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

Instead of talk about the starving around the world, the International Association of Agricultural Economists conference concentrated on obesity. More people around the world are struggling with weight than starvation, even in countries where starvation was a problem before, like China.

• Treatment Online: World Moved From Starving to Obese with Terrifying Speed

I don’t know what a gathering of economists can do about obesity, but it seems that every group of scientists is tackling this problem.

When it’s so widespread, the concept of “Eat Less and Move More” seems a little simplistic, but sometimes the most difficult problems have the most simple answers.

A lot of research is being done on something called Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis, or NEAT. It is being performed by a doctor, James A. Levine, M.D. You can see the Mayo Clinic abstracts here:

• The Mayo Clinic – About NEAT

The idea is that it is possible to burn a lot of calories over the day just by fidgeting. Being unable to sit still is actually a good thing when it comes to staying thin. His philosophy is that moving around throughout your day is a way to keep healthy and strong. He hasn’t proved it yet, but he is working on it right now with research.

Until then, how can we fidget productively?

• Every few minutes get up from your desk and walk around the office. Get a glass of water, go to the bathroom or even just stand up and jog in place. If you are tied to your desk, you can still just stand up and stretch.

• Set up an elevated desk in which you can work by sitting or standing.

• We worry so much about efficiency. Stop it. If it takes you three trips to the counter to get what you need, that’s actually better than getting it all in one trip.

• Bounce your leg while you’re sitting. Lift your arms over your head and stretch every few minutes. Roll your shoulders. Any activity burns a few calories. Take the times when your computer is loading a page, compiling a program or saving a document to fidget.

I’m sure Dr. Levine will have an entire program to teach you how to fidget productively and burn calories while you work. Until then, just remember to keep moving.

With my IBS, the doctor told me a huge list of foods that I should avoid to alleviate the gut-wrenching pain. None of it worked, yet I stuck to cutting that food out of my diet in a desperate attempt to avoid pain.

It seems the IBS sufferers aren’t the only ones getting shoddy medical advice. Heartburn sufferers have also been victims.

• Heartburn not cured by avoiding foods – Slashfood

Ever since I discovered acidophilus and my IBS calmed to a minor and smelly inconvenience, I’ve noticed that other people have also been given poor advice about gastrointestinal distress. If avoiding spicy food isn’t working for you, it’s not because you’re not doing it right. It’s because your doctor is just spewing the same old wive’s tales that didn’t work way back when.

How would it feel to get a 30-minute exercise break every day at work? What if your employer not only paid you to exercise, but provided you with a gym and personal trainer? That’s exactly what Clif Bar does for their employees.

• Treatment Online – Companies Get Creative to Cut Healthcare Premiums

So many companies have made the connection between exercise and good health that they are actually providing their employees with easy ways to exercise in an effort to cut healthcare costs. I would like to see more of this happening.

I actually worked at a company that paid us to exercise three times a week and provided a gym downstairs. Ironically, very few people took advantage of the facilities or benefits. The ones that did took advantage of the extra 30 minutes by walking to a local restaurant instead of driving. While I sweated away on my treadmill in the basement, I thought it wasn’t quite fair that walking to a restaurant counted. I guess it was better than driving.

This article says that companies that invest in health maintenance like providing a gym for its employees will save money on healthcare costs, but I would like to see some hard numbers. I didn’t really see people sweating it out during those extra 30 minutes at my former employer’s company. I wonder if policies like this are actually helpful or if they are just a bandaid on the problem.

Still, it was nice being paid to exercise three times a week…

Over the years, I have learned to feed a headache.

If I get a headache, I immediately feed myself, before I even think about taking a pain reliever. Food is my first instinct.

The saddest part of this ritual is that most of time it doesn’t even work. I would say that 90% of my headaches are caused by sinus allergies. Most of the time, I get a headache, eat and then wait an hour in pain until I finally give up and take a Sudafed.

This is all because I don’t like to take pills.

My grandma was the kind of woman who thought pills were the answer to everything. I remember at a very young age deciding that I wasn’t going to be like that when I grew up. I didn’t want to have bottles and bottles of pills. I was going to find ways to get rid of my pain without Tylenol 3, Darvocet and carisoprodol. If I couldn’t then I was just going to have to be in pain.

I found ways to deal with my pain without pills. Sadly, it was with food instead.

So, I’m breaking myself of my habit of feeding my headaches. When I get them, I am consciously staying away from food and taking a Sudafed instead. It’s a difficult habit for me to break because about 10% of my headaches are actually caused by me needing to eat. I’m slowly learning to tell the difference. Until then, this is going to be an interesting journey.

Malcolm Gladwell, author of Blink and The Tipping Point, noticed a study on health care in the U.S. and U.K.

