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

Last week, Angela commented on my The Weight Loss Testimonial entry:

There was a madtv scetch once about “eat less and move more.” And this whiny person saying that was too complicated and couldn’t they just take a pill or have surgery? And the guy responds, “you’d rather have dangerous, invasive surgery than just eat less and move more???” That one always sticks with me as I’m trying to do this on my own.

I had never seen or heard of that sketch before, so I looked it up:

Angela is RIGHT! This is such a powerful lesson to me. Every time I get tempted by some diet pill that promises a miracle, I’m going to remember this lady.

Lady: Isn’t there a pill I could take?
Announcer: Haven’t you taken you taken pills for dieting?
Lady: I sure have…
Announcer: And how’d that work out?
Lady: I’m fatter now than I’ve ever been!
Announcer: You want to lose weight, right?
Lady: Absolutely!
Announcer: Then all you have to do is eat less and move more.

I have heard the phrase, “Eat Less Move More” so many times that I’m pretty sick of it, but it’s true. That’s the only thing I need to do to get to my goal weight. It’s the DOING it that’s hard.

In what has become a silly extension of the worry about the environment, everyone is asking whether riding your bike to work is better for the environment than driving your car.

• Roger Kramer Cycling: The Blog Page

The study Nye speaks was written by Karl T. Ulrich of The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and it’s titled “The Environment Paradox of Bicycling” (PDF file). In short, the study suggests there is an immediate energy savings by bicycle riding, since a cyclist is up to nine times more energy efficient than a single-occupant car. However, the study suggests cyclists increase their longevity by 10.6 days for every year of cycling. Because of that, they consume more energy over their lifetimes, thus doing more harm to the environment.

Which is more important: human life or the environment? If you really believe that the environment is more important than your own life, then you should commit suicide now. There are none of us with a carbon footprint of zero.

If it’s at all possible for you to ride your bike to work, you should DO it! It will help the environment in the short run and keep you alive in the long run. I’ve written about this in the past:

• Starling Fitness » Riding My Bike To Work

• Starling Fitness » Save Gas By Walking or Riding Your Bike

• Starling Fitness » How To Ride Your Bike To Work

• Starling Fitness » PostSecret: Bike To Work

• Starling Fitness » You ARE Traffic

Last week, Quadrathon ran a 50 kilometer race through a canyon. He wrote all about it here:

• Quadrathon: PCTR Sycamore Canyon 50k

Not only did he run over 31 miles for one race, he filmed video while he did it! You can watch him run down Pt Mugu here:

THIS is why I don’t film running videos. I can’t get them to be steady enough to be watchable for an hour. This short video from Quadrathon is SO inspirational to me, though!

Next time you’re having a hard time getting through your workout, remember Quadrathon. If he can run a 31 mile race up and down mountains, you can finish the last ten minutes of your hard workout!

When I saw this postcard from PostSecret, I nodded my head and said, “I KNEW it!”

It reads:

I feel superior when my machine
is set at a faster pace.

There have been many times when I’ve been at the gym and I’ve noticed the person next to me looking at my treadmill display. Secretly, I’ve always worried that they were looking at how fast I was running and judging me. NOW, I know that there is at least one person out there who DOES.

I try to tell myself that they are just wondering why their machine is showing a heart rate. Since I wear a heart rate monitor that works with the treadmills at the gym, there is usually crosstalk and my heart rate displays not only on my machine, but also the two treadmills on either side of mine. I try to tell myself that even though they are running faster than I am, my heart rate is EXACTLY where it’s supposed to be and focus on that.

As much as we forget about it, exercising at the gym is a group event. You may not know the people next to you on the treadmill, but we are all there together, sweating it out. Next time you think that someone is looking at your treadmill display, don’t assume they are judging you. Maybe they just feel self-conscious because their heart rate monitor is announcing their heart rate on your machine.

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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.

The excellent Wendy Bumgardner at About.com’s walking blog has a great list of essential gear for walking safely.

