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

As you can see, I have wanted a treadmill desk (treadputer, walk station, etc.) for a LONG time. The first time I wrote about it was back in 2006.

• Starling Fitness – A Whole Website About Treadputers!
• Starling Fitness – The Walking Desk Blog
• Starling Fitness – The Walkstation from Steelcase
• Starling Fitness – Treadmill Desk
• Starling Fitness – Fitness Magazine Review: April 2010
• Starling Fitness – The Best Inexpensive Treadmill Desk

EIGHT years later, I FINALLY did it to my treadmill, and I’m so excited! Best of all, it only cost me THREE bucks!!

Read more for instructions, but I’m sure you can see what I did just from this first photo. (more…)

I love the design of this treadmill desk.

• Redetermine: DIY PVC-IKEA Treadmill Desk – Again
• Redetermine: DIY PVC-IKEA Treadmill Desk

He used an Ikea Linnmon Table Top, four Adils legs, and 1.5 inch PVC pipe. Connecting the legs to the table was a bit of a challenge, but he explained how he did it here.

To tighten the connection between the table leg and the PVC make a vertical cut at the end of the pipe and push a coupling down. The coupling will apply pressure and jamb the PVC against the metal leg.

This is the absolute BEST design for an inexpensive treadmill desk. I have been looking at these for a LONG time and this is the first one that makes me want to build it. You can see some of the other treadmill desks here:

• Starling Fitness – A Whole Website About Treadputers!
• Starling Fitness – The Walking Desk Blog
• Starling Fitness – The Walkstation from Steelcase
• Starling Fitness – Treadmill Desk
• Starling Fitness – Fitness Magazine Review: April 2010

It’s obvious that I have been interested in this for a LONG time. The truth of the matter is, I am a literal SLUG during the day. Even walking on a treadmill at ONE mile per hour while I am working would be AMAZING compared to the sloth of my typical work day. I am VERY interested in getting a desk that I can use at my treadmill right now, so this PVC plan is EXACTLY what I’ve been looking for.

Via: LINNMON treadmill desk with PVC pipe legs – IKEA Hackers

Just a few days ago, Samsung showed the world their Gear Fit. It’s a watch, heart rate monitor, fitness tracker and mp3 player. Here is a video showing it here:

It has customizable screens and bands that are easy to change out.

It looks awesome, doesn’t it? In fact, it almost becomes the watch of my dreams that I’ve spoken about on The Gadgets Page:

• Gadgets Page – I Hate the Watch Designers of the World

It’s the watch I’ve been waiting for almost a DECADE. So, what’s the catch?

The catch is that it doesn’t work with my iPhone. The catch is that it only communicates with 20 Samsung devices. The catch is that I would have to figure out how to get music on the damn thing because it doesn’t work with iTunes. The catch is that it is so integrated into the Samsung world that it is completely useless to me.

It’s pretty, Samsung, and you did a good impression of the Apple presentation style, but it’s not going to fly.

I was looking through my old screenshots and I found this from a magazine:

It is a review for S2H Replay, a wristband device that I actually bought because of this ad. I wore it for a while, hated it and stuffed it into a box. I actually saw it the other day when I was cleaning out a box and tossed it aside in disgust. I never earned even one “reward,” and that stupid little bracelet didn’t seem very accurate.

I was curious if S2H is still around, but when I went to their website, this is what I found:

So, if you did like them, it didn’t matter because they were deleting all your information. It seems that they were closing up shop so they could offer their services to corporations.

• S2H Challenge: The Wellness Program for your company

After only a month with my Fitbit, I absolutely adore it and would be devastated if they closed up shop. Where did S2H go wrong and Fitbit go right?

• GOOD website: The Fitbit syncs seamlessly with my iPhone and my computer making everything easy to read.
• No false promises: Fitbit never promised to give me rewards for completing my daily steps, so I don’t feel ripped off when all I earn is a 20% off a product I don’t want.
• Fashion sense: I can change my band on my Fitbit to match my outfit. I know that shouldn’t be a big deal, but for me, it was.
• Compatibility: My Fitbit works with Lose It! and My Fitness Pal, so any activity I do, automatically syncs over to my food program. This was the deciding factor for me when I chose the Fitbit.

