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

I found this image on Pinterest, but the original came from BIKINI BODY MOMMY.

If you click on her link, she has a bunch of ideas to help you get through winter, which are all great. I had seen her before and after pictures on some scummy websites selling diet pills, but I think those guys must have stolen her pictures. She is selling books and tools, but no diet pills. Check out her website.

We are almost through winter. In just a few short days, it will be officially spring, although Utah will probably looks something very similar to this picture. I have been exercising on the treadmill and itching to get outside, but the cold and the horribly polluted inversion air has kept me inside.

All of that is an excuse, though.

If I blamed the cold or the pollution on not exercising it would be baloney. There is ALWAYS a way to get it done. I could go to a mall in the early morning and jog indoors. I could get a used treadmill and run on it every day until it finally dies. I could do jumping jacks in place in my tiny bedroom. There is NO excuse for not keeping up with my exercise in the winter.

Bikini Body Mommy is right. Summer bodies ARE made in the winter. If you want a hot body for summer, you need to stop letting things like cold, ice and snow get in your way. There are a hundred inexpensive ways to get thin. Don’t let a little frozen water get in your way.

I found this motivational poster on MotiveWeight a while ago.

It reads:

Every day has 1440 minutes. Be active for 30.

I always forget that when I’m procrastinating my exercise. It’s only 30 minutes and heck, ten of those, I can use for a warm up and cool down. I’ve written about this way back in 2005:

• Starling Fitness – Less Than An Episode of Gilligan’s Island

Back then, I said:

Why do I tell myself, “Less than an episode of Gilligan’s Island?” Why do I find that phrase inspiring? When I was a kid, I loved the show and it always felt like it ended far too soon. I realized commercials took up a third of its time, so each episode was really only about twenty minutes. It was motivational to me. Twenty minutes is short. It will fly by quickly.

It’s only thirty minutes out of 1440. That’s a slim 2% of your day. If you are unwilling to donate 2% of your day to your health and fitness, then you need to readjust your priorities.

But I hear you naysayers out there. You’re screaming at me all the excuses that people have been using for years.

• “I have to sleep!”
• “I have to work a full-time job!”
• “I have kids to take care of and meals to cook.”

I’ll give you sleep and work. That takes your total minutes from 1440 down to 480 minutes. I’ll even give you an extra hour for commuting. That leaves you with 7 hours, or 420 minutes. You’d think that would change things drastically, right? Your percentage of the day devoted to exercise is now, like 30%, right?

NOPE.

30 minutes is only 7% of your newly revised 420 minutes. SEVEN PERCENT!!! All you have to do to gain all the psychological and physical benefits of exercise only requires you to “sacrifice” 7% of your time. That gives you plenty more time to play with your children, shower, cook meals and watch all the TV you could ever want to watch.

Quit listening to the lazy voice inside your head who tells you that you don’t have time to exercise. It’s a liar. You can make room for 30 minutes out of the 420 minutes of free time you have each day. You MUST make room for 30 minutes of exercise every day. Your life LITERALLY depends on it. Start acting like it.

I was reading this blog entry from Wil Wheaton and I realized how different normal people are from overeaters.

• With diet and exercise, and a little help from my friends | WIL WHEATON dot NET

I immediately cut down my beer consumption to one pint a day. I reduced #burritowatch to maybe once a week. I started to enter my meals into my app, and after a few days, I started to see that it really wasn’t that difficult to make healthy food choices, once I knew what was going into my body.

I was having a lot of fun, I was starting to feel pretty good, and — here’s the thing that blew me away — when I got back on the scale at the end of the first week, I’d lost almost 6 pounds.

THAT is the difference in a nutshell. He realized he had gained twenty pounds, cut down on the burritos and beer and dropped back where he wanted to be. In that same time period, I have also lost twenty pounds, but it looks VERY different.

I, too, have been adding my food into my app. I, too, bought a Fitbit after Christmas. I set it to go off every two and a half hours and I’m counting the minutes until I get to eat again. Sometimes I eat my snack and I immediately start counting down until the next time I eat, waiting for that silent vibration on my wrist.

My twenty pound weight loss has nothing to do with cutting out the beer and burritos and everything to do with avoiding a plethora of foods that can set off a binge.

And, the only time I’ve earned a badge was when I was in Las Vegas and I had to walk a mile every time I wanted to get to my car from my hotel room. I seriously exercise for thirty minutes each day, but the rest of my life is so sedentary that it’s a struggle to get to 10,000 steps a day.

