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

I knew that there couldn’t possibly be actual pumpkin in Pumpkin Spice Lattes and Pumpkin M&M’s, but this video made that stunningly clear to me.

So, pumpkin flavoring is made from a concoction of chemicals that mimic the taste and mouth feel of pumpkin. Even the option that I suggested in my entry, Beware The Pumpkin Spice Latte, is the same concoction of chemicals, they’re just provided in a sugar-free format that is much less expensive than the coffees at Starbucks.

More importantly, is the manipulation from the food industry with LTOs. Limited Time Offers are foods that are only available certain times of the year. This is NOT a new thing. Cadbury Creme Eggs and Peeps during Easter, fruitcake during Christmas and even turkey and stuffing during Thanksgiving are all foods that are only available for limited times. How many times have I overeaten because I thought that I wouldn’t be able to get that food again for a year?

Too many to count.

The problem is PERCEIVED SCARCITY. We could cook a turkey any time, but we only have them at Thanksgiving. We could buy that Torani Pumpkin Pie Sugar Free Syrup for our coffee at any time, but Starbucks has somehow convinced us that it is only available in the fall. None of these things are actually scarce. The food manufacturers use marketing and self-imposed limits to make them scarce and even create hoarding.

DON’T FALL FOR IT!

There is no pumpkin in pumpkin spiced lattes. There is also no limit in Limited Time Offers. Cans of pumpkin are available ALL YEAR LONG. Don’t fall for their marketing techniques. Make yourself a REAL pumpkin pie with this recipe and you’ll be out only 170 calories, as opposed to the 510 calories in a Starbucks Venti.

• Crustless Pumpkin Pie

Wouldn’t you rather have the REAL thing? Then don’t settle for the chemical concoction.

I absolutely adore this picture I saw on Facebook the other day:

It reads:

this carrot bout to drop the healthiest verse of all time

I want to see the animated version of this!

Of course, a quick YouTube search for rapping carrot brought me this:

And this…

I have never in my life loved a vegetable enough to write a rap about it. I don’t think I’ve loved any food enough to write a rap about it. I was too busy eating to be that creative.

Whenever we talk about self-esteem or learning to love ourselves, we never talk about one of the most POWERFUL ways to show it. My whole life, I’ve felt that the way you tell if someone loves you is by their ACTIONS, not their words. If a guy said he loved me and then insulted me or tried to get me to do things I wasn’t comfortable doing, I instantly knew that he didn’t love me. I got this from an old quote:

What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

This holds true for ourselves. We can do all the self-esteem exercises in the world. We can meditate and recite our affirmations all day long, but if we don’t DO what we say, then we are LIARS. The only way to prove to ourselves that we actually love ourselves is by DOING loving things.

• Eating healthy food
• Giving ourselves exercise
• Pampering ourselves with a shower
• Grooming ourselves to look beautiful
• Wearing mended and clean clothes
• Surrounding ourselves with people who are NICE to us
• Making our minds better by learning new things
• Entertaining ourselves with uplifting diversion

You don’t show that you love yourself by repeating the phrase, “I love and cherish my unique self.” You SHOW it by taking good care of yourself. Start SHOWING yourself that you love you today and eventually you will notice that you no longer have a low self-esteem. And, more importantly, when you HATE yourself, do these things anyway. It’s the only way out of your well of self-hatred.

Original image via: Hi., Perfection.

I saw this picture on naive orleanss — buns-and-guns: I did a thing and I thought, “How clever!”

It reads:

I did a thing.

This reminds me of my Easy Meals that I did back in 2008:

• Starling Fitness – Easy Meals: Mexi-Beans
• Starling Fitness – Easy Meals: Italian Beans
• Starling Fitness – Easy Meals: Refried Beans

Each recipe makes three meals and shows you all the easy ingredients. I haven’t done this for a long time because I got sick of eating these meals over and over. Part of keeping the dopamine response to healthy food fresh is varying your meals. I haven’t eaten these meals in so long that they look good to me again. It’s funny how we need to be reminded over and over things we’ve already learned.

Via: Breathe Happiness

I found this banner on Pinterest the other day.

It reads:

Fruit is fast food

It’s true. It’s really easy to grab an apple, pear or nectarine on your way out the door. The only problem with this idea is if you didn’t BUY the fruit the last time you went grocery shopping. Make sure you put fruit and easily edible veggies (like baby carrots or pre-cut celery) on your grocery list.

You can’t eat what isn’t there.

My friend, Roland, and his wife did some service for the local boy scouts and manned the Tiger Ear Booth to help them earn money. He wrote about it here: Magic Number: 7 — Eastern Idaho State Fair | Roland K. Smith’s Weblog

The Tiger Ear Booth was definitely a once-in-a-lifetime event (that is, you only want to do it once). Both Nina and I spent the four hours shaking cinnamon-sugar on the Tiger Ears. About a half-hour before we were finished, I finally found a stool to sit on … but by then my feet were definitely done for the day.