• About.com: 10 Walking Essentials by Wendy Bumgardner

Walking is the least gear-intensive sport around, but take her list to heart. You don’t want to find yourself stranded with chaffed inner thighs. You don’t have to spend much money, but you should follow her advice.

Here’s a quickie list:

1. Layered Clothing
2. Walking Shoes
3. Walking Socks
4. Hat
5. Pack
6. Water
7. Sunscreen
8. Route Plan
9. ID and Money
10. Keys

Wendy goes into detail about each item on her list, so click on over to About.com to read all about it!

When Budget Gadgets asked me if I was willing to review their Calorie Heart Pulse Watch, I didn’t have high expectations. I have loved my Nike Imara Heart Rate Monitor for over three years now and I doubted that anything could be good enough to take its place.

I was impressed with how good it looked. It’s hard to make a digital watch attractive, but the Calorie Heart Pulse Watch meets the bare minimum. It shows the date and time on the face of the watch, so that’s a plus.

The pulse is taken with a sensor on the right of the watch. You don’t need to wear a strap around your chest to get a reading.

This is good because you don’t have to worry about two pieces of equipment, but it is bad because your heart rate isn’t constantly monitored. You can only check your heart rate when you go to that mode.

Modes

The Mode button toggles between the Time/Date, Alarm, Chronograph, Exercise, and Pulse modes. The Up button in the Time/Date mode toggles between standard time and 24-hour time.

Setting Time/Date

In the Time/Date mode, hold down the Set button for two seconds. The year will flash on the screen. Use the Up button to change the year. When you get to the correct year, push the Set button once to get to the next item. Do the same for Month, Day, Hour, Minute, Birth Year, Birth Month, Birth Day, Sex, and Weight. In the weight section, the Reset button will toggle between Pounds and Kilos.

Unfortunately, there is only one direction when setting this watch, so if you miss your weight, you’ll have to scroll all the way up to 500 pounds before it wraps around to the beginning again. I’m glad they are accommodating for all sizes of humans, but I wish they had programmed a Down button in addition to an Up button.

Alarm

Set the Alarm just like you set the time and date. In Alarm mode, the Up button turns the alarm on and off. The reset button turns the hourly chime on and off.

Chronograph

Chronograph mode is a standard stopwatch. Press the Up button to start and stop it. Press the Reset button to bring it back to zero. If you change modes while the Chronograph is running, the timer will stop. You have to keep the watch in Chronograph mode the entire time you’re using the stopwatch feature. There is no lap feature on the Chronograph.

Exercise

Exercise mode is the mode you want to use if you want to know how many calories you burned during your workout. It works like a normal chronograph. To start it, press the Up button. To stop it, press the Up button again.

If you change modes while the Exercise clock is running, it will continue to keep timing your activity. It doesn’t stop itself like the Chronograph mode does. This allows you to go to the Pulse mode and check your heart rate in the middle of your workout.

The calorie calculation is an estimate of your caloric burn based on a single snapshot of your workout. It is NOT a running total like the Nike Imara keeps. To find out how many calories you’ve burned in your workout, you must press the Up button to stop the watch. Then you press the Set button once. You will see a heart on the screen. Press and hold the Set button for two seconds and it will ask to take your Pulse. Based on your heart rate, it will calculate the number of calories burned.

When I took a calorie reading right after a spurt of running, it gave me a HUGE number of calories burned that didn’t match my treadmill or my Nike Imara readings. When I took my heart rate after my cooldown, however, it was VERY close to the treadmill readings.

You can also estimate how hard you worked and use the watch to calculate your calories based on that. For instance, if you were unable to get the pulse meter to read, but you KNOW you ran as hard as you could run, then you can use the watch to estimate based on perceived effort. To do that, press the Up button to stop the watch. Then press the Set button. You’ll see a heart, when you press it again, it will show one intensity level, press again and it will show two intensity levels. You can choose your intensity from one to five. Once you’ve chosen your perceived level, then hold the Set button for two seconds and it will calculate your calories burned.

Pulse

The Pulse mode is a convenient way to take your pulse during your workout. Hold down the Set button for two seconds until it says, “Touch Sensor.” Then place your finger on the sensor on the right of the watch.

