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

I keep hearing the phrase, “Who is to blame for obesity?” Whether it’s childhood obesity, American obesity or just obesity in general, the same thought is being thrown around: Who is to blame? This article tackles that issue:

• The Independent – Who’s really to blame for the problem of childhood obesity? You are by Richard Kilgarriff

“The truth is, we are all to blame for the society in which we live, and the finger-pointing and point-scoring has to stop. This childhood obesity problem is bigger than any political party or supermarket or manufacturer, and much bigger than food advertising on TV.”

More importantly, IT DOESN’T MATTER. It doesn’t matter which industry or institution is the cause of obesity. The longer we argue about who is to blame, the less time we have to fix the problem. Who cares if it’s television or video games or high calorie snack foods or shoddy school lunch programs or inattentive parents or… The list goes on a mile long. The most important thing with both adult and childhood obesity is that we stop it. The only people who can stop it are each and every one of us.

You… Yeah, you… Next time you think about skipping your workout or eating something that is not scheduled for your meal plan, STOP. Make sure you get your workout in. Make sure you stop that binge in its tracks. The only way to make the world a healthier place is to take personal responsibility for yourself. You are the only person on this planet that you can truly control.

High on the list of ways to get fit for free is Burpee Conditioning. There is a great article about this very manly way of getting fit on Bodybuilding.com. It includes videos of how to perform the maneuver so that you are clear about the process.

• Bodybuilding.com – Burpee Conditioning No Nonsense – by Ross Enamait

This form of exercise may be too intense for a beginner, but if you have limited funds or space, it is a great way to have an intense workout. There are even variations at the end of the article that will boost the intensity even higher if Burpee Conditioning becomes too easy for you.

In this thread at community site Ask Metafilter, someone was looking for ideas for exercise that would work in a small apartment with minimal equipment, without access to a gym. If you’re looking for some new ideas for exercises, you might find a good idea or two among the responses.

The ideas ranged from push-ups to Bowflex to stability ball exercises to the ever-popular Kettlebells, and it seems just about everybody is enthusiastic about one particular approach. I think the important lesson here is that there are a million different ways to exercise, and the vast majority of them work if you commit to using them regularly.

If you’re bored with your current routine, try finding a new piece of equipment or a new approach. It won’t be a miracle, but having something that you’re excited about makes it much easier to maintain your exercise regimen.

The following article from Associated Press says something that many of us already know: it’s easier to exercise and lose weight with a partner, and dogs make good partners.

• Dogs make good diet buddies

In a somewhat scientific study involving 92 people and 89 dogs, comissioned by diet pet-food maker Hill’s Pet Nutrition, they found that people with dogs did slightly better at losing weight and keeping it off than those without.

Curiously, the dogs in the study lost more weight overall than the humans, and the dogs had more energy and did not increase begging. Having someone much larger than you hold absolute control over your portion size is apparently a very effective diet technique.

Shape magazine has a Pilates workout that doesn’t require a bunch of exercise toys to complete. It’s a strength training workout that you can incorporate into your schedule. You don’t need a membership at a gym or any weights.

Shape Magazine – Brand new year, hot new bod – by Alexa Joy Sherman

This workout is based on The Pilates Promise by Alycea Ungaro. There are five moves that strengthen your core muscles that you master first, then you move on to strengthening your upper or lower body with different moves. All of the exercises are shown in detail with pictures on the website.

This list is from Amazon.com, so you know they are just trying to sell you a bunch of stuff:

Amazon.com Listmania! – Fun Exercise – by Gina

Be that as it may, I really enjoyed looking at this list. There are tons of ideas for different kinds of exercise. Remember that your local library probably has some of these books and video titles available for you to borrow and try out (and if they don’t, Netflix definitely does).

Sometimes I make time fly on the treadmill by changing the speed or incline every couple of minutes. Other times I want to finish a certain distance within the time that I have to exercise. The way that I have done this in the past is to use Microsoft Excel (a spreadsheet program) to calculate how fast for how long I would have to go to complete the distance that I want.

Download this Treadmill Spreadsheet if you’d like to try it.

There are a total of 9 workouts. All of them are 30 minutes long including a warm up and cool down of two minutes apiece. Since my treadmill starts the timer at zero and counts up, the “Reading” column is what the treadmill should read when I change the incline or speed. I used these workouts when I was training for a 5K last year and I found them helpful.

When I read Runner’s World, they would always talk about Interval workouts or Hill workouts, but they would never talk in specifics. They would say things like “Run at 70% of your 5K speed,” which really didn’t help me. I wanted to know the specific MPH to set the treadmill to and when to change it. I ended up making my own treadmill workouts using this spreadsheet.

You may be more of a beginner or more advanced than these workouts, but they could still be helpful to you. The formulas will still calculate the distance, if you change the speed. Play with it a little bit and you can make this work for you. I hope you find it as helpful as I have.

This article covers the basics of a treadmill workout:

• Pioneer Thinking – Treadmill Workout Ideas That Make Fitness Fun – by C. J. Gustafson

It also includes some information on how to spice up your treadmill workouts. If you are working out at the local recreation center, you may not be able to watch television while you run, but bringing along music or a book is a great way to help the time pass.

Jerradk is sponsoring a workout tomorrow morning. This is an invitation only match, so please email me with your gamertag by 7pm Eastern (4pm Pacific) tonight if you are interested in playing.

Workout Details:

• Dance Dance Revolution Ultramix 2
• Difficulty Level: Light
• Thursday Morning, 02-17-05
• 7 am Eastern (4 am Pacific)
• Duration: Approximately 30 minutes

This is the first time I’ll be an invitee to a match, so I’m excited to see how it works!

I was browsing at Best Buy and came across Secret Formula: Ultimate Fitness for Men. It led me to believe that there might be an Ultimate Fitness for Women, but I couldn’t find it in the store. At first glance, it looked like a cool thing. It has 130 strength training exercises, 45 cardio exercises and 115 video clips. It runs you through a personal assessment, then you can customize your fitness program and track your results. It looked pretty cool until I started comparing it to Yourself! Fitness and what Maya does for me.

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