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

I’ve talked about treadmill desks before, but here is an awesome video that shows them in action:

There is a blog that talks about treadmill desks here:

• Treadmill Desk Blog

I have some entries about them here:

• Starling Fitness » A Whole Website About Treadputers!

• Starling Fitness » The Walking Desk Blog

• Starling Fitness » The Walkstation from Steelcase

A couple of years ago, I thought that I would encourage myself to be more active by having a standing desk, where I could type at my computer by standing up. The funny thing is, I avoided that desk and started working on my laptop on the couch instead. After months of this, Mike finally said, “Let’s face it, the standing desk is a failure.” He was right and I immediately reorganized my desk space to be more comfortable. Walking all day long might be healthy, but if I have any choice in the matter, I’m pretty sure I’d just avoid doing work at my treadmill desk and take the laptop to the kitchen table if I had to.

Video via: Coming Here Soon :: cowork utah

Treadmill Desk Blog via: The Treadmill Desk Blog

It’s a new year and I’m sure you’re all fired up to be healthy. Last year, I wrote a weekly plan to get you on track for a healthy and active life. You can get started here:

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

If you are ready to get going with your fitness and eating plan, start there and get started RIGHT!

If you just want the short version, here it is:

• DO NOT change your eating regime at all, but write down EVERYTHING you eat.
• You are allowed to ADD a serving or two of vegetables every day, but you are not allowed to restrict anything in your diet.
• Start exercise slowly. SLOW, SHORT and EASY. Whatever you were thinking of doing, cut it in half. Recommended exercise: Walk 0.5 miles five days this week.
• Check with your doctor.

People say the best workout partner is a dog. A big, energy-filled dog that needs a couple of walks a day is a good workout partner, but when it’s snowy and icy outside, your workout partner can pull you onto your butt.

I’ve been walking outside every day with NakedJen and her dogs, Stella and Buddha. They are huge black labs and when Buddha sees a cat, he could pull my arm right out of its socket trying to get it. Earlier this month, Jen started using the Halti Head Collars on both of the dogs and suddenly, I’m not so worried about getting pulled over. I could lead both Stella and Buddha with one hand if I had to. Now, when we walk over icy roads, I only have to worry about keeping myself stable instead of the double worry of slipping and/or being pulled over by the dog.

If you walk your dogs in the winter, a Halti might be the best exercise equipment you’ve ever bought. It will help keep you injury free and your walks with your dog will be MUCH easier.

As you’re enjoying the holiday today, remember to:

• Keep the meals light: No matter what is served at Christmas you can keep your meals light by choosing small portions. Don’t deny yourself the traditional foods that you only get once a year, but keep the portion size SMALL and you’ll give yourself a present this year.

• Put away the food after the meal: Leaving the food out is an invitation to graze all day long. After the meal is over, put the food away.

• Take a walk with your family after Christmas Dinner: You’ll burn off some of the calories and prevent food coma.

• Play in the snow with the kids: Christmas is the one time of the year when parents actually PLAY with their children. Make it an active time and throw some snowballs or built a snow fort in the backyard.

• Remember it’s a holiDAY, not a holiWEEK: Christmas is ONE day. Don’t continue celebrating with food after today is over.

As always, have a happy holiday and be here bright and early tomorrow morning for more inspiration!

While I was scouring old Seventeen Magazines for cool things, I found this workout routine in the May 1983 edition. It features one of their models, a pre-diva Whitney Houston.

Here she is showing off some leg workouts:

Here are some arm workouts:

The ab workouts are here:

Finally, take care of your skin. It’s interesting that “maximum protection” was SPF 15 back then:

I almost feel a little cheated by this article. When I read Seventeen Magazine, I used to think that the workouts that they showed me were actually performed by the models. I believed that the reason they looked good was because of the workout routines shown.

Call me naive, but I was sixteen years old. If you can’t be naive at sixteen, when can you? I’m glad that Seventeen Magazine has changed so much over the years. I loved the magazine that they used to be, but I really don’t think they were that healthy for me.

The idea for this Ab Solo is a cross between basketball and an Ab Roller.

I like the idea of the Ab Solo, but only as a way of kicking butt. I don’t really think it’s all that useful for sculpting abdominal muscles, but I’m pretty sure that little LCD display on the side could be used to count how many throws I did and see if I can kick my friend’s butt.

It looks like a game to me, but I can’t play it alone. I need to have a friend to play with me, which means that there needs to be two of those machines for it to be fun. At nearly two thousand bucks a pop, the likeliness of a gym buying two of them is pretty slim, so I can’t even imagine having fun with the Ab Solo.

