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

It wasn’t so hidden to the rest of the world. I had lost weight. I lost about fifty pounds and then everything stopped… for two freakin’ years. I couldn’t lose more than 10 pounds without having a binge relapse and gaining back the 10 I had just lost. I bounced from 180 to 170 so many times in those two years that I began to think that I couldn’t get lower than 170 pounds. To say I was frustrated was an understatement. The truth of the matter was, I was at my wits end.

The articles and weblog entries that I read in magazines and online were bloody useless. USELESS! They talked about mixing up my calorie intake and starting weight training. I was honest with myself and I knew that the problem wasn’t my body’s fault. I knew that it wasn’t an issue with my body trying to maintain some sort of equilibrium. When I followed the program, I lost weight. It was as simple as that.

The problem was that I couldn’t folow the program for more than a month or two.

That hadn’t been the case when I started. For the first five months after I joined Weight Watchers, I followed the program to the letter. I didn’t feel a sense of deprivation. In fact, I was surprised at how much I could eat and still stay within the bounds of the program. No, it wasn’t Weight Watchers fault that I was bingeing, but I felt helpless against it. I was on a hidden plateau because the reason for it was hidden to me.

Here’s a glimpse into what might help you past something like this if you run into this problem.

(more…)

This entry on Diet Blog about free weight loss programs versus ones that make you pay a weekly fee really got me thinking.

• Diet Blog – Free Versus Expensive Diets

I keep telling you that you can eat healthy and exercise for free, yet I go to Weight Watchers and advocate their meetings. Am I a hypocrite? Am I confused? What am I really trying to tell you?

You CAN do it for free

The truth of the matter is, you CAN lose weight for free. You don’t need expensive dietary supplements, gym memberships or fancy exercise gadgets. All you need is to eat less calories than you burn, and there are a myriad of ways that you can do this within the confines of a healthy diet. You don’t need to pay anyone anything to lose weight.

I wasn’t able to do it for free

I tried for years and years to lose weight before I decided to just love my body the way it was. I had tried every diet and sometimes I lost weight, but mostly I just lost five pounds and then gained back ten after the diet-induced bingeing. When I decided to stop dieting forever and to just love my body the way it was, I gained a few pounds and decided that I was okay with it.

After a few months of accepting myself the way I was, I decided that I wanted to exercise to help keep my heart healthy. That step alone took me from 235 to 190 pounds. Exercise was my first step toward a healthy lifestyle, but after a muscle strain, I started gaining the weight that I had lost back. That’s when I had a realization.

Exercise alone won’t do it. Dieting alone won’t do it. I needed to do both and I REALLY needed help in the eating department because all diets had sent me into binge-mode. When I found out that a close friend and my sister had great success with Weight Watchers, I decided to join. What I learned there changed the way I dealt with food.

Conquering bingeing took more than just learning what is healthy. It has taken a daily focus on keeping myself satisfied both physically and emotionally. It’s such a vast subject that I don’t think I would have ever been able to get past bingeing on my own. That’s why I’m so dedicated to Weight Watchers.

So, should you pay for it?

That’s a question that only you can answer. There are people who have paid their Weight Watcher dues every week without success. There are others, like me, who have completely changed their lives. It all depends on you. Are you ready to do it on your own? Do you need extra support? Give yourself an hour or two and a stack of paper and write it out. That has always been the most helpful way for me to look at things.

I picked up The Flavor Point Diet at the health food store. Somehow I thought it might have a grain of truth in it. The diet is based on the premise that if you limit the amount of flavors in a meal, you’ll feel full faster. The flavors in question are sweet, sour, salty and savory.

What I know for sure:

When I used to binge, I would eat for hours on end. I would constantly eat. How could I do that? Most people get full when they eat for five minutes straight, yet I could eat without stopping for hours. How did I do it?

I would start with whatever I was in the mood for, like potato chips. Once I started getting full of potato chips, I would move on to something sweet, like Reeses Peanut Butter Cups. After I felt full enough of Reeses, then I would change to something salty again like french fries. Sometimes I would even combine them by dipping my Wendy’s french fries into my chocolate Frosty.