Honestly, I liked the little smiley face and frowny face on the S2H. Considering how little the LEDs on the Fitbit tell me, I liked them better. In the end, S2H was SO close. A little band around my wrist that keeps track of activity for me is a brilliant idea and they were doing it way before any of the other companies.

I found a study at IOPScience that describes a breathalyzer that measures the amount of acetone in your breath.

• IOPScience – A prototype portable breath acetone analyzer for monitoring fat loss

According to them, acetone is a by-product of fat burning and excreted through your breath.

Acetone contained in our exhaled breath is a metabolic product of the breakdown of body fat and is expected to be a good indicator of fat-burning.

They can measure this with huge spectrometers, but that would be too difficult to carry around with you, so they have developed a small device that works with your smartphone to analyze your breath.

Here, we prototype a portable breath acetone analyzer that has two types of semiconductor-based gas sensors with different sensitivity characteristics, enabling the acetone concentration to be calculated while taking into account the presence of ethanol, hydrogen, and humidity. To investigate the accuracy of our prototype and its application in diet support, experiments were conducted on healthy adult volunteers. Breath acetone concentrations obtained from our prototype and from gas chromatography showed a strong correlation throughout the experiments. Moreover, body fat in subjects with a controlled caloric intake and taking exercise decreased significantly, whereas breath acetone concentrations in those subjects increased significantly. These results prove that our prototype is practical and useful for self-monitoring of fat-burning at home or outside. Our prototype will help to prevent and alleviate obesity and diabetes.

This study was sponsored by NTT Docomo, the largest mobile phone provider in Japan, so the idea that your phone could tell you if you are burning off fat may be a reality in the near future.

But is this information helpful?

At this moment, I would say no, but, way back when, I said the same thing about wearable fitness technology, which I ADORE now. More data certainly opened my eyes to my slug-like ways as far as activity is concerned. Perhaps something like this would help me know more about my body.

Or, perhaps it would be just a distraction. I can’t tell right now, but I am excited to see this fat burning breathalyzer show up on the market.

Image via: BACtrack Keychain Breathalizer

The Fitbit Flex on my wrist went off at 10 am, but I was trying to write a blog entry. I ignored it. The irony is that I was trying to write an entry for Starling Fitness. I should have just looked at my wrist and realized that I had forgotten the most important thing to keep me eating healthy: I Eat When The Fitbit Tells Me To Eat.

There should be no question about it. I used to want to eat ALL day long without relief from the hunger. It wasn’t until I set alarms every two and a half hours that I found that I could go any amount of time without thinking about food.

Now, I find myself FORGETTING about food and making the alarm go away without bothering to eat. I went a half hour without eating my apple that was already washed and ready to eat. All I had to do was put it in my piehole.

Why? Why do I let myself forget the torment of constant obsession with food and fall into bad habits? As long as I FEED my poor, abused body, it will give me HOURS of time when I won’t even THINK about food. If I had to feed my cat every two and a half hours, I wouldn’t think twice about abandoning my work and jumping up when the alarm went off. Yet, when it comes time to feed MYSELF, I won’t even bother.

And the worst trick of all, is that if I don’t feed myself healthy food every two and a half hours, I get FATTER!! I end up feeling so hungry that I eat an entire day’s worth of calories in one sitting. It’s a paradoxical practical joke that I have played on my body for years, and yet, I still haven’t learned how to do it properly.

Maybe that’s why it’s so hard. I alternately starved and stuffed my body for YEARS and I’ve only been practicing this type of eating for three months. I’m trying to undo YEARS of bad habits, so I guess it’s going to take some time until this is second nature to me. Until then, I am going to jump when that alarm goes off and stick some food in my piehole!

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Overeaters Anonymous does not endorse anything on this entry or blog.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks for atheists and twelve-step programs are the first few steps. In particular, the requirement to believe in a Higher Power as you know it. I may not be able to believe in an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent being who actually CARES about my inability to stop eating, but I can lay all my trust in science.