Tiger Ears are some kind of a scone with the dough squashed flat then fried in a deep-fat fryer, sprinkled liberally with cinnamon-sugar, and sold for $3.00 (extra honey-butter 50¢). The squishing process takes place in a hydraulic press with blobs of dough soaked in oil, then fried in oil. It is an oily, greasy process. By the time we were finished, I was in no mood to eat one!

At the Utah State Fair, they call them Elephant Ears. I have never in my life been in “no mood to eat one.” In fact, the ONLY reason I went to the fair for the last seven years was to binge on the food there. The fire-roasted corn, funnel cakes, fried Twinkies, fried Oreos, elephant ears, huge corn dogs and anything else sold to me out of a little traveling food trailer. I didn’t go to pet the goats. I didn’t go to look at the booths. I went for the food.

I didn’t go to the Utah State Fair this year. It lasts until the 14th, but I just have no desire to go to it. Despite listing all my previous binge foods from the fair, I don’t really don’t want to binge. Could it be that for the FIRST time in my life that I’m in “no mood to eat one?”

Images via:

• Wikipedia – Fried Dough
• Century Industries – Elephant Ear Concession Trailer Gallery

I haven’t played Animal Crossing in quite a while, so when I saw Tank, I was so happy to help him. He said he was hungry and wanted some fruit, so I grabbed him a perfect pear. Perfect pears are worth A LOT of money in the game, but I have so much money that I don’t really care and I really missed Tank, so I gave him one. After he ate it, this was his reaction:

He said,

I feel like I’m not worthy of something so delicious!

Then he cried profusely.

It felt so sad to me to think that Tank didn’t feel like he was worthy of a perfect pear, but honestly, I have felt the same thing. When I am deep into the facet of my disease that makes me limit my food too much and exercise too much, I have felt unworthy of delicious food. I truly believe that feeling of unworthiness is an aspect of my eating disorder. It’s why I restrict my eating so much.

At the same time, it is also the reason I binge. I may feel unworthy of such delicious food, so when it is offered to me, I eat it to prove that I’m worth it. I’ve been a good girl, so I DESERVE this food, don’t I? People who are good get to eat delicious food, right? So, I must be good if I eat it, aren’t I?

The truth is, I am worthy. I AM a good person. I don’t need to eat a perfect pear or any other food to prove that I am worthy. I don’t need to refrain from eating a perfect pear or any other food to make myself worthy. In fact, whether I FEEL worthy or not is irrelevant. I might ALWAYS feel unworthy, but that doesn’t change the fact that I am worthy.

I read the headline to this old Sara Lee advertisement and I thought to myself, “THAT! That was my problem for so long!”

It reads:

How to start and end your day with love.

Pecan Morning Love

Strawberry French Cheesecake Evening Love

That’s what we all want, right? We want to start our day with love and we want to end our day with love. The only problem with this ad is the idea that it comes in a pie tin.

I’m not villianizing pie and coffee cake, mind you. You can work a slice of pie into your diet as well as any other high calorie food. I’m just pointing out that sweets and desserts are NOT love.

Love is a hug. Love is a kind smile when we make a mistake. Love is a calm and loving response when we have a bad day. Love is NOT food.

Oh, but it can FEEL like it sometimes. That’s why it fools us. Sometimes love MAKES a pie, but it’s the person who made the treat, NOT the treat that is the expression of love. Don’t get fooled.

Or maybe love isn’t around, but there’s pie and when I eat it, it ALMOST feels like love. Yeah, that dopamine response is good, but honestly it’s not THAT good. It’s close, but a hug is much, much better.

So marketing is doing what marketing does best and fools me into thinking that a Sara Lee coffee cake IS love, but they are wrong. So how can I do it? How do I start and end my day with love?

GIVE IT AWAY.

If you want more love in your life, you MUST be the first one to give it away.

I know it sucks that you have to put your heart out there on the line. I know that as much love as you give out to strangers, lovers and acquaintances will never come back to you in the same form or quantity. But it WILL come back. All you need to do is honestly love others and SHOW them it every morning and every night and you can start and end your day with love. No pie required…

Images via

• Vintage breakfast – Found in Mom’s Basement
• Best Love Quotes: Love isn’t love ‘Til you give it away

Part of the reason I have enjoyed so much success with Overeaters Anonymous is because of their tools of recovery. You can read more about them here:

• Tools Of Recovery – Overeaters Anonymous

Before I ever came to OA, I had a plan of eating, but the only problem was I couldn’t follow it. Having a plan of eating is essential to recovery, but it’s the one that most of us already have. It’s something that we all have been desperately trying to follow for years until the day when we realize that we just can’t do it.

Ironically, the plan of eating is what so many newcomers to OA are looking for. “What am I supposed to eat?” “What constitutes ‘abstinence?'” I remember when I first attended an OA meeting in the conference room of the physical rehabilitation hospital, I stayed after the meeting expecting the nice lady to tell me exactly what I had to eat and how to measure whether I was abstinent or not. I was very frustrated when she told me that I had to decide.

