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

Driving through Oregon along the back roads to Mount Hood, we saw tons of little fruit stands and markets. It seemed like every swath of land was offering to sell us ripe and delicious fruits and vegetables.

Compared to what I can get at a supermarket, however, their choices were limited. There is a lot of talk about buying your produce at farmers’ markets lately, but not all communities have access to such great fare locally and in the coming winter months, it’s impossible to get local produce.

Why should I buy local?

When I can walk to my nearest grocery store and get whatever fruit I want, why should I go to the trouble of going to the farmers’ market once a week to get produce?

It Saves the Environment

This reason is the the least supported of them all for me. Sure, it takes less oil to transport the apples from Young Family Farm in Mona, Utah than it would to transport an apple from Venezuela, but that’s only if both farms are run with the same energy efficiency. Maybe the farm in Venezuela uses more human labor than machine labor. How does that affect the equation?

Honestly, all of the factors are many and varied. Accounting for all of them is difficult and I’m not convinced that buying locally grown produce will make a significant improvement on the environment. There are figures thrown around about how much oil eating one locally grown meal a week could save, but I want to see the data to support them. It’s surprisingly scant.

It Tastes Better

The best vegetables and fruit I have ever eaten have been from my grandfather’s garden when I was a teenager. Compared to that, nothing else tastes right. The closest I’ve ever come to truly delicious fruit and veggies has been food that I’ve gotten at the farmers’ market. Supermarket fruit and veggies just don’t compare.

It’s Usually Cheaper

I know that sounds crazy that better food might be cheaper, but from what I’ve noticed at the farmers’ market here in Salt Lake City, it is. I have compared the prices of what is available to what is in the grocery stores and it costs less every time. Of course, the variety isn’t as wide at our farmers’ market as it is in the grocery store. I’ll never be able to buy a locally grown orange or mango unless it was raised in a hot house, but if I want the juiciest apple picked ripe off the tree, then there is no beating the farmers’ market in price.

It Doesn’t Last Forever

I don’t know about more temperate climates like California, but our farmers’ market closes up the minute the weather turns cold. With frost, comes the end of fresh produce from Utah and I suspect it’s the same in all areas of the states that actually have all four seasons instead of the perpetual spring of the warmer climates.

Whatever your reason for going to a farmers’ market, the food that gives you the most bang for your calories are fruits and vegetables. Whether you buy them in a grocery store or a farmers’ market, they will help you stay within your requirements and fill you full of fiber and vitamins.

The other day, I read this article on Diet Blog:

• How To: Make Nutritious Smoothies

Michael bought a new blender last week, so we have been using it to create a wide variety of smoothies. I had never put cottage cheese in a smoothie, however, so the suggestion from the Diet Blog was surprising to me. I immediately ran into the kitchen to try it out and this is what I created:

Strawberry Cottage Cheese Smoothie

• 1/2 cup cottage cheese
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 cup frozen strawberries
• 1 TBSP honey
• 1 TBSP ground flaxseed

I was pleased with the different flavor that the cottage cheese added. The nutrition facts are approximate. I used 1% milkfat on the cottage cheese and the milk, so if you use skim or full fat, the nutrition facts will change accordingly.

There are so many variations that you can use for fruit smoothies and they are an easy way to eat your dairy and fruit requirements every day. Try this one and then experiment with your own!

I came across this picture while I was researching gluttony the other day. It was labeled glutton.jpg.

Wendy, Ronald McDonald and The KFC Colonel all have been rendered pudgy in front of a landscape of nutrition facts. The question remains, does fast food make you fat?

When I lost my weight, I did it almost solely on fast food, so I can categorically tell you that fast food doesn’t necessarily make you fat.

I CAN tell you, however, that non-fast food will make you feel fuller.

When I eat fresh fruit, veggies, meat, eggs and dairy, I end up feeling fuller than when I eat the same amount of calories in fast food. Even if I make my own Egg McMuffin, I can do it with less calories and it tastes better.

So why eat fast food?

Duh, because it’s fast and convenient. Sometimes we just don’t have time for a healthy meal and we have to compromise. You just need to know that it’s possible to do that without looking like the restaurant mascots above.

This LOL cat from I Can Has Cheezburger? is funny:

It says:

I no can haz peetsa,
YOU no can haz peetsa

For all of those not familiar with LOLspeak, he’s saying, “If I can’t have pizza, you can’t have pizza.”

How many times have I felt like this? If I have to eat healthy, YOU have to eat healthy. It not only extends to everyone within my house, but everyone in my family and even random strangers on the street. It even explains why vegetarians are so annoying.

