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

For a great inspirational story about walking, read tingilinde’s entry about walking here:

• tingilinde: 2987

The tips about walking are excellent and so many that I don’t want to print them all here. Click over to tingilinde to read them all.

I started out walking when I weighed 235 pounds, and even now, a brisk walk is enough to get my heart pumping and me feeling happy and active. There are so many benefits to walking and running that it’s very difficult to put them into words, but tingilinde has done a good job.

Via: Betsy Devine: Luna bars, movie whiplash, and more inspirations

I did a simple search on YouTube and found a few exercise videos. It made me happy just to see these short films.

Exercising with Claire, Peck & Katy:

These three kids spend their afternoon exercising with an exercise video. They are giggling more than they are sweating, but it looks like such fun. Peck is behind the camera most of the time while Claire and Katy try to keep up with the video.

Exercise Ball:

Scott shows you how to do a simple crunch using an exercise ball and then gets a little silly.

Morning Exercise:

A truly inspiring video showing a floor exercise done by an amazing gymnast.

(more…)

McDonald’s has a new promotion right now. If you order one of their premium salads and a drink, you can get a Yourself! Fitness DVD. I can’t find anything about it on the McDonald’s website, but Yourself! Fitness is promoting it on theirs.

• McDonald’s USA – Food, Nutrition, & Fitness

• Yourself!Fitness: Choose Your Program

I got the Cardio DVD and the Yoga DVD the other day and I just finished doing a workout with the Yoga DVD. The workouts are very similar to the Yourself! Fitness game for the PC, PlayStation 2 and Xbox. Here is how a workout is different with Yourself! Fitness vs. the DVD.

• Maya is a little more talkative. She explains her movements a little more than she does with the Yourself! Fitness game.

• You cannot stop the workout and have the move explained in further detail. That’s probably why they include more explanation during the workout.

• The indicator is the same except it doesn’t tell you how much time is left on the workout like it does on the game. Of course, all the workouts are only 15 minutes long, so knowing how much more time is left is less of an issue. With the game, there is a counter on the left hand side that tell you how much longer you have. I find that really helpful and missed it on the DVD.

• You can’t stop a movement and ask Maya to make the workout easier or more difficult. Once you choose a difficulty level, you’re stuck with it for the entire workout. In the game, you can stop it at any time and ask for a more difficult workout or easier. It’s a great feature of Yourself! Fitness.

• You can’t choose your workout environment or music like you can with the game. The Cardio DVD uses the Urban workout environment and the techno music every time. I really like being able to change the venues.

• The DVD is actually a little bit better as far as stretching after the workout is concerned. It still only stretches the hamstrings and the quads, but it allows for more time stretching after a workout. I really recommend doing the Yoga DVD when your finished with the Cardio DVD so that you get a full stretch after your workout.

The ways in which the game and the DVD are similar:

• Maya is still very cut and dry. This is a great feature. She just explains the moves and stays quiet the rest of the time. There is none of that silly workout patter.

• There is still an indicator telling you which move you are going to do next and how much longer you have on the current move. That is really helpful on the Cardio workouts when the movements change rather quickly. I tend to really worry about keeping in step and the indicator really helps for that.

• You get to choose the intensity of your workouts. You can choose “Ease Me Into It” or “I’m Up For A Challenge.” On the Cardio workout, you can tell Maya whether you have a step-bench or not for different workouts.

I’m so glad to see Yourself! Fitness get this opportunity. I want to see them release a second version of Yourself! Fitness that fixes some of the minor problems with the program and add new features. This might be the promotion that they needed to get that done.

You can find out more information about Yourself! Fitness here:

• 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 » Yourself! Fitness and Xbox 360

I live in Salt Lake City, Utah. They have decided to sponsor a get fit program. It’s not very well organized and it’s kind of silly how they have teams that collect points based on how much you exercise. There’s not really a way to compete individually and it’s all on the honor system.

There is one cool thing about the program, though. They have set up a bunch of walking maps. At various parks across the city, they have set up maps that show the route and how many miles they are:

• Welcome to Salt Lake City Gets Fit Together: Maps

I have been wishing for this for years. I don’t know why the Salt Lake County Parks and Recreation didn’t have this years ago.

If you have been bored with your walking or running routine, you should look up your local parks and recreation site to see if they have updated their website recently and added something informative like these maps for Salt Lake City.

If not, you can always create your own walking map at a local park using the Google Pedometer.

The following article has the lofty goal of convincing you that a pedometer can be as fun as a video game:

• Steps Across America – How To Make Your Pedometer As Fun As A Video Game

Here is their list of ways to make walking with a pedometer fun:

• For the person who likes to compete: Keep track of the number of steps you walk every day. Strive to beat that number on a daily basis. If you’re extremely competitive, challenge your children and spouse to a Step Off.

• For the person with chameleon-like tendencies: Put a series of numbers ranging from 8,500 to 14,000 in a hat. Each morning, pull a new number and commit to walking that many steps before you go to bed that evening.

• For the person who can’t seem to get over the past: Walk one thousand extra steps a day for all of those ex-boyfriends and girlfriends you can’t seem to get over. After walking for half the day, you’ll be amazed at how quickly you’ll be over what’s-his-name.

• For the person who likes to show off: Purchase pedometers in several different colors and match them to your purse, sunglasses, and designer trainers.