I would keep switching from salty to sweet and back to salty and back to sweet until I couldn’t eat another bite. I used to do this on a regular basis and I even had an episode of this over the last Christmas holiday. The only way I could consume a ton of food like that was to switch between flavors.

How does this translate to a diet?

I don’t know. The method that David L. Katz, the author, uses is to limit flavors by day (such as a lemon day) in the first phase. The second phase limits flavors by the meal (Lemon Lunch, Pineapple Dinner) and finally in the third phase, you should be able to limit your flavors as you see fit.

I am really uncomfortable with diets that map out what I should eat for the next six weeks. I prefer the freedom of choosing what I want to eat at the time of the meal. There is no way for me to follow this diet to see if it would work for me because the mere idea of limiting my food to a six week plan sends me heading for a binge. Dr. Katz had a lot of people following this diet, raving about its efficacy and ease, but I can’t be one of those people. I know in theory, it would be good for me to limit the various flavors in my meals, but there is no way I could possibly follow his plan.

What’s good about the diet?

It seems to be nutritionally very sound and the recipes will bring a variety to your diet that you might be missing right now. We tend to fall into ruts when we are eating healthy, and this diet has enough interesting recipes to really shake up your diet plan. If you consider this book just a recipe book, it’s worth the cost all by itself.

What’s wrong with the diet?

I find the paranoid insistence that the food industry is purposely trying to make you fat a little far-fetched. Sure, there is salt in sweet foods. What probably happened is they tested various recipes and the taste tests came back, puzzling the food chemists. I can just imagine them talking to each other, “Can you believe the one they all chose? They like the one with salt in it. Why would they want so much salt in their cookies? It doesn’t make sense.” The other scientist says, “It doesn’t need to make sense. It just needs to taste good.”

The food industry isn’t trying to make people eat more food by adding more flavors. They are trying to make food that tastes good to the largest number of people. That’s their job, to make the tastiest food. The paranoia is an unnecessary scare tactic.

Should I buy this book and follow this diet?

This diet seems nutritionally very sound with plenty of whole grains, lean protein and interesting recipes. If you’re the kind of person who can follow a regimented diet, this one will work for you. Otherwise, this book has some great ideas for new healthy recipes and some ideas to keep bingeing in check.

My friend Karen Rosenlund had a problem with her knees. Her doctor told her that she needed to take a weight training class in school so that she could get her knees stronger, and he showed her the exact exercises she needed to do. I took Weight Training because my friend Karen did. I needed to choose SOMETHING for gym, and this class had a friend in it.

Every day, we would dress for weight training and Karen would do the exercises that she needed to do for her knees. After that, we told the teacher that we were going to run a few laps around the auditorium for the rest of the class. He had suggested that as an alternative to working with weights every day. We would stretch, start running around the auditorium and keep running to the Photography Lab to see our other friend, Matt Sheffield.

I spent that entire semester in the Photography Lab, developing pictures I had taken with my 110 camera.

Weight Training had something called Maxs. They tested our Maxs at the first of the term. If we could beat them at the end of the term, we got an A. Just one more rep on each exercise and I could get an A. I didn’t know that at the first of the term, if I did, I wouldn’t have had to work as little as I did. For one day of the term, I pushed myself hard. The rest of the time, I developed grainy black and white pictures. Quite literally, the class was “No Sweat” for me.

Now, I wish I had paid more attention. I also wish the teacher had cared a little more. It would have only taken one checkup to see if we were actually running around the auditorium instead of sloughing. We were always back in time to change out of our gym clothes, but we never looked like we had been running for 30 minutes straight. He didn’t care. As long as we beat our Maxs, he was happy.

