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

According to wikiHow, the second way to learn how to be humble is to appreciate others.

This aspect of humility has given me the most trouble, especially on Starling Fitness.

Appreciate The Talents of Others.

There is a lot to be said about recognizing the successes of other people. I have posted a few entries about the weight loss of celebrities here, but never from ordinary people. I’ve never asked you to share your weight loss stories with me to post here. I find them inspiring, but I feel an incredible shame that I have never even ASKED you to share your stories with me.

That all stops now. If you have had great success at weight loss, tell me about it here:

• Starling Fitness Success Stories

I will contact you for pictures and post your success right here on Starling Fitness.

STOP Comparing Yourself to Others.

I’ve talked about this before here:

• Starling Fitness – Bingeing
• Starling Fitness – Don’t Let Comparison Steal Your Joy

Every time I have let jealousy be a driving factor in my weight loss, I have failed. Comparing my weight loss with other people has hurt me. Comparing my food logs with other people has hurt me. Comparing my food plan with other people has hurt me. It’s not the losses, the food logs or plans that have hurt me. It’s the comparison.

Listen To And Take Advice.

People come out of the woodwork when you tell them that you’re trying to lose weight. I have always just nodded politely and let them tell me about their great plan, but lately, I’ve take a different approach that has helped me. I LISTEN to them. Almost every bit of advice given was given with love and caring, so I listen to it and follow it to the best of my ability.

Let Go of Preconceived Notions.

Scientists are taught to create theories, but let go of the outcome of the experiment. We may believe something is true and find that the data for the experiment shows an entirely different outcome. The same is true for us. If I let go of all my thoughts and theories about weight loss and let the DATA speak for itself, then I will know if I am following the proper food plan or not. Am I losing weight? Am I constantly hungry? Can I forget about food for even ONE minute of the day? Letting go of all my ideas about weight loss and looking at the answers to these questions is a far more effective way to live.

Treat Everyone As A Teacher.

This corresponds to the Listen To And Take Advice section. There are times when I sincerely do NOT know what to do. I have been in a panic about a meal or a situation. Every time that I have turned to Twitter, Facebook or even my friends on Lose It, I end up with people who have helped me with my problem. Being willing to accept that I don’t know everything and maybe someone out there does, has helped me in the past. The scientific term for that concept is crowd-sourcing and it is a tool that can direct you in ways you may have never thought of before.

Appreciating Others

I feel the worst about how little I have even THOUGHT about others, except to compare myself to them. It is the aspect of humility where I need the most work, and I am willing to do it.

More Humility Advice

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

According to wikiHow, the first way to learn how to be humble is to accept your limitations.

Here is the list in detail:

You Can’t Do Everything

This belief overcame me not too long ago and I talked about it on Starling Fitness here:

• Starling Fitness – Refeeding: A Treatment for Obesity?

I realized that my hunger response is BROKEN. I can’t control it, no matter how much I eat. I am hungry all the time and it has NOTHING to do with how I have fed myself. Knowing that I have no control over my digestive system was a revelation to me. I can’t do everything. I can’t even control my hunger.

You Don’t Know Everything

EVERY time I think I have figured out what is best for weight loss, I have a problem. EVERY time. It has taken me TEN freakin’ years to learn that I know NOTHING about physiology. Not even all the doctors and nutritionists know everything.

Whenever I have just given up all hope of knowing and just mindlessly followed a plan, I have lost weight. It didn’t matter what plan: Weight Watchers, Atkins, anything. As long as I didn’t try to tweak anything, I lost weight. The instant I tried to change the plan, I would start gaining again.

I don’t know anything. I’m just going to choose a food plan and freakin’ stick to it without trying to inject any of my “wisdom.”

You Have Faults. Find Them. Fix Them.

Every time I overeat, it’s because of one of my faults. It’s NEVER about the food. It’s ALWAYS about my emotions and my inability to face up to the fact that I’m fearful, conceited, and stubborn.

Be Grateful for What You Have.

I don’t spend enough time acknowledging all the things that truly WORK in my life. My body, that I have maligned and starved and stuffed over the years, is a marvel. Despite my being almost one hundred pounds overweight, I can exercise every day. It’s an instant access to a touch of happiness when I can run without pain, and I get that feeling every day I get my butt off the couch.

Make Mistakes And Learn from Them.

I have made hundreds of mistakes over these last ten years. I like to think that I have learned from them, but have I really? I honestly feel like I should do full entry retractions from entries I’ve written over the years to fully understand how my faults played a part in my failures.

At the same time, I can’t let all those mistakes over the years keep me from trying again. Here I am, despite all my lack of success, to do my best and make more mistakes if I have to.