Just like him, I find the Fitbit motivating. Just like him, I track my food in a food diary app every day. But unlike him, it was a vicious struggle every day. THAT is the difference between normal people and overeaters. Our brains are wired differently for food, so just going easy on the burritos and beer is much harder.

Cartoon Via: Toon Pool

I saw this photo on The Rowing Life and it reminded me that there are NO EXCUSES!

If that lady can find a way to exercise with a BROKEN leg, then you can get your butt out of bed in the morning and get on that treadmill!

Via: Funeral For My Fat, row-hard: Genius

I love this motivational poster I found on run, eat, relax.

It reads:

Lose an hour Gain a mile

I really miss being able to run outdoors. We live near a beautiful lake and while it’s possible to go for a run out there, the temperature is at 38 degrees right now, so it’s miserable. I miss those nice weather runs where everything is gorgeous and there is a lovely sight to be seen around every corner. I know they’ll come back in a month and a half, but it’s hard to wait.

Until then, I’ll print up this poster and put it in front of the treadmill. I can pretend I’m in a lush forest while I gain my miles.

Didn’t even realize until this very second that if you run a mile in one hour, that’s REALLY slow. That’s even slow for walking. Still a good thought, though.

I know this is a commercial for batteries, but I still LOVE it.

I love that line:

They didn’t call my name. Told me it was over. But I been deaf since I was three. So I didn’t listen.

Made me cry and inspired me to keep going. Thanks, Derrick Coleman. I sincerely had never heard of you before this Duracell commercial, but good going! I heard you won that Super Bowl thing, so congratulations.

I saw this image on Funeral For My Fat and I had to know what was going on.

It reads:

No f-ing gym. I will f-ing lift the whole earth!

It looked so strange that I had to watch the video that it came from, a video on YouTube called “Chinese New Year St. Rampage”

As funny as that temper tantrum was, he actually got a pretty good workout from it. There was one time in my life when I asked, “Does anybody love their gym that much?” Apparently, one guy does.

I was fascinated by this animated GIF I found on Funeral For My Fat:

When I looked at it, it looked like she had a suitcase/duffle bag in her hands, and I imagined myself doing that exercise in a hotel room. This exercise has a complete perfection to it as far as travel is concerned: quiet, full-body, and uses items on hand.

Of course, it’s FAR too intense for me right now, but it was nice to watch it and imagine a day when a workout like that would be something I could actually do.

The next time you use the fact that there is no gym in your hotel as an excuse to let your fitness regime fall by the wayside, remember this quick and simple (but not easy) exercise. Don’t let excuses get in your way.

This advertisement from Asics is amazing!

It reads:

Sound Mind Sound Body: Running releases more than just sweat

It’s true. There is one moment in every run where I feel a huge sigh of relief. I have to be paying attention to notice it past all the jiggling, puffing and sweating, but it’s there with every workout.

In fact, there are times when running has actually SAVED me time throughout my day. When I’m running, my mind wanders over the things I need to do. If I take a second and write down all the things I remember on my run, I have an instant to-do list that has saved me more time than it took to run.

Don’t let excuses get in the way of your workout. Remember that exercise helps your mental health as well as your physical health and get your butt off the couch.

“We should all do the Electric Run together. I think it would be fun,” I said, to the car full of my sister, Stacey, my brother-in-law, Dan, my husband, Mike, and my boy, Sean. Mike asked, “Is that the run where they throw paint all over you?” I laugh. No, that’s the Color Run.

“What? Do they shoot you with paintballs?” Dan asked. I answered, “I don’t think so. I think it’s colored chalk or something.” Mike chuckled, “That’s all I need when I’m trying to run a 5K, inhale a lungful of chalk dust.”

The conversation has gotten away from me and I try to steer it back. “The Electric Run is different. It’s at night and you wear glow necklaces and fluorescent clothing. They have black lights and disco music while you run. It sounds like fun.”

“Sounds great! The only problem I have with it is the ‘running a 5K’ part,” Mike is firm. He doesn’t want to participate in any run, no matter how fun. Dan said, “I’m not interested in that.” I was dropping people left and right. “I want to do that Zombie Chase thing,” Stacey replied.

“We can do that, too.” Now, instead of doing one race, I’ve agreed to do two, one of which, I’m running from Zombies through obstacle courses. “That one we should bring the trailers and camp down there before the race so we don’t have to drive so far,” I suggest. Dan agrees wholeheartedly and suddenly, I have a reason to train and run every day. Our whole family has decided to rally behind Stacey and me for these two races and are planning fun times together for them.

My butt has been on the treadmill EVERY day since this conversation.