I have been doing the circuit training at 24 Hour Fitness for the last month or so and I’m enjoying the progress. It feels so good to be able to lift more weight than I did a couple of weeks ago. Sure, there is pain, but it’s not as bad now as it was the first two weeks. If I had known the sense of accomplishment that I would get from weight training, I might not have been so quick to run off to the Photography Lab.

I guess it wasn’t my time to learn that lesson…

The title for this post has been sitting in my queue for months. The truth of the matter is that it was pretty difficult for me to find an exercise that I enjoy. The only real advice I have for anyone who hates exercise is this:

Try something different.

That’s it. If you hate your workout, then try something different. For YEARS, I thought that I had to do aerobics to get thin. I think it’s because I watched so much Richard Simmons when I was a kid and then I was a teen during the Jane Fonda era of physical fitness. Every second that I did aerobics, I HATED it. The teachers rarely explained the moves well enough so that I would know what I was doing, so I ended up just fumbling around. I can’t clarify enough how much I despised aerobics.

Even Denise Austin, wasn’t enough to make me like aerobics. She is so clear when she explains what she wants me to do. She is good enough not to be too repetitious, so her videos don’t irritate me with the same phrases over and over again. I was able to do Denise Austin workouts for a summer in 1992, and she will always hold a soft place in my heart, but I just don’t like to do aerobics.

About six years ago, I knew that I wanted to start exercising because I wanted to improve my cardiovascular health. It wasn’t about losing weight. I knew that the studies had only proven that exercise helps heart health, not necessarily weight loss. I thought back to all the different exercises that I did in gym classes over the years. The only one where I enjoyed it enough to actually EARN an A in the class was a jogging class I took the first semester of high school. I decided that I would run.

Luckily, it worked out for me. It was painful. It wasn’t easy, but there were no teammates to complain about my performance. There were no competitors to pass me by. It was just me, running around my suburban neighborhood or on my treadmill. Running worked out for me and strangely, it led to other exercises that I enjoyed like bike riding and even weight training.

So many of my friends stay in shape with aerobics. There was a kickboxing class at the community center that my sister just loved. When I attended it, I wanted to punch the teacher in the face for assuming that all her students knew what she was doing. Halfway through the class, I stopped trying to follow along and just stepped up and down on the step over and over until it was over. If I had insisted on using aerobics as my way of getting fit, I wouldn’t have a story to tell you today.

If you hate exercise, STOP DOING IT! I don’t think any other health and fitness person will tell you that, but I’m here right now to tell you that it’s okay to stop doing whatever it is you hate. The only thing I ask is that you try something different. I don’t care what it is, but try something else and stick with it for a month or two until you know whether you like it or HATE it.

I promise you. If you keep looking and trying new things, you will find an exercise that you love.

I’m usually watching a movie while I’m running on the treadmill, so I rarely notice what is flashing on the dashboard of the treadmill. The other day, I was listening to music while running, so there was nothing for my eyes to do but stare at the screen. I was surprised at what I saw.

My usual workout is a warm up and a constant run at 5 mph with 0 incline. It’s a run I’ve been doing for the last few months because it reliably gets my heart rate in the high intensity zone. It’s also a goal that I set for myself a long time ago.

I didn’t realize that I had achieved this goal when I achieved it. It was logged in my head as, “Hmm, if I keep the speed at 5 mph, my heart rate stays in the high intensity zone… cool…” That’s about all I thought about it when I first achieved my goal, because long ago, I had decided I wanted to be able to run 12 minute miles, not 5 mph.

The only gym class I ever got an A that I deserved was Jogging. All we had to do was run around the auditorium 12 times (2 miles) every class. At the end of each quarter, the teacher timed us. If we could run a mile in 12 minutes, we got an A. It was that simple and I got my first A in gym without using feminine wiles (getting an A in Dance counts as feminine wiles, by the way).

Before I ever conceived of joining Weight Watchers, I decided that I was going to start exercising every day. We had a treadmill and my goal was to get to the point where I could easily run 12 minute miles, just like in my Jogging class. I weighed 235 pounds. It was 1998.