In the past, I have over-counted my exercise. I talked about that here:

• Starling Fitness – Weight Watchers ActiveLink System Requirements

Back then, I said:

Since I followed the program exactly, I was very frustrated that I was only losing minimal amounts of weight. I now know why. I am such a SLUG during the day, that I was over-counting my exercise points. What I would have counted as four points, is only showing up as two points with the ActiveLink because my workday is so sedentary.

My solution was to count whatever the ActiveLink said, but now that I’m using the Lose It app, I needed something that worked with calories instead of Weight Watchers Points, so I bought a Fitbit Flex with my Christmas money and decided to faithfully use it as my Higher Power. It is ALWAYS on my wrist.

I’ve run into one problem with the Fitbit. I have not been able to get it to accurately measure riding on the exercise bike. I’ve tried wearing it around my ankle under my sock and putting the Fitbit into a Nike+ pocket on my shoe. Neither one showed any significant workout, even though I worked my butt off. This is one case where I need to trust my heart rate monitor and not worry about the outcome.

Additionally, the silent alarms on the the Fitbit Flex are a godsend. I set them for every two and a half hours and when they go off, I eat. No questions asked. I just do what my Higher Power tells me to do. The reason I do this is because eating tiny meals at such regular intervals has helped me be less hungry. I talked about that here:

• Starling Fitness – Fitness, diet, and health weblog » Refeeding: A Treatment for Obesity?

Just like an anorexic, my hunger response is broken, so I don’t eat when I’m hungry. I would be eating ALL the time if I did. I eat when the Fitbit alarm silently vibrates on my wrist.

It might be strange to consider a fitness gadget my Higher Power, but it has helped me stay honest about the amount of exercise I’m doing and reminds me to eat at regular intervals. I have humbly put my trust in its evaluation of my activity level and faithfully ate whenever it told me to. This simple faith and humility have helped me stay on my program for longer than I have been able to in years, so I’m not going to stop.

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Overeaters Anonymous does not endorse anything on this entry or blog.

Related entries:

• Starling Fitness – Fitbit Flex: A Long Cry From BodyBugg
• Starling Fitness – Refeeding: A Treatment for Obesity?
• Starling Fitness – The Dual Benefits of my Silent Refeeding Alarms

One of the biggest stumbling blocks for atheists and twelve-step programs are the first few steps. In particular, the requirement to believe in a Higher Power as you know it. I may not be able to believe in an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent being who actually CARES about my inability to stop eating, but I can lay all my trust in science.

One piece of science that has been debated is the Calories In Vs. Calories Out concept. There are those who don’t believe this is the case and that you can eat far more food as long as you tweak the macronutrients. Honestly, I NEVER lost weight when I ate more calories than I burned. I feel fuller when my protein and fat are higher than my carbs, but if I ate more calories than I exercised away, I didn’t lose weight.

So, I decided that one of my atheist Higher Powers was Lose It!. It runs on the web, on an iPhone and an Android phone. I put in my age, gender, weight and height into their system, told them I wanted to lose at least a pound a week and then I have faithfully followed their calorie counts. I just turned over all my food thoughts to Lose It. I can even monitor my carbs, protein and fat percentages, trying to manipulate them to keep me feeling fuller.

Entering food is easy. I can make recipes and find out the calorie counts for our favorite dinners. It even works with my Fitbit.

Most importantly, there is a community aspect to Lose It. If you have friends, you can post on the activity stream, asking for advice. Unlike a prayer to God, my Lose It friends can ANSWER my questions and help me through hard times with words of encouragement and advice. I can set my privacy as much as I want, but I let them see all of my food, exercise and weigh-ins so that they can have the full picture of my food life.

It may sound strange to believe in a web app as one’s Higher Power, but my hunger response is BROKEN. I’m hungry all the time and I can eat until I’m in PAIN and still want to eat more. Using the Lose It app as my Higher Power has relieved me of all those decisions that I used to make about food. Are there calories left in my day? Then I can eat. If not, I’m done. I have just released all of my decisions about food to this Higher Power and my life is more sane because of it.