A LIGHT touch is all that is needed. If you press too hard, the watch won’t be able to get a reading. I was able to check my pulse while I was walking and during a light run, but it’s impossible to get a reading during a hard run. I would have to stop running and grab a pulse reading right after my sprints to get an accurate heart rate. I checked it against the readings on my Nike Imara and it was spot on 90% of the time.

The readings that you take in Pulse mode do not affect the calorie calculations in Exercise mode. You must stop the Exercise stopwatch and take a pulse reading within Exercise mode to get a calorie calculation.

Is It Worth It?

I’ll be honest. Learning to use this watch was HARD. The directions given with the watch were cryptic and written by a non-English speaker. I’m pretty good with watches, so I was able to figure out almost everything, but I would have never learned how to calculate calories without the sales staff from Budget Gadgets. Fortunately for you, I’ve done all the hard work for you, so all you need to do is read this review to learn how to use the watch.

Is it as good as my Nike Imara? No, it’s not, but it only costs $10.56 with free shipping. Compared to the 120 bucks I spent on the Nike, it’s a freakin’ bargain. It does 90% of what the Nike Imara does at 10% of the price. If you are looking for an inexpensive watch to time your workouts and tell you how many calories you burned, I haven’t seen a better watch.

Budget Gadgets gave me the watch for free to test out, but if I had to choose all over again, I would go for this watch instead of the Nike Imara. With the hundred bucks, I would have saved, I could buy a lot of different toys.

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Update: 04-06-09: The folks over at Budget Gadgets have given me a discount code for the readers of Starling Fitness. If you make an order, use the coupon code LM5OFF2 and get a 5% discount on your order! Isn’t that awesome!

When I saw this Library of Congress photo this morning, it reminded me that winter is almost over. We got a fresh layer of snow in Salt Lake City, yesterday, but I’m sure other parts of the world are enjoying much better weather. Fortunately, we can ice skate all year ’round with indoor ice skating rinks.

It’s almost spring and I haven’t gone ice skating… again.

Ice skating isn’t just a sport that athletes do on the ice. For inspiration, here is the workout regimen that allowed Johnny Weir to overcome devastating knee and ankle injuries and make it to the 2006 Olympics.

• Regimen: Olympic Figure Skater Johnny Weir’s Fitness Routine — New York Magazine

For me, ice skating is just a fun way to try to keep my butt off the ice, but the workouts that I do every week are what keep me strong enough to enjoy ice skating as a casual sport. Before the winter melts into spring, get yourself out to a skating rink to enjoy the last of the winter sports.

Stuart and his wife took a ride through Death Valley from Furnace Creek to Badwater.

• Quadrathon: Living it up in Death Valley!

Riding there was pretty simple, but the ride back was a little more difficult.

The way back was simply that, such is a ‘there and back’ route, this time we had a headwind that while being not overly strong was consistent and so we plodded on, not wanting to provide my wife with the fond memory of seeing my ass disappear over the horizon, I periodically circled back to ride with her and make sure she was ok. To her credit she muscled through the whole ride; although she is the first to admit that it was about 10 miles too long.

It’s always hard to do something active with a family member that is in better shape. Congrats to Stuart’s wife for muscling through the whole ride. The whole Internet is proud of you, babe!

Here is a video that Stuart shot while he was riding into Badwater:

THIS is why we exercise, so we can get to places that we wouldn’t be able to see without the power of our own two legs. The experience of seeing Death Valley in such an intimate way is far more powerful than steaming past it in a car.

By the way, Stuart has started a podcast documenting his training. You can get it here:

• target=_blank>Quadrathon Podcast (iTunes Link)

If you look at the iPhone app section on iTunes, you will find hundreds of fitness and health applications for your phone. Finding the good ones, however, can be a little difficult. A couple of weeks ago, I downloaded the Nike Women Training Club App (iTunes Link) because it was free.

You have to register on their website, which is a bunch of advertisement for their shoes, but after that, you can use your app on your iPhone to exercise.