I wore out that first treadmill, which was very nicely replaced by another treadmill under the warranty, which was also worn out and replaced last year with my Nordictrack. Three treadmills, eight years and 75 pounds later, I finally reached my goal and I didn’t even notice it when it happened. It wasn’t until weeks later when I watched the dashboard on the treadmill flash between the workout time and the pace. I noticed the green numbers reading:

Pace 12:00

I had set the goal so clearly in my mind that it didn’t even surprise me when I FINALLY made it. It was as if I had already made it when I set the goal. Back then, I thought that the only class I had ever deserved an A in was Jogging, so I’m going to learn how to run again and I’m going to earn an A again. I know I can do it because I did it once before.

What have you achieved in your life that you are proud of? I know there must be at least one thing in your life that you deserved as much as I deserved that A in my Jogging class. Remember that time and use it as an inspiration. If you were able to do that, just think about what else you can do. If, after three treadmills, eight years and 75 pounds, I can finally achieve my goal that I set back in 1998, I can get to goal. The same goes for you. If you were able to make yourself proud so long ago, then you can do it now.

When I reach my goal weight, what will my life be like? I’m so close to my goal right now. I only have 28 pounds to go after losing a total of 76 pounds. It’s hard to imagine that those extra 28 pounds will have as profound an effect on me.

It’s that kind of thinking that can derail me.

I have made so much progress and my life is so much better that I think that I can’t possibly have an even better life when I finally get to my goal weight. I’m totally wrong and I know it.

The benefits of weight loss are exponential. Losing 76 pounds to get where I am today feels amazing. It feels like I have more freedom. I feel as if I have been released from those looks and those opinions that people have about fat people.

I KNOW that getting to goal will be even better, and here’s why:

• I finally conquered it! After years of trying and failing, I will have finally made it! I have been fighting this battle ever since I was nine years old and watching Richard Simmons on the television every day. Finally getting to a healthy BMI has been my goal since before BMI was called BMI. When I finally get there, I will have reached a point I have never hit before. I will have NAILED it! I can’t wait to achieve that accomplishment.

• I will feel like I belong. Even though I’m healthier now, I still feel uncomfortable at the gym. I don’t want people to look at me. I just want to get in and get the job done. I know I deserve to be there because I get in and workout as hard as I can while I’m there. I just don’t feel like I belong there. It’s not the people at the gym, it’s strictly my mindset.

• If I thought being able to fit into Lucky Jeans was great, just think how great those size fours will feel. I have never really felt worthy of good clothing. Once I know that I’m at my goal weight and I’m staying there no matter what, I will be able to enjoy the best clothing. I won’t have to shop at thrift stores anymore because I’m finished losing weight and I will be at this size for longer than the clothes will last.

• Intangible Benefits: I don’t know what they are, but I’m sure that I will be surprised with benefits that I can’t even imagine right now. That’s wonderful. I’ll take those surprises and run with them, whatever they are.

I realized today that thinking that my life couldn’t be much better at goal than it is right now is just an excuse. It’s one of those thought patterns that tries to convince me to keep things at the status quo because I’m scared of the future.

Believe it or not, getting to goal is scary for some people. I refuse to live in fear and I’m going to look forward to the benefits of being at a healthy weight.

If you have been telling yourself that even when you get to goal, you’re still going to be dealing with the same problems, take an hour for yourself. Write out all your fears and all your hopes of what life would be like when you get to goal. Refuse to believe the fears. Just release them in your mind and imagine them floating down the river, far far away from you. You have no need for fear in your life. Enjoy the prospect of your life being better when you get to goal and you’re that much closer to getting there.

“Half of me want to lose the weight, but the other half wants to eat whatever I want whenever I want it.”

Have you ever felt like that? It feels like there are two people within you raging a war against each other. When I feel like this, I feel powerless against either one of them and I thought I just had to wait to see who was the strongest. Ever since January 2002, the half that wants to be at a healthy weight has won out, but there were some scary battles there for a while.

