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

Skateboarding has been around for over thirty years. Longboards are skateboards that are bigger and react more like a surfboard on the road. These are both great exercise and give you an awesome lower body workout. If you want to add an upper body workout, now there is Land Paddling.

Kahuna Creations has invented the Big Stick, which allows you to paddle along the street on your longboard. You can still move using your feet like a skateboard, but the Big Stick gives you the option of working your arms, back, abs and chest.

Here is a video showing it in motion:

For all of you out there who are financially challenged, you can probably create something like this on your own. As soon as the snow melts off the sidewalks and the streets, you can get out there and enjoy a whole new way to exercise!

Last year, I wrote a weekly plan to get you on track for a healthy and active life. If you followed the plan last week, then here is the link to this week’s plan:

• Starling Fitness » New Year’s Resolutions: Week 6

The Short Version:

• Reduce your daily caloric average by another 100 calories. Write down EVERYTHING you eat including measurements and calories.
• Choose lean protein and whole grains.
• Save enough calories to eat two teaspoons of healthy oil each day.
• Avoid the feeling of deprivation by finding non-food activities to nurture yourself EVERY day.
• Eat five servings of fruits and vegetables every day.
• Save enough calories to eat two servings of dairy products each day.
• Increase your mileage. Walk 1.75 miles five days this week. You are allowed to increase your speed to the point of sweating, but if you are sore the next day you MUST go slow again.
• Give yourself kudos for coming this far.

Last year, I wrote a weekly plan to get you on track for a healthy and active life. If you followed the plan last week, then here is the link to this week’s plan:

• Starling Fitness » New Year’s Resolutions: Week 5

The Short Version:

• Reduce your daily caloric average by another 100 calories. Write down EVERYTHING you eat including measurements and calories.
• Save enough calories to eat one teaspoon of healthy oil each day.
• Avoid the feeling of deprivation by finding non-food activities to nurture yourself EVERY day.
• Eat five servings of fruits and vegetables every day.
• Save enough calories to eat two servings of dairy products each day.
• Increase your mileage. Walk 1.50 miles five days this week. You are allowed to increase your speed to the point of sweating, but if you are sore the next day you MUST go slow again.
• Give yourself kudos for coming this far.

The biggest asset you can do for yourself is to make exercise a habit. One way to do this is to choose a trigger. Choose something that you do EVERY day without fail. Here are a few ideas:

• Waking up.
• Brushing your teeth.
• Eating breakfast.
• Going to lunch.
• Coming home from work.
• Eating dinner.
• Going to bed.

When I worked as a secretary, our office used to be right next to a gym in town. Instead of taking an hour to eat, I could run over to the gym and fit in a workout at lunchtime. Afterward, I just ate my lunch at my desk. Taking my lunch break was the PERFECT trigger for me because I was required by law to take a break, so I did it every day.

If you choose a trigger, then every time you do it, it will remind you to exercise as well. Another good trigger for me used to be waking up. When I was in college, I would run in the morning first thing after waking up. The first two weeks, I slept in my exercise clothes just to remind me to exercise. That worked for a long time and even now, I sometimes feel the urge to exercise when I first wake up. It was a trigger that still works even now.

What about you? Choose a trigger that you can correlate with your exercise and state it here in the comments. Now that you think about it, you might ALREADY have a trigger for your exercise, but you just haven’t noticed it yet. Tell me what you do to remember your exercise every day.

Bowling isn’t the most physically grueling sport around, but it beats watching television for burning calories. Next time you’re trying to think of what to do with your evening, head to the nearest bowling alley for a night of light activity rather than zoning out in a movie theater for a couple of hours. I wouldn’t count an evening bowling as my exercise for the day, but it’s a great way to get up out of your chair and do something a little active.

If you know nothing about bowling, you can find out more here:

• Bowling – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

When I was a kid, they used to show commercials. People would be sitting, looking bored. One of them would say, “What should we do?” Suddenly, a bowling ball would appear in their hands and a voice-over would sing, “Let’s go bowling!” They showed these commercials so often when we were kids that whenever anyone says the words, “What should we do,” I immediately want to sing, “Let’s go bowling!” No one ever gets the joke and I can’t find the commercial on YouTube, so it must have been a local thing.