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Overeaters Anonymous does not endorse anything on this entry or blog.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks for atheists and twelve-step programs are the first few steps. In particular, the requirement to believe in a Higher Power as you know it. I may not be able to believe in an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent being who actually CARES about my inability to stop eating, but I can lay all my trust in science.

One of the things I consider my Higher Power is my heart rate monitor. I use the Polar RS300X to monitor my workouts, but there are MANY heart rate monitors and straps that will work with exercise equipment at the gym and cost less than this one did.

I keep my workouts in the 80%-90% range throughout the entire workout, except for a two-minute warmup and cool down. No matter what it says on the screen of my treadmill, I speed up when my heart rate falls lower than the 80% range and slow down when it goes higher. Here is a chart for Intense Heart Rate Zones:

It’s amazing how difficult it is to follow this simple rule. When I’m running and I’m out of breath and I want to slow down, it’s HARD to keep going until my heart rate gets up to that upper limit. When things are feeling good and I only have fifteen seconds to go to log another fast minute, it’s HARD to slow down when my heart rate has gotten to that upper limit.

They always talk about “listening to my body,” but my body is a LIAR. It tells me I’m hungry when I’m not. It tells me I’m too tired to go on when I can run more. It tells me I’m just fine to run a little more when my heart is clearly beating out of my chest. LIAR!!!

That’s WHY I kept injuring myself when I was running before. Instead of running when my heart rate said I should, I was running too much. Honestly, running feels GOOD sometimes. So good that I disregard any stress I might be putting on my feet. I talked about this issue before here:

• Starling Fitness – The Pain I Endure

Back then, I said:

Even a long walk will make my feet ache like they never did before. My bulky and large feet, who have been my good friends all these years, have become fragile and temperamental. I have no idea how to strengthen them to be able to take the pounding that they did before.

Right after that, I started running again, using my heart rate monitor as my Higher Power and my feet have been happy and willing participants.

It may sound strange to believe in a fitness gadget as one’s Higher Power, but my internal monitoring of my body is broken. I can’t tell when I’m tired or just lazy, but my heart rate monitor definitely can. Someday, I may be able to run without heart rate monitor, but until then, I’ll humbly place all my exercise decisions on my Higher Power.

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Overeaters Anonymous does not endorse anything on this entry or blog.

Back in 2005, I first heard about BodyBugg, which used a accelerometer to track body movements and make calorie adjustments for the day on a computer system. I wrote about it here:

• Starling Fitness: Bodybugg – Weight Management On Your Arm

My evaluation of these kinds of systems was pretty negative:

In the end, a piece of paper where you write down what exercise you did all day is almost as good and over $500 cheaper.

The thing is, I was WRONG. Pretty damn wrong, actually. After using the ActiveLink with the Weight Watchers system, I realized that I had been GROSSLY overestimating my exercise, even when I used a heart rate monitor. I wrote about that here:

• Starling Fitness: Weight Watchers ActiveLink

I said:

Since I followed the program exactly, I was very frustrated that I was only losing minimal amounts of weight. I now know why. I am such a SLUG during the day, that I was over-counting my exercise points. What I would have counted as four points, is only showing up as two points with the ActiveLink because my workday is so sedentary.

Suddenly, I realized that there is definitely a benefit to these accelerometers. The WW ActiveLink requires a monthly fee IN ADDITION to the fee that you pay to Weight Watchers to attend their meetings, so I thought I would try out a different one. I decided on the Fitbit Flex.

Honestly, my decision to go with the Fitbit Flex was based ENTIRELY on the fact that it worked with the Lose It! app and website, and it had interchangeable bracelets in a variety of colors. It’s a silly reason to choose an exercise gadget, but if I have to wear a bracelet every day, it better match my outfit and look kind of cute. Oh, and my friend, Roland Smith, was using a Fitbit for his workouts and it seemed to be inspiring to him as well, so I was partial to that system.

After only a day’s use, I can’t really give a good evaluation yet; I’ll add updates here later. For now, all I can say is the silent alarms are the ABSOLUTE best! I set one to wake me up this morning and Mike didn’t even turn over. I was able to get up without bothering him a bit.