“The United States spends $5274 per person, per year, on health care and the United Kingdom spends $2164, or substantially less than half as much. The question is—what do we get, in terms of health, that for extra $3100 a year?”

It turns out that on all levels, Americans are less healthy than Brits. If you think obesity was the nail in the coffin, think again and read his weblog:

• gladwell.com: U.S. versus U.K.

The truth of the matter is that you can’t buy health. You can’t buy it at the doctor’s office, the hospital or the drug store. You have to give it to yourself every day.

I was looking at Google Trends to find out what’s going on in the world. I compared Exercise with Eating Healthy and I was surprised to see what I found:

The blue line shows the activity surrounding “exercise” and the red line shows the activity for “eating healthy.” It seems that “exercise” is getting a lot more news media and search activity than “eating healthy.”

For me, exercise was the first step. I had decided to never diet ever again and I was just going to concentrate on walking and running. I was going to be strong and active, even if I was going to be fat. I lost a little bit of weight from this determination.

It wasn’t until I learned how to truly eat healthy, however, that I started to lose weight. It’s a two-fisted approach. Just eating healthy might help you lose weight. Just exercising might help you lose weight. Both together and you are guaranteed.

So why is “exercise” so much more popular in the searches and news articles than “eating healthy?”

Because exercise can be fun and eating healthy just sounds boring…

There are so many ways to be active that are truly fun, but no one has really come up with a way for eating healthy to be enjoyable. It seems like eating healthy is just a matter of taking away “good” things from our lives instead of giving us a benefit like stronger bodies.

Tune in tomorrow to find out why I think eating healthy can be fun.

We have heard the promises before. A magic machine that can melt fat away. It looks like researchers are still working on this goose that lays golden eggs.

• BBC NEWS | Health | Hope over laser ‘that melts fat’

They haven’t developed an effective treatment yet, but they are still looking for it:

“While this laboratory research sounds exciting, we are a long way from knowing whether or not laser therapy of this nature could be developed into an effective treatment.” – Judy O’Sullivan, of the British Heart Foundation

Every time I used to see ads for pills or machines that were supposed to “melt” away the fat, I turned away from them. I didn’t want to have to take a pill for the rest of my life. I have always wanted to find the way to live healthy and slim. I don’t want to have to go in for laser surgery every couple of months to excise the damage I did to my body. I want to eat healthy and exercise moderately so that I can be slim on my own.

If the scientists ever find a way to “melt” fat, I’ll probably just walk on by, even though it means I have to continue watching my food and keeping active. I don’t want to be dependent on some scientists’ expensive laser therapy.

Via: The Laser That Melts Fat?

This funny little article links obesity to widescreen televisions. It’s a parody and they aren’t serious, but it’s funny to read.

• SlashNOT – Obesity epidemic linked to widescreen televisions

The idea that people are getting fatter because of the way their televisions are formatted is just as absurd as some of the other theories that have been thrown around lately. Blaming your widescreen television, the PlayStation, your car or any other modern convenience for obesity is just a cop out.

I was fat because I ate too much and I exercised too little. It’s not like I didn’t have access to running shoes. It’s not like my Xbox was shoving food into my mouth. I was fat because I didn’t take care of myself. I don’t blame anything else.

The fault was all mine. That was the sucky part. I had nothing and no one to blame but myself, but the corallary to that is that now that I’m healthy, I also have no one to blame but myself. I eat less. I exercise more. No one forces me to get on the treadmill or bike. No one withholds food from me. I have done it all myself and I’m happy to announce that my fitness has NOTHING to do with a widescreen television.

I had a low blood sugar incident yesterday and I am still feeling the effects of it. Sometimes I forget that I can be sensitive to sugar. Since I’ve started eating healthy, I’ve had few blood sugar problems, so I kind of forgot that I used to have sensitivity to huge sugary treats.

Ironically, the low blood sugar problems that I used to have on a regular basis weren’t enough to get me to eat healthy. It wasn’t until my stomach started bothering me that I thought I better get my eating under control. After yesterday, that kind of shocks me. Half my day was wasted with a unplanned nap and I still feel a little yucky this morning. I used to live with this on a regular basis and it wasn’t enough for me to start taking care of myself. How did I stand it?

Now that I eat healthy, I usually don’t have to worry about low blood sugar. I have been avoiding simple sugars, so they don’t set me off and I eat protein regularly, so I just don’t have those incidents anymore. Yesterday was set off by an apple and pecan bread pudding with carmel sauce. I had plenty of room for it in my diet, but I guess my body couldn’t handle that much sugar.

I forgot how crappy I used to feel all the time. This has been a vivid reminder of why I eat healthy 90% of the time.