Next time you’re feeling bored, imagine that huge bowling ball appearing magically in your hand and choose something ACTIVE for your activity.

Last year, I wrote a weekly plan to get you on track for a healthy and active life. If you followed the plan last week, then here is the link to this week’s plan:

• Starling Fitness » New Year’s Resolutions: Week 4

The Short Version:

• Reduce your daily caloric average by another 100 calories. Write down EVERYTHING you eat including measurements and calories.
• Avoid the feeling of deprivation by finding non-food activities to nurture yourself EVERY day.
• Eat four or five servings of vegetables every day.
• Save enough calories to eat two servings of dairy products each day.
• Increase your mileage. Walk 1.25 miles five days this week. You are allowed to increase your speed to the point of sweating, but if you are sore the next day you MUST go slow again.
• Give yourself kudos for coming this far.

Last year, I wrote a weekly plan to get you on track for a healthy and active life. If you followed the plan last week, then here is the link to this week’s plan:

• Starling Fitness » New Year’s Resolutions: Week 3

The Short Version:

• Reduce your daily caloric average by 100 calories. Write down EVERYTHING you eat including measurements and calories.
• Avoid the feeling of deprivation by finding non-food activities to nurture yourself.
• Eat three or four servings of vegetables every day.
• Save enough calories to eat one serving of dairy products each day.
• Increase your mileage. Walk 1.0 miles five days this week. You are allowed to increase your speed to the point of sweating, but if you are sore the next day you MUST go slow again.
• Give yourself kudos for coming this far.

If you like to log your runs outside, you might want to look into Trailrunner.

• TrailRunner – Mac OS X route planning and journaling for iPhone, Nike+ SportBand, Garmin ForeRunner GPS

It’s a software program that works with the iPhone, Nike+, and the Garmin ForeRunner to log and map your workouts. Since I use the Nike+ on all my runs, I used it to download all my runs for the last two and a half years. Of course, the Nike+ doesn’t have a GPS, so it can’t show any maps of those runs. If I download iTrail, on my iPhone, however, it will log my runs AND map them on the screen.

Personally, I like the desktop application that works with my iPhone. It’s like they took the online capabilities of RunKeeper and let ME control them on my desktop instead of making me log onto a website.

The biggest problem with both TrailRunner AND Runkeeper is the lack of interactivity. The killer feature of Nike+ is that I can compete with other people. There are thousands of people online at Nike’s website that I can run races against. When I’m trying to rack up the miles on my Nike+, I do it to kick somebody’s butt. That feature of the Nike+ makes all of these other applications pale in comparison.

I have been downloading Podrunner onto my iPod for a LONG time and I’m surprised that I have never talked about it here. You don’t have to subscribe using iTunes. You can download the latest podcast here:

• Podrunner: – Free Workout Music
• Podrunner on iTunes

Running is much easier when I have the right music. Podrunner always gives me music with a thumping bass that makes keeping active easy. I hate it when I have my iPod on shuffle and a slow, mellow song comes on, so a mix like Podrunner lets me exercise without having to worry about skipping songs. I just start it playing and I have an hour of run-friendly music to keep me company.

Last year, I wrote a weekly plan to get you on track for a healthy and active life. If you followed the plan last week, then here is the link to this week’s plan:

• Starling Fitness » New Year’s Resolutions: Week 2

The Short Version:

• DO NOT change your eating regime at all, but write down EVERYTHING you eat, including the measurements (i.e. 1 cup of rice) and calories.
• You are allowed to ADD two or three servings of vegetables every day, but you are not allowed to restrict anything in your diet.
• Increase your mileage. Walk 0.75 miles five days this week. You are allowed to increase your speed to the point of sweating, but if you are sore the next day you MUST go slow again.
• Give yourself kudos for coming this far.