Additionally, I’ve set the silent alarms to go off for my snack and meal times. I’ve had great success with meal alarms and refeeding myself like an anorexic would. I talked about that before here:

• Starling Fitness: Refeeding: A Treatment for Obesity?

The only problem with the alarms on my phone is that sometimes I’m not where my phone is, so it is chiming away while I’m working, unaware of it. By the time I notice that I’ve past my alarm time, I am starving and ready to eat FAR more than I should. In addition to that, those alarms are kind of embarrassing. I might be in the middle of a conversation with friends and the alarm goes off, disrupting everything. A silent alarm on my wrist is perfect. I turn it off, take the carrot sticks out of my purse and no one even notices.

So far, I love the Fitbit Flex, but the true proof is whether I lose weight when I use it faithfully. I did with the ActiveLink, so I suspect that the Fitbit will be the same, but I won’t know for a few more weeks. I’ll check back here and tell you how it went.

Update 01-13-14

I absolutely ADORE the Fitbit Flex. My favorite part is that it communicates with my Lose It! app, so I don’t have to worry about entering my exercise or adjust my calories. That is taken care of with the Fitbit app and syncing.

I like the Fitbit Flex more than the ActiveLink because I don’t have to pay money every month just to keep it working. They both seem to keep track of my activity as well as the other, but the Fitbit is easier to remember because it’s on my wrist, instead of hidden on my bra strap.

I LOVE the interchangeable bands in so many colors: black, dark blue, orange, lime green, aqua, slate and pink. I get a little thrill every day when I change the band to match my outfit. I don’t know why that is a factor, but I really love it.

I HATE the fastener on the bands, however.

How I WISH for a damn buckle! That little thing that is supposed to click into the holes is just HARD to do and not that secure. Please fix this, Fitbit!

I’ve had two problems with activity tracking: crocheting and cycling. If I put the Fitbit on my wrist, there is a serious problem with crocheting (and other repetitive crafts). It will read that I burned FAR more calories than I know I did. I just take it off when I’m crocheting.

When I’m riding the exercise bike, however, I have the opposite problem. It doesn’t register a workout at all. I followed the advice of some to put the bracelet on my ankle in my sock, but that didn’t register anything either. I haven’t solved this problem yet, but as soon as I do, I’ll post here.

On another note, I found a wonderful review of all the wristband fitness trackers here:

• Walking About.com: Top Wristband Activity Monitor Pedometers

I’m happy with my Fitbit Flex and have cancelled my subscription to the ActiveLink, but I’ll keep you posted on further developments here.

Update 01-27-14

I have not been able to get the Fitbit to accurately measure riding on the exercise bike. I’ve tried wearing it around my ankle under my sock and putting the Fitbit into a Nike+ pocket on my shoe. Neither one showed any significant workout, even though I worked my butt off.

Update 01-30-14

Well, it has taken nearly a month, but I’m finally used to the fastener on the Fitbit band. I can easily put it on now, where it would take me upwards of a minute to put it on before. I think I just needed to learn how to use that fastener and push it into the holes, or maybe the holes have stretched out and it’s easier.

On another note, I’ve heard that some people are having trouble with losing their Fitbit because it falls off their wrist. I haven’t had that trouble, but I’ll keep my eyes open for it.

Update 01-12-15

I have been using the fitBit for over a year now and I still love it. I am excited about the Apple Watch, but until it shows up, I am happy with the Fitbit. I found some replacement bands on Amazon because I wore my black band out and wanted some new ones. These ones were cheap:

• Zover Set Large L Replacement Bands with Clasps for Fitbit FLEX at Amazon.com

I have been really happy with my FitBit and consider it a Higher Power. I was really fooling myself when I took credit for the exercise I did, so now, I believe my FitBit, no matter what it says. I don’t even care when I don’t really get full credit for riding my bike because the app now has a way to tell it that you were exercising on a bike and it can follow along with GPS or you can enter what your stationary bike readout said.

Related entries:

• Starling Fitness – My Higher Power: Fitbit Flex
• Starling Fitness – Refeeding: A Treatment for Obesity?
• Starling Fitness – The Dual Benefits of my Silent Refeeding Alarms