They’re all a buncha hippies.

That’s what I told Mike. They just let anyone decide what to eat to lose weight. That doesn’t make any sense. But honestly, it was EXACTLY what I needed. We have all starved ourselves. We have all jumped on those strange food bandwagons that promised us svelte figures if we only eat certain foods or swallow magic concoctions. We have been doing this for so long that we KNOW (with a capital K), what we should eat to keep healthy, strong and to lose weight. We know WHAT to do. We just couldn’t do it.

So, I showed up at OA knowing to put my weight into my Lose It! app every day and let it tell me how many calories to eat. I showed up at OA knowing that if I eat every two and a half hours, I was less likely to binge and more able to STOP eating after each tiny meal. I KNEW how to eat to lose weight, but following any program was a struggle. The plan of eating was something I could always follow for a week or two (until the end, when I couldn’t even follow it for a few hours), but I was white-knuckling it. It was sheer will-power that kept me on a plan of eating. The OTHER tools helped me stay on the plan.

Don’t get me wrong. A plan of eating is important. Without it, we would slip into day-long binges just like before. All of us know how we SHOULD be eating. We came to OA because we couldn’t do it.

Overeaters Anonymous does not endorse anything on this entry or blog.

Image via: What should I eat? :33 by Seirenn on deviantART

I have been on a refeeding schedule for several months now. I talked about the idea here:

• Starling Fitness – Refeeding: A Treatment for Obesity?

Back then, I wrote:

After months of not being able to follow my plan for more than an hour each morning, I finally have a tiny modicum of success. It appears that refeeding works for anorexics and binge eaters alike.

I now have months of success following my plan of eating and I can honestly say that it has helped me. I’ve released 45 pounds over the last six months, taking life one healthy meal at a time.

My FitBit goes off at 7:30 am for breakfast, 10 am for snack, 12:30 pm for lunch, 3 pm for a snack, 5:30 pm for dinner and finally 8 pm for a snack. It’s a good schedule for me and I can always tell myself if I’m hungry that I can eat again when my alarm goes off. It’s never more than two and a half hours away.

My riskiest behavior is when I skip meals. My FitBit will go off and I’ll think, “I’m not hungry right now. I’ll just skip this one.” I’m usually okay if I just skip one alarm, but if I skip two, I’m too hungry and find that I’m tempted to eat way too much.

And then the intrusive food thought came…

Mike and I were going to Las Vegas last week for our anniversary. I wanted to eat in Vegas those foods that are just not available at home. That’s just fine and can be fit into my eating plan, but the bad thought came to me, “I’ll just skip breakfast and morning snack and then I’ll have more calories for lunch and dinner in Vegas.”

This, my friends, is THE definition of my binge-eating disorder. That single thought is what has undermined me time and time again. It’s the thought that triggers months of bingeing. It’s the thought that brought me to the weight of 231.8 pounds at my highest. I have gotten down to 185 pounds eating when the alarms go off, so I’m not about to sacrifice that success.

There is a dual benefit to my silent refeeding alarms on my FitBit. Not only do they keep me from eating between meals, preventing me from bingeing all day long. They also keep me from starving myself. They tell me to eat, even when I think that I can go without food. As long as I treat those alarms like a command instead of a recommendation, I am able to keep my food intake within my caloric restrictions. Paradoxically, by forcing myself to eat every two and a half hours, I eat LESS.

The Vegas trip, by the way, was a complete success. I realized that I was having an unhealthy food thought and ate when the alarm told me to. It went off at 7:30 am and I ate a small and healthy breakfast. It went off again at 10 am and I had a snack. It went off a third time at 12:30 pm and we still weren’t in Vegas, so I had another snack. Even though I wanted to “save” those calories for Vegas, I ate something. When we rolled into town, my 3 pm alarm was going off, so we had lunch then at the place we wanted. Because I wasn’t starving, I was able to share a dish with Mike, even though there was some weird ordering mistake and they gave us TWO entrees instead of one.

If I hadn’t had my breakfast and those two snacks, I would have eaten that second entree all by myself instead of sharing one with Mike. When you look at the calories, I would have eaten MORE if I skipped breakfast and snacks. Instead, we got a to-go box and put that extra entree in the hotel fridge and I ate it for breakfast over the next two days.

If you are having a hard time keeping to your plan of eating or if you feel like you are hungry ALL the time, try setting alarms for yourself every two and a half hours. EAT when they go off, without question. It doesn’t have to be a lot of food. It can be a snack as small as five almonds or a few carrot sticks, but EAT. And then, DON’T eat between the alarms. If you still feel hungry, tell yourself, “I can eat when the next alarm goes off.” It’s only two and a half hours away. You can do anything for two hours. You will be SHOCKED at how easily you are able to stay within your caloric restrictions.

Related entries:

• Starling Fitness – My Higher Power: Fitbit Flex
• Starling Fitness – Fitbit Flex: A Long Cry From BodyBugg
• Starling Fitness – Refeeding: A Treatment for Obesity?