I’ve just recently found out that I don’t need to sit around and wait to see who wins the battle. I can affect things for the better and give the half of me that wants to be at a healthy weight a huge club to beat on my other half.

When half of me wants to be healthy and half of me wants to eat, I’ve found that something strange is going on in my life. I have started “weighing” things. Weighing health against cream cheese brownies. Or maybe I’m weighing the feeling of fitting into Seven Jeans against the “freedom” to eat whatever I see. When I am thinking like this, I need to tip the scales back to the health side and it usually takes a couple of things to do it.

• Kill the Deprivation: If I’m feeling deprived of cream cheese brownies, I need to find a way to work them into my diet. It usually only takes one or two servings spaced out over a couple days to kill the feeling of deprivation. If you find that you have been weighing your health against any food, it’s time to find a way to work it into your diet.

• Conquer the Boredom: I also find that I get into ruts. I find foods that are low in calories that taste good and fulfill my health needs and I eat them every day… for months. The last time this happened to me it was fresh, cut veggies. I was having all my vegetables in the form of fresh and raw vegetables. When I started adding cooked broccoli and vegetable soup to my diet instead of the raw veggies, I found that it was easier to enjoy my food. I’m sure you have found the perfect snacks to keep you satisfied, but if you eat them every day for months, you WILL get bored of them and this eating healthy thing will start feeling yucky.

• Feed My Head: Sometimes I forget why I eat healthy. It helps to go back and look at my old pictures to remember how hard it was to be fat. It also helps to read the newest health and fitness information. If I feed my head with images of healthy people and ideas for exercise, eating and health, it’s a lot easier to keep on track.

It takes all three of these things to tip the scales back for me. I’ve found that if I just do one or two of them, it’s not enough to tip the scales where they need to be. I need to bombard myself with all three techniques to get back on track. Give it a try and see if it’s a big enough club to beat into submission the half of you that wants to eat everything.

Laura,

I’ve started having neck stiffness since I started running. I know it’s from running because the stiffness goes away on the weekends when I don’t run. I stopped holding on to the handrails on the treadmill and I even had someone look at my form when I run, but they didn’t notice any problems.

Do you know any neck stretches that I could do before and after exercise to help with the stiffness?

Thanks,
Mike

Mike,

Firstly, you might want to make sure your form is correct and there aren’t any underlying problems by seeing an orthopedic doctor or a physical therapist. After you’ve done that, here are a couple of stretches that might help with the stiffness and pain:

Ear-To-Shoulder:

• Stand up straight with your shoulders down.
• Lower your ear as close to your shoulder as possible.
• Raise your hand, place it on the top of your head and GENTLY lower your ear closer to your shoulder until you feel a good stretch.
• Hold the stretch for 20 seconds and repeat.
• Stretch the other side.

Intense Neck Stretch:

• Grab your wrist behind your back.
• GENTLY pull the arm toward the opposite hip.
• At the same time, lower your ear to your shoulder.
• Hold the stretch for 20 seconds and repeat.
• Stretch the other side.

These exercises stretch the upper trapezius (shown here). You should feel the stretch in the highlighted areas. If you feel the stretch somewhere else, check your form and try again. The stretch should not be intensely painful. Always check with your physical therapist for more information.

If you are experiencing pain elsewhere, then there are other exercises and stretches to strengthen that area. You can find more information at the Exercise & Muscle Directory.

Good Luck,
Laura Moncur

Every time I post anything about fat acceptance, I get blasted. I try to edit out the most offensive comments before anyone sees them, but the articulate ones are left to bring about discussion. Considering that I am writing about health and fitness, it might seem strange that I’m such an advocate for fat acceptance, so I’m here to tell you why I believe that we need to be willing to see more fat people on television, in magazines and everywhere else.