STOP Bragging!

The biggest backslides I’ve made have been after every bragging session I’ve made here. I’m not successful. When I am, my path may not be the path for anyone else but me. I am happy to document what has worked, but it is SO important that I learn not to brag about my success here. Right now, even the smallest downward movement on the scale is a great accomplishment in my mind, but the moment I brag about it here, I am lost again.

Give Credit Where It’s Due.

Weight Watchers has been a victim of much complaining on my part, but honestly, those weekly meetings and my leader have been incredibly helpful. Low carb has been hailed and vilified both on this very blog, but honestly, my hunger abated when I ate a higher percentage of protein and fat, keeping my carbs low.

I have done my best to link to any video or article that has helped me on this journey, so I feel as if I have done my best on this concept, but at the same time, I worry that any ideas I’ve had are never fully my own and I’ve mistakenly not given credit.

Accepting My Limitations

I’m not perfect. I’m not even close. I have NO idea how to curb this unyielding hunger, but that isn’t going to stop me from trying. I will humbly keep searching and faithfully follow the food plan I’ve chosen for myself.

More Humility Advice

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

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.

I think it all boils down to humility. When I post entries to Starling Fitness, I’m bragging. Somehow, that bragging is the polar opposite of the way I need to act for losing weight. I started Starling Fitness over TEN years ago and it has taken me this long to learn this one simple message.

I NEED TO BE HUMBLE.

The act of humility is the one thing that can make losing weight EASIER. EVERY time I’ve humbled myself, admitting that I don’t know everything, I have found a better way of living. The sad truth is that we Westerners just aren’t taught how to be humble. When I did a search, I found mostly religious references, which leave me feeling lost as an atheist. I did find one list on wikiHow:

• 3 Ways to Be Humble – wikiHow

Their list of ways to learn how to be humble are:

• Accepting Your Limitations
• Appreciating Others
• Rediscovering a Sense of Wonder

I’ll be writing about these three methods of humility as they relate to weight loss for the next few days, and hopefully, I’ll be able to learn to share here without sabotaging my efforts.

I saw this picture on Funeral For My Fat and it helped me today.

It reads:

The only real failure in life is the failure to try.

I’ve started “trying” again. I have been “trying” for YEARS. I have been “trying” for my whole freakin’ life, actually.

I wrote my first Starling Fitness entry on October 29, 2003. My ten year anniversary came and went without mention because I’m STILL trying. I’m not at a healthy weight. I’m not physically fit. Fighting entropy and my own disordered eating is still a struggle after all of these years.

And I feel like a failure.

Shouldn’t I be at goal by now? I’ve had ten LONG years to do it! Why am I still fighting this?

I may feel like a failure, but I’m not, because I’m still trying. I’m still working on it. Perhaps I will find the way to conquer this ethereal hunger that doesn’t seem to plague skinny people. The only way I can find the answer is to keep looking. Keep working out and to keep trying.

I saw this motivational poster on Fitness, Health, And Confidence and I really love it.

It reads:

Today is another chance to make yourself proud.

When I am feeling like a worthless slug, I forget that it only takes a few, small accomplishments to feel like a superhero. Seriously, the difference between feeling like a complete and utter failure and a successful person is only a few minor chores:

• Exercise for 20 minutes
• Eat within my caloric restrictions
• Clean something in my home
• Do some work to get paid
• Meditate for 15 minutes
• Write in my private journal

Seriously, this is the bare minimum that I have to do to stop feeling like a flatulent bum. It’s such a low bar, but it is so essential for my mental health.

The saddest thing is that I FORGET! I forget that all I have to do is this small list of things to be happy. I can wallow in sadness and lethargy for DAYS without remembering that this is all I have to do to get myself out of the pit.

Why?

Why? I’ll tell you: PERFECTIONISM. My mind is wired for perfectionism and it’s not enough for it to exercise for 15 minutes. It has to do an hour of cardio and a full weight-training routine. 20 minutes of walking on a treadmill might be enough to get me out of a depressive funk, but that’s not good enough for my poor, broken mind. Because it sets such impossible standards, I end up doing NOTHING. Instead of doing the measly 20 minutes on the treadmill, I avoid exercise altogether because doing an hour is too hard.

SET YOUR GOALS LOW! Seriously, just set them low and meet them, every freakin’ day. If you do more than your goals, great, but don’t raise the bar. Keep your goals at that minimum and you just might accomplish more than you ever have done before. Be humble about your abilities, accomplish something EVERY day, and you will feel like a superhero instead of a slug.

I was at Dillards the other day and I saw this display.