Why? Why do I feel like I have impose my eating regime on everyone else on the planet? The longer I have been “good” the more I think others should be “good” as well. It even backfires on me. When I’ve been eating relatively well for a while, I impose ever-stricter rules upon myself until I can no longer eat without guilt.

It’s no longer good enough to just eat within my caloric requirements, I have to eat five fruits and vegetables every day. Then, eating more veggies just isn’t enough, I need to eat only whole foods. Then, after that, I decide to only get my protein from vegetable sources. After too long of following these ever-tightening rules of eating, I end up bingeing.

Does anyone have an idea on how to stop this because I’m at a loss and it’s seriously hurting me.

If you have an iPhone, there is an application that can track your Weight Watcher Points as well as calculate the points for certain foods. You can find out more about it here:

• Park East, Inc. » iPoint Calculator

You can easily add what you ate and save your favorite foods so you can easily add them the next day. Right now, it only keeps track of one day and then you have to clear it to start again the next day. Additionally, the activity points don’t deduct from your used points. They also don’t account for Flex Points. You have to work them into your daily points total.

Park East, Inc. have the following updates in the works:

• Weekly point recording
• Ability to export your log to formatted email
• Addition of other fields, such as “oil”
• Flex points (which will deduct from)
• Exercise points (also will deduct)

I have seen other programs like this for the Palm format that have been served cease and desist papers by Weight Watchers in the past, so hurry and download iPoint before it mysteriously disappears.

I’ve heard it time and time again from other people. They don’t want to journal because it’s too much work. I have felt the same thing. The idea of writing down everything I put into my mouth just feels like such a burden.

Honestly, it EASY. Keeping a food journal is the EASY part. It’s the constant deciding what to eat that will be healthy that is the taxing part of keeping a food journal. It’s the decision-making process that makes it difficult. According to this article by On Amir from Scientific American, they have studied this phenomenon.

• Tough Choices: How Making Decisions Tires Your Brain: Scientific American

They say that making decisions is tiring and a burden.

These experimental insights suggest that the brain works like a muscle: when depleted, it becomes less effective.

That’s all well and good, but what do we do with this knowledge. According to Mr. Amir,

[W]e should take this knowledge into account when making decisions. If we’ve just spent lots of time focusing on a particular task, exercising self-control or even if we’ve just made lots of seemingly minor choices, then we probably shouldn’t try to make a major decision. These deleterious carryover effects from a tired brain may have a strong shaping effect on our lives.

So, how can we make dieting easier for ourselves? We are bombarded with choices every day that deplete our decision-making abilities. Here are a couple of tips:

• Limit your choices: When you go grocery shopping, shop at a smaller store. Instead of choosing between seven brands of canned tomatoes, you will only have two. You can choose to buy only a certain brand of canned food. You can choose to only shop within a certain radius of your home. That’s why people who eat the Subway diet, The Flavor Point diet, and even the grapefruit diet can be successful. Any arbitrary limitation will help you make decisions easier and save your brain power for the most important decisions.

• Make the decision now: Group all your decision-making into one session and then rest afterward. That’s why menu planning can be helpful. Instead of an endless stream of decisions all day long, you can make all of your food decisions once a week and then follow the plan religiously. This might be taxing the one day of the week when you plan your menu, but the rest of the week leaves your decision-making skills for the really important things like work and family. If you would like a weekly planning spreadsheet, you can download one here: Weekly Meal Planning Spreadsheet

• Make rules set in stone: If you set up rules for yourself that you are NEVER allowed to break, then there is no decision to be made. That’s why a lot of people have success with diets that have “good” foods and “bad” foods. It’s the whole reason The Core Plan on Weight Watchers and veganism works. When you have a strict limitation on your food, you don’t have many decisions to make. You just follow the rules and eat from your small selection of food. If, however, you are constantly deciding whether to eat from your good list or bad list, then you’ve lost all benefits of this one. The rules have to be set in stone.

• Limit other decisions in your life: If you are unwilling to make a weekly plan for your food or limit your food choices, you can limit the OTHER choices in your life. Make the rest of your life simple and dieting will be easier.

In the end, the constant barrage of decisions is tiring. When you limit your decisions, food journaling and eating healthy won’t seem like such a chore.

If you have decided that you are willing to journal your food every day, here is a form to get you started: Weight Watchers Weekly Tracking 5 1/2″ X 8 1/2″ – Requires Microsoft Excel

This postcard from PostSecret on MySpace reminded me of my own secret.