The opposite of fat acceptance is fat fear, fat disgust, fat discrimination. I’ve been on the receiving end of that spectrum and, quite frankly, it didn’t feel so good. Now that I’m thinner, people are nicer to me. I had less problems in the business world. Everything just got easier. Is that fair? I’m still just as competent and efficient as I was when I was fat, but no one infers that I’m lazy anymore. I’m still just as witty as I was before, but people laugh at my jokes more now. More people look me in the eye. My insurance premiums are cheaper.

Is that fair?

Fat discrimination runs rampant throughout our society and it is accepted by people who would scream bigot if someone made similar comments about race or sexual orientation. Prejudice is fear and hate and I will fight both as ardently as I can. The reason people are prejudice against the obese is because they both fear and hate them.

Fat Hate:

People hate (or resent) fat people because they think fat people can eat whatever they want. They assume that the obese have never dieted a day in their lives. They rationalize that if someone is fat, they are lazy. It’s prejudice, plain and simple. People make assumptions about the obese based solely on their body type which have little to do with reality.

When I was fat, I was constantly starving. I was always on a diet or recovering from one. Exercise was harder for me back then than it is now, because I was packing 75 extra pounds. When I exercised, I burned more calories than I do now because I was so overweight. It was harder, yet I did it every day.

When I was fat, I worked hard at my jobs, yet I had to defend myself against implications that I was lazy all the time. Weighing 235 pounds had absolutely no effect on how many phone calls I could answer or how many insurance claims I could process every day, yet I was constantly defending myself against insults about laziness. Not even my daily performance, which was one of the highest in my group, could protect me from those insults. Only losing the weight changed their perception of me.

Fat Fear:

“Oh my God! Look at that woman! How does she live like that?! Oh please, don’t ever let that happen to me.”

Thoughts like these are far less detrimental to the obese than the prejudice of Fat Hate. They are far more detrimental to the person thinking them. People fear overweight people because they fear the prejudice of others. It doesn’t help that the media is constantly feeding the fear with threats of obesity causing diseases (as opposed to aggravating diseases that are already present).

Living in a state of fear is harmful. It is one of those low-grade stressors that accumulate in your mind and you wonder why your shoulders are tight all the time and you have the beginnings of an ulcer. Learning to accept fat people will lesson that fear and will help you more than you can imagine.

The day I decided that I was going to accept my body (fat and all), was the day that I let go of the fear. After a few months of truly accepting and loving my body for what it was, I started eating healthier to take better care of myself. I started exercising to make my heart healthier. I did all of these things to take better care of my body. I even joined Weight Watchers to learn how to eat healthier because I was so confused by all the diets I had put myself through during my fat years.

The lack of fat people in advertising, magazines, on television and in movies is just a form of Fat Fear. Hollywood is the worst offender in this category. Because being fat can kill the career of an actor or actress, is it any wonder that they fear? That’s why I applaud every magazine that features real-looking people. Don’t feed your fear of fat by only allowing images of the bone thin into your life.

Getting rid of Fat Fear is something that you do for yourself. When you are able to completely accept fat people without prejudice, you are actually helping yourself be healthier. Let go of the fear. It isn’t helping you. It’s harming you.

What I Don’t Agree About Fat Acceptance:

I hear the phrase “Diets Don’t Work” in the Fat Acceptance circles. I hate to disagree with them, but they are wrong. When you eat a healthy diet and consume less calories than you burn, you lose weight. It’s physics physiology. There is no way around it. Fad diets typically don’t work, but a healthy diet does.

I hear stories about people who insist that they ate correctly, but still didn’t lose weight. I think if someone had followed them around all day and kept meticulous track of what they ate and how they exercised, I’m sure they could have found the problem. When we are truly honest with ourselves, we know when we are cutting corners. Now that most food has nutrition facts, it is so much easier than it used to be.

I don’t believe that Fat Acceptance means giving up responsibility. Just because someone is fat doesn’t mean that they deserve the kind of abuse that I received. I believe fat people should be protected from discrimination, but I also believe that being thinner helps a lot of health problems. I chose to lose weight because I wanted my body to be healthy and last a long time, but I don’t think anyone has the right to discriminate against someone who is fat.