I needed some workout clothes, so I wandered over there to see what they had. Unfortunately, the “Large” size that they had couldn’t have been bigger than a size 12. Shame on you, Nike!

I have had this problem with them before and talked about it here:

• Starling Fitness – Fitness, diet, and health weblog » Why I’m Angry At Nike
• Starling Fitness – Fitness, diet, and health weblog » Nike! What The BLEEP Is The Matter With YOU?!

Back then, I said:

The fact that they don’t carry a size for me when I’m fifty pounds lighter, just tells me that they aren’t an athletic clothing company. They’re a fashion clothing company just like Kenneth Cole. They don’t want “fatties” like me wearing their clothes and giving them a bad name.

I wrote that entry in 2006. It’s SEVEN years later and they are STILL making the same mistakes. I was going to write an entry about the new Nike App called Nike+ Move that would turn your iPhone 5S into a device that monitors your every move like a FitBit, ActiveLink or Fuelband, but I don’t even want to give them a link now.

In the end, we left Dillards and went to Forever 21. They had plenty of exercise clothes to fit me.

I saw this quote on work sweat achieve. It reads:

The hardest battle you will ever have to fight is between who you are now and who you want to be.

I liked it so much that I made a motivational poster of it with Ali from The Biggest Loser, because she is still so inspiring to me.

Apparently, on Twitter the hashtag #FatShamingWeek is trending and a bunch of really mean tweets are associated with them. I could go on an on talking about this and HAVE in the past. You can read some of those entries here:

• Why Do Skinny People Hate Fat People?
• Why Do Skinny People Hate Fat People? REDUX
• Tired of High-Tech Fat Hatred
• Your Chubby Lass Can Be the Belle of her Class
• The Biggest Loser
• Skinny Bitches
• We hate her

This video from Meghan Tonjes, however, is so succinct that I thought I’d share it with you.

I love her:

You have a right to your opinion and you have a right to express that opinion, but you also, within that bundle of rights, have the right to sound like an asshole. Make jokes about whatever it is that you want to make jokes about, but this goes beyond jokes. This goes to a mindset that people have that it’s okay to make people feel that they’re not worthy of respect or love.

I refuse to entertain the notion that publicly shaming people for being big or fat or anything that makes you uncomfortable is anything but completely demeaning, ignorant and disgusting.

If you’re focusing on tearing people down, it’s because you’re miserable and misery loves company.

THE BEST QUOTE:

It’s no one’s job to defend themselves as being worthy of existence.

Here’s some good advice to all those people who think it’s their job to police other people’s bodies.

You’re making the world WORSE. STOP! Why aren’t you making the world BETTER?! The rest of us are fighting to make this world a little better for everyone else, and you’re slowly just fucking it up!

My thoughts about this issue is that these people are STARVING. When they are so hungry and see someone who is fat, they get jealous, thinking that person is eating everything that they’ve denied themselves and they lash out.

The saddest truth of all is that most of the people who are fat are ALSO starving, trying their hardest to get thin. And when they see thin people, they get angry because they think that those people didn’t have to work to get where they are and lash out, calling them skinny bitches and yelling, “Just eat a sandwich.”

How about this radical idea? How about no one starve themselves? When we feed ourselves properly, there is no starvation and no reason to lash out at anyone.

Via: “#FatShamingWeek” Except congress. Seriously… – Hank’s Tumblr

That ARThletic Girl posted a couple of images (one of which she drew herself) with the motto: Don’t let comparison steal your joy. This is what she said:

This has recently become my life motto. I find that comparing myself and my life to other people is dangerous for my self esteem. Sometimes it does me some good because it makes me appreciate what I am and what I have, but more often than not it leaves me feeling inadequate and a whole bunch of things I’m most probably not.

First, she posted this one, which is beautiful and simple.

But this one really drives home the point.

I have talked about this issue before on my personal blog:

• Pick Me! – The Girl With The Most Cake

Back then, I said:

Does it matter that I’m not the girl with the MOST cake? Nope. All that matters is that I bring it, every day. Time to put down the cake now.

That was back in 2006 and I really have STILL not recovered from that SXSW trip. I am STILL struggling with bingeing and I haven’t gotten back to the weight that I was on that trip. I am still trying to stuff my face with the most cake, when really what I want is…

What do I want?

Maybe that’s the problem…

For seven LONG years, I have been letting comparison steal my joy and stuffing cake down my gullet to compensate for it. I’m printing up that image and plastering it to EVERYTHING until I get over this.

This motivational poster from MotiveWeight really inspired me.

It reads:

All our dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them.

I think I like it so much because the fat girl is pretty and looks happy. You can be pretty, happy and still want to pursue your dreams, even if your dream is to be thinner.