When I used to go to Krispy Kreme on a regular basis, I used to bring in a paper with all the donuts that I wanted listed on it. Then when I went in, I would read them off as if I was picking up the donuts for a whole office of people instead of just for me. Of course, I did this because I wasn’t willing to go in EVERY day and order two donuts for myself.

Ironically, if I watch my points, I can work in two donuts a day and STILL lose weight.

Even worse, sometimes I’d end up eating more than just one or two donuts a day because the box full was siting there.

If I could somehow extract all the shame from my eating habits, I think I’d be a thinner person.

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.

Friday night, I was up late. Not just normal late, but LATE late. I had eaten dinner at 7pm, so by 2am I felt like I was STARVING. No wonder, since it had been SEVEN hours since I had last eaten. I was out of points for the day.

What should I have done?

What I did do was go to Del Taco, one of the few places still open at two in the morning, and had a four point taco. I counted it on my eating journal as breakfast for Saturday morning. I went to bed a half hour later, woke up so late that I missed breakfast and my next meal was lunch. I technically didn’t lie on my journal, but I felt like I cheated. I was out of points, so I counted those points toward the next day.

But it WAS the next day!

My watch said it was August 2nd. At midnight, Cinderella’s finery turns back into the bland and I can count that taco as breakfast, right?

Now before you go all “late night eating is BAD for you” on me, do a Google Search for “Diet Myth Eat After 7” and plenty of experts will tell you that your metabolism doesn’t just shut down at 7:01 pm. They say that in the end, what counts is energy in and energy out. I don’t know if I believe that, but I DON’T believe that eating after 7pm will make me fat, because I have lost a lot of weight not heeding that advice.

This is an issue of score-keeping. When I run out of points for one day, is it acceptable to start working on the points target for the next day? Why do I feel like I have to sleep eight hours before I am allowed to start eating for the next day? What if I didn’t sleep at all? Should I starve until I am allowed slumber?

In the case of last Friday night, it worked out because I was just having my breakfast before I slept, but if I run out of points at 3pm, I really don’t think counting the full meal at 7pm as breakfast for the next day is the way to go. Where do I draw the line? Is it really the midnight hour?

What about you? How do deal with situations like these?

One of the benefits of living in Salt Lake City is that it’s the kind of place that attracts people like nakedjen. She moved here last January and after seven months in the town, she knows it better than I do now. I was enjoying the joy of her company at the Geek Dinner last Thursday when she told me about eating locally. She posted her entry about her thoughts here:

• nakedjen: Eating Local, Eating Organic, Eating Well

This is the crux of her challenge to us all:

I want each of us to really think about the food on our plates. To be mindful of the food that we’re eating. To forge a relationship with it. To understand where it has come from, how far it traveled, the energy it took for it to get from the farm to our belly. Do you know that if each and every one of us ate just one local meal a week, just one, a meal that is purchased and prepared from foods found in season and locally, we would save, as a country, 1.1 million barrels of oil per week?

Could I do it? Could I eat locally grown food for just ONE meal a week? Sure, I could! That one meal a week would cost me a fraction more than it would have at the grocery store, but isn’t that worth saving THAT much in oil?

How would I do it? Well, in the summer, it’s easy. Our city had a local farmers’ market every Saturday where I could get locally grown food. In the winter, however, I would have to rely on Liberty Market, a small store that specializes in local and organic food. Depending on your town’s size, this may or may not be an option for you. Of course, the more rural you are, the more likely you’ll have access to people who grow food for a living.

Can you do it? Can you eat one locally grown meal a week?

The July 17th New England Journal of Medicine has published a report that followed three groups of dieters for two years. They compared low fat, The Mediterranean Diet and Atkins (low carbohydrate). You can see the full results here:

• NEJM — Weight Loss with a Low-Carbohydrate, Mediterranean, or Low-Fat Diet

The overall weight changes among the 322 participants at 24 months were:

• –2.9 kg for the low-fat group
• –4.4 kg for the Mediterranean-diet group
• –4.7 kg for the low-carbohydrate group

A graph of the weight loss for each group is here:

One note about the study is that while the low-fat and Mediterranean diet followers had a restricted caloric intake of 1500 to 1800 calories a day, the low-carbohydrate group were not restricted in their calories.

I find it difficult to maintain a low-carb diet, but I know I feel better when I follow one. Here is a little incentive for me to monitor my sugar and carbohydrate intake.

Via: Low-Carb Comes Out Ahead in Diet Comparison