• For the person who collects too much stuff: Clip on your pedometer and count your steps as you collect all of the unused things gathering dust around your home. Walk each item to the local Goodwill one at a time.

I don’t know about you, but none of these ideas really make me feel like they would make walking with a pedometer as fun as being in a video game. Here are my ideas to boost the fun in your walking.

• Walk Across Your State: Get a large map for your wall and some pushpins. Measure the miles from one end of the state to the other. Each day, move your pushpin a little further across your state based on the miles you walked on your pedometer. After you conquer your state, get a map of your country.

• Create A Wall Chart For Your Mileage: Just like the telethons who mark how much money they’ve earned, set a goal for mileage and each day, fill in the chart with the mileage you walked. When the chart is full, reward yourself.

• Use Time As Your Goal: Give yourself a limited amount of time to exercise every day and try to earn more miles within that time frame each week.

Video games are fun because there are clear goals to accomplish and you KNOW when you’ve achieved them. With a walking or running exercise regime, it’s hard to tell if you’re successful if you don’t set goals. The goals for video games are artificial, but that doesn’t make the game less fun. The same can be true for walking or running. Set some artificial goals, whether it’s walking across your state or increasing your distance, you will know when you’ve beat the game when you achieve them.

While driving to California, Mike and I met up with the most amazing couple who are riding their bikes across the world, Rhona Quarm and Gavin McDonald.

• Starling Travel » Perth 2 Perth 2 Perth

Check out what I wrote about our encounter with them and their website:

• Perth2Perth.org – Rhona and Gavin cycle 18000 miles around the world

Both of them were physically fit before starting the trip, but after ten months of riding, they are built of lean muscle and strength.

Next time you think about skipping your workout, remember Rhona and Gavin travelling the roads of India, Australia and the United States. The thought of them will keep your legs going.

I’ve been thinking a lot about keeping my mind fresh and active and I’ve found that exercise is one of those things that keep me “bubbly.” It looks like Kathy Sierra has noticed the same:

• Creating Passionate Users: Animals love exercise… why don’t we?

Her weblog concentrates on teaching me how to write a weblog that people will love. What it has to do with exercise, I don’t know, but this article was very helpful to me.

Want to be a little smarter? Have a better memory? Stay mentally sharp? Improve higher brain function? Run. Those who exercise have a mental advantage over those who don’t.

Every day when I take my dog for a walk or play with the horses, I watch them tear around and think, “Why do I have to force myself to do what they do because they love it?”

Sometimes we think too hard about exercise. Next time you go outside for a run, try running like a crazy maniac. It’s what my dog does everytime I remove his leash at the dog park. There is something about just letting loose and running full speed that is so fun and invigorating. Somehow, it gets lost when we grow up.

Kell, one of the authors at A Blog For Fat Athletes (wish they’d get a catchier name), wrote about her discovery about heavy breathing and sweating during exercise.

• A Blog for Fat Athletes: From Kell: Speaking of Sweat, Something Stinks

She used to think that only fat people sweat or get out of breath and television was partly to blame:

“Once upon a time in the late 1960s, when I was 8, 9 years old, I truly believed that thin people did not sweat or get out of breath. After all, whenever you saw a fat person doing anything athletic on television, they always showed us huffing and puffing.”

The truth is, if you’re exercising at the correct intensity level, you will sweat and breathe heavily, whether you’re skinny or fat. Conversely, if you are “working out” and not even breaking a sweat, you’re not working out hard enough, whether you’re skinny or fat.

The day I realized that skinny people sweat too was the day I was able to feel good about how hard I was working.

I found an old entry on Kathy Sierra’s weblog called Fitness Hacks for Geeks. She talks about the kinds of gadgets that can keep a computer-obsessed person interested in exercise.

• Creating Passionate Users: Fitness hacks for geeks

Here is her list of items that can make you more excited about exercise.

• Use an iPod
• Use a heart rate monitor
• Use an accelerometer
• Log it and blog it
• Dance Dance Revolution on PlayStation 2 or Xbox

I have never tried exercising with an accelerometer (or a GPS), so I don’t know how inspirational it might be. I also have never really blogged about my daily workouts. When I find a weblog that just lists the daily workouts of the writer, I tend to shove them into the “this is personal and not for me” category and never read them again. I guess I think that no one really cares what I do for exercise.

I don’t know why I assume that people care about what I THINK about exercise, but that’s another story…

If you have been feeling a little unmotivated to get your workouts done, you might want to try one of Kathy’s suggestions. More importantly, what do YOU do to keep motivated and interested in exercise?

I buy my tennis shoes from Ryka, so they send me email every once and a while. Mostly it’s just advertisements for more Ryka products, but this time, they announced a series of races they are sponsoring, Iron Girl.

• RYKA – Iron Girl Race Series

The race schedule is as follows:

• July 9 – Boston, MA
• July 23 – Irving, TX
• August 6 – Denver, CO
• August 27 – Columbia, MD
• September 10 – Seattle, WA
• September 24 – Bloomington, MN
• September 30 – Clearwater, FL
• December 2 – Tempe, AZ

The nearest they come to me is Denver, so I won’t be participating in any of these triathlons, but it’s nice to know that Ryka is actually sponsoring events that have something to do with their shoes.

If you have been having trouble with motivation lately, try signing up for a race. I’ve found that knowing that I’m going to have to compete against other people is enough to get me out of bed and onto the treadmill every day.