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

I have this old Fleetwood Mac song in my Workout playlist. It reminds me of President Clinton and how enthusiastic we were when he was first elected. It seemed like a good, upbeat song to put in my list. You can hear it here:

The truth is, thinking about tomorrow has gotten me into a lot of trouble in the past.

“I’ll start eating right again tomorrow,” while stuffing my face with food.

“I’ll start running again tomorrow,” while sitting on the couch, watching too much television.

“I’ll get some healthy snacks tomorrow,” while skipping my snack time, allowing myself to get too hungry and binge the next meal.

Tomorrow has gotten me into a BUNCH of trouble. I know this is a long journey and the long view will help with that, but I’ve used the promise of tomorrow to CONTINUE the bad practices of today. Instead of all those horrible lies, I said to myself, I should have been thinking of NOW.

“I’ll start eating right NOW,” while putting down the binge food, throwing it away or spitting it out.

“I’ll start running NOW,” while lacing up my running shoes and putting the leash on the dog.

“I’ll get some healthy snacks NOW,” while running quickly to the closest store to get fruit and veggies for my snacks.

NOW is far more powerful than TOMORROW. I don’t know why I never saw that before.

I love this image from healthy moi

It reads:

Eat Train Sleep Be Humble

I especially like the final “Be Humble.” THAT is exactly what has tripped me up EVERY time I’ve started getting my eating in order. I talked about that before here:

• How To Be Humble
• Accepting Your Limitations
• Appreciating Others
• Rediscovering a Sense of Wonder

Back then, I said:

I have noticed a strange pattern in my weight loss journey. EVERY time I start to see some success and talk about it here on Starling Fitness, I end up backsliding again. It has made me skittish, superstitious and unwilling to share any positive experiences I’ve had.

That’s why I love this image. It reminds me to be humble.

Via: Funeral For My Fat

I know this is a commercial for batteries, but I still LOVE it.

I love that line:

They didn’t call my name. Told me it was over. But I been deaf since I was three. So I didn’t listen.

Made me cry and inspired me to keep going. Thanks, Derrick Coleman. I sincerely had never heard of you before this Duracell commercial, but good going! I heard you won that Super Bowl thing, so congratulations.

This advertisement from Asics is amazing!

It reads:

Sound Mind Sound Body: Running releases more than just sweat

It’s true. There is one moment in every run where I feel a huge sigh of relief. I have to be paying attention to notice it past all the jiggling, puffing and sweating, but it’s there with every workout.

In fact, there are times when running has actually SAVED me time throughout my day. When I’m running, my mind wanders over the things I need to do. If I take a second and write down all the things I remember on my run, I have an instant to-do list that has saved me more time than it took to run.

Don’t let excuses get in the way of your workout. Remember that exercise helps your mental health as well as your physical health and get your butt off the couch.

One thing that I have found to help keep my eating under control is daily meditation. It’s not easy for me. In fact, over the years, it feels just as hard to keep my mind free from distractions as it was when I started, but I’ve noticed that when I meditate for about 15 minutes every day, eating healthy is easier.

The app I have used for meditation for over the last couple of years is Ambiance. I like that they are cross-platform, with apps for iPhone, iPad, desktop and Android. It’s not a free app (the price is currently at $2.99), but it has worked better than anything else I’ve used for meditation.

I love that there are so many free audio clips to choose from. And, you can also record your own favorite sounds, like the redwing blackbirds on your walk by the stream or the cackling magpies outside your window. There is probably a audio clip of any of your favorite sounds already in the store, though, so you don’t have to be a brilliant audio engineer.

I use the Quickstart feature that knows that I do fifteen minutes of meditation and like the app to cycle through the sounds randomly every minute. All of that, I set up in the settings menu and makes it literally a one-tap action to get the app going for my meditation.

You can also use Ambiance to fall asleep. You set it to the amount of time you want and have the audio slowly fade out until it turns itself off at the end. It’s wonderful for a peaceful way to fall asleep.

My sister even used Ambiance when they were living in a hotel to keep the dogs from barking at every little noise. They would turn on one of the White Noise audio clips and the sound would drown out the other hotel visitors. It worked wonders.

I have been using Ambiance for a LONG time, so I was surprised that I hadn’t spoken about it here. It’s one of those things that has helped me stay sane, so I feel as if I haven’t been grateful enough because I haven’t told the world about it. I don’t think I could meditate without Ambiance anymore. It has helped me keep my mind free of distractions and my life free of binges.

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!

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

A long time ago, I was listening to a mountain climber talking about climbing mountains, clinging to those red cliffs here in Utah. He said,

You think about letting go LONG before you actually let go.

I was reminded of this the other day. I think about eating poorly LONG before I actually do it. If I could just stop thinking about it, I probably would never let go. I just need to STOP thinking and hold on!

Image via: Uzbekistan Mountain Climbing

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.

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.

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

According to wikiHow, the last way to learn how to be humble is to rediscover a sense of wonder.

Every time I have searched with a child-like wonder, I have been rewarded with weight loss success, so keeping that alive is vital.

You Haven’t Seen It All.

This one is the hardest for me and it falls back to the accepting my limitations section. EVERY day, nutritionists, doctors and scientists are working on this problem of obesity. There is NO way I can keep up with all they have discovered, so I need to keep an open mind when I read new articles, studies and ideas. I haven’t seen it all and maybe there is something new to learn or see there.

React to Conflict with Gentleness.

So many of my backslides have been caused by dealing with conflict and negative emotions with food. Practicing gentleness helps me stop eating away my bad feelings and helps me to DEAL with them. Most people who I have had conflict with have reacted quite positively when I calmly respond. There is a slim percentage of people who think that sort of reaction is an invitation to more abuse and those folks need to be excised from your life. For everyone else, people react far more positively when you are kind, gentle and respectful.

Spend More Time in Nature.

This is HARD to preach in the dead of winter, but spending time OUTSIDE will help you. It’s not just the exercise that is beneficial when I hike the mountains, walk the beach or paddle the lake. The sheer beauty of nature is enough to let all negative emotions dissipate. For someone like me, who eats all her feelings away, finding other ways to deal with negative emotions feels like a miracle.

Meditate.

Science has shown that meditation changes the human brain, making it calmer and more resilient. Believe me, it’s difficult to do. I’ve talked about it on my personal blog here:

• Pick Me! » Meditating at the Gym

Taking fifteen minutes every day to think about nothing has helped me handle those stressful food situations.

Spend More Time with Children.

Who has not been humbled by our own lack of knowledge when faced with the barrages of “why” questions from a child? It’s a stunning example of my own limitations. I don’t know everything, but I can at least try to find things out. Additionally, sometimes kids know what to do better than I do. They don’t exercise, they PLAY! Adding more play into my life is the perfect way to keep that sense of wonder alive.

Rediscover A Sense of Wonder.

Keeping humility strong within me is a struggle, but one I’m willing to work at.

More Humility Advice

• How To Be Humble
• Accepting Your Limitations
• Appreciating Others
• Rediscovering a Sense of Wonder
• Eat Train Sleep Be Humble