• Nike Women – Home

Just like the iPump workouts, you are given a series of exercises to do. The videos show you how to do them and then you can check off whether you did them or not.

The best part is that they give you points for completing workouts. I’m a sucker for points and I love to see myself on the leaderboard. I don’t have any friends yet, so I can’t see how I am competing against others, but I LOVE collecting points for a workout.

You don’t need an iPhone to participate in this program. You can log in online, start a workout, invite friends, see the videos and even print out the workout to take to the gym or just to do at home. You don’t need a lot of equipment to do the workouts either. It would probably help to have some Nike training shoes, so that’s probably why Nike has invested in this program.

This app isn’t perfect, of course, Their idea of beginner workouts has some exercises that are FAR too difficult for a beginner. I really wish they would let me choose to do an easier exercise for less points. On one of the exercises, I modified it to an easier exercise and said that I did the “real” exercise. On another, I was just completely incapable of doing the workout, so I had to skip it.

I’d also like to see how I compare to other people. I don’t have very many friends who are willing to play with every new iPhone app that comes along, so I felt like the workouts were just me competing against myself. I would have loved to see how other people were doing, even if I didn’t know them. What’s the point of earning points if I can’t kick somebody’s butt?

On the whole, I like the Nike Women Training Club app for the iPhone. It has a wide variety of exercises to do, but most importantly, it was free. A free workout program that you can carry in your pocket with you at all times, is a great thing to have!

I’ve been reading up on The Gabriel Method and trying out his ideas to see if they work.

I’m still not finished reviewing his plan, but I have found ONE very important idea in everything he says. It is possible to trick your body into getting thin by giving it positive stress.

One of those positive stresses is exercise. We need to convince our bodies that they need to be thin so we can outrun the predators or fight them off if we’re cornered. In his book, Jon Gabriel talks about a time when he was riding his bike. A vicious dog started chasing him, nipping at his heels. It took over a minute to shake off the dog and after he had pedaled himself away, he felt more vitality than he had felt all day.

The idea is to envision that we are in danger during an interval workout. Whether we are running, walking or riding a bike, it can be difficult to imagine that a pack of dogs are at our heels when the treadmill is steadily keeping its pace. Even if I boot the speed up for a minute, it’s kind of hard to materialize blood thirsty animals at my heels.

Then I remembered that I live with one…

My dog, Sid, has never been vicious with me, but every day, he turns into an panicked lunatic. It happens Monday through Saturday between 9:30 am and 11:00 am. He starts barking and beating himself against the front door each morning the mail carrier delivers our mail.

So I set my audio recorder right next to the door and recorded his barking. After a couple of days’ worth of screeching at our postal worker, I was able to compile the recordings into an MP3 that is a little over a minute long. I’ve set this MP3, called Primal Reaction, as my Power Song on my Nike+. Every few minutes, I set the treadmill to the highest speed I can maintain for one minute, hold down the middle button for three seconds and the sound of five dogs barking at my heels gets my heart rate up faster than running on the treadmill could possibly do. It really sets off my flight response.

You can download it here:

• Primal Reaction – by Laura and Sid Moncur Right click the link and choose Save As…

I’ve also been exercising with Wii Boxing. Despite the cartoony feel of my opponents, I have found that if I truly pretend that the guy wants to hit me, I get that adrenaline surge from the workout. Wii Boxing was the only section of Wii Sports that got my heart rate into the cardio zone, but I can keep boxing opponents for a twenty minute workout and by the time I’m done I’m sweating, breathing heavily and all wound up. It truly sets off my fight response.

When it comes to fight or flight, we humans have been at the top of the food chain for so long that it’s only natural that our bodies have been convinced that it’s safer to be fat than thin. Especially since we go on diets and impose a famine on them every January, our bodies are trying to hold onto the fat so that we don’t starve to death. A few primal workouts every week just might be enough to convince our bodies that it’s more important to be fast and strong. Maybe we can trick our bodies into making us thin so we can run away or fight ourselves out of sticky situations. That’s the whole goal of a primal workout.