS, make sure you know the details so that those smug moms and girlfriends (like in the commercials), won’t be able to give you a lecture about how “safe” it is.

To all of you vegetarians and vegans out there, here is one study you might want to take a closer look at. Scientists at Oxford University have linked a meat-free diet to brain shrinkage.

• Going veggie shrinks the brain | The Courier-Mail

The link was discovered by Oxford University scientists who used memory tests, physical checks and brain scans to examine 107 people between the ages of 61 and 87.

When the volunteers were retested five years later the medics found those with the lowest levels of vitamin B12 were also the most likely to have brain shrinkage. It confirms earlier research showing a link between brain atrophy and low levels of B12.

If you want to prevent brain atrophy, then you need to make sure you get enough vitamin B12. The best source for that vitamin is milk, liver and fish.

I always thought the Weight Watchers Points system to be the easiest way to keep track of your food, but it looks like Clive Thompson at Wired Magazine has noticed how much it resembles playing a game.

• Games Without Frontiers: Fun Way to Lose Weight: Turn Dieting Into an RPG

Indeed, I’m in awe of the sheer brilliance of Weight Watchers in adopting the word points as its metric for measuring food. The word immediately shoves the user into the semantics — and fun — of gameplay. You regard losing weight as an intriguing challenge, as opposed to a mere grind.

This puts me in mind of the talk that Jane McGonigal — a brilliant and pioneering alternative-reality game designer — gave at this year’s South by Southwest conference. She argued that game designers ought to put their skills to use in the real world by reshaping dull, everyday activities into fun challenges. Why not a game that gives you points for walking your dog or jogging?

You can make this a game for yourself pretty easily without the use of Weight Watcher’s expensive eTools. All you have to do is use the Weekly Goals Sheet that you can download for free here:

• Starling Fitness » Bribe Yourself

Give yourself goals for every day of the week and choose a reward for each one. In my example, I’ve been just bribing myself with money, but you can use whatever reward you want for each goal. Whether exercise, eating, getting your chores done or whatever you goals you have, this goal sheet is the first step on the way for you to achieving them.

Via: Play Girlz: Weight Watchers RPG