Here is the official website for Ab Solo:

• Ab Solo – Rewriting Abdominal History

Via: AbSolo Combines an Ab Workout with Basketball into One Machine » CraziestGadgets.com

Anyone who has been reading Starling Fitness for any length of time knows how much I love exergaming. I love it when video games incorporate exercise. Four years ago, the idea of an active video game was pretty much relegated to Dance Dance Revolution and Yourself! Fitness. While DDR has flourished and is available at any game store in the country, Yourself Fitness kind of fell off the map. I’m so happy to see that Yourself Fitness has found a new life with Ubisoft:

• Ubisoft – Ubisoft Announce My Fitness Coachâ„¢

Ubisoft announced that it will publish My Fitness Coach™ exclusively for the Wii™ home video game system from Nintendo. Based on the original idea from ResponDesign’s Yourself! Fitness and Fitness! Lifestyle, My Fitness Coach will allow players to create, engage in and track their own fitness program. A virtual trainer, Maya, will guide players through more than 400 unique exercises, give valuable fitness advice and even provide a pep talk for extra motivation.

It looks like they have brought all the best of Yourself Fitness to the Nintendo Wii with My Fitness Coach. They still use exercises that work with a stability ball, step bench, and hand weights. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like it uses the Wii Fit Balance board:

You can choose various places to workout. This is the Alpine Retreat. Keep on the lookout for the mountain biker riding by!

This looks like she’s exercising on a roof. It looks like a new venue to me.

You can set your commitment here. I haven’t played Yourself Fitness in so long that Maya is really going to give me a lecture!

It looks like you can track your progress as well.

I really loved exercising with Yourself Fitness, so I’m tempted to buy My Fitness Coach, even though it doesn’t look all that different from the original. If you missed this game the first time around, you are in luck!

Here are some entries describing the game in detail:

• Starling Fitness » Yourself! Fitness for the Xbox
• Starling Fitness » Silver Status on Yourself! Fitness
• Starling Fitness » Yourself! Fitness for Playstation 2
• Starling Fitness » Gold Status on Yourself! Fitness
• Starling Fitness » Workout 35 on Yourself! Fitness
• Starling Fitness » A Poem Dedicated to Yourself! Fitness

It has been a long time since I played with Yourself! Fitness, but seeing this makes me want to play again. I need to break out the old Xbox!

Update 12-13-08: I found a video that gives you a good idea of what the workouts are like:

Over the years, I’ve written some pretty good entries about surviving the Christmas season and keeping healthy. You can see the entries here:

• Starling Fitness » Surviving Christmas Shopping

• Starling Fitness » Christmas Shopping: The Workout

• Starling Fitness » How To Survive Christmas in the Office

• Starling Fitness » How To Handle Neighbor Treats

Whether you’re shopping at the mall and trying to eat healthy or using it as your workout, there are a bunch of tools here to help you stay on your program while you get ready for the holiday.

I love this video of a baby playing at Liberty Park in Salt Lake City. She obviously wants to play in the water, but when she gets wet, she runs away.

They never had water features like this when I was a kid, but it reminded me of running through the sprinklers as a child. I could spend all day just running back and forth on my front lawn dodging the water and bursting right through it.

Winter is coming and I can remember playing all day in the same front yard building snow men and imagining vast and elaborate snow forts. My endeavors never reached those heights, but that didn’t stop me from working all day in the snow.

When did exercise change from fun to work? And how do I get the fun back?

Back in May, we visited Welches, Oregon. I took a walk through the Wildwood recreation area and filmed it. It took a while to get the video ready to sell, but it’s ready now just in time for Christmas.

Here is a glimpse of what the video looks like:

It was warm and moist and the walk through the forest was invigorating.

Estimated Distance: 3.02 miles
Estimated Speed: 2.0 mph
Time: 80 minutes

I’m offering this workout DVD for $5 plus shipping.

Order Starling Fitness Walking Videos Here

There are so many trees that I can’t see on Google maps to make a route map, but I tracked the workout with my Nike+, so you can see the stats here:

• LauraMoncur’s run log for Friday, May 16, 2008 at 10:26 AM – RUNNER+

Video Description:

The Wildwood river walk calls to you with its cool shade and moist ground. You can smell the leaf blower in the distance while you start your walk. Say hi to passing joggers as you head toward the Salmon River. Leaf through the field sketch book in the marshlands. Dodge the school children as they head on their field trip.

From the tops of the trees to the toadstools growing on the logs, Wildwood is a relaxing escape from your day. Escape to Oregon and take a walk through the forest.

Order Starling Fitness Walking Videos Here