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

I had an epiphany the other day. I have been struggling with my eating and exercise. I will get everything in order and start exercising again. Then I’ll have to go out of town on a trip and I’ll forget everything I’ve learned because I get out of the habit.

I realized that habits are like baby animals. They are very delicate and it’s surprisingly easy to kill them. It takes only a few days of neglect and they die on me and I have to start again. I imagined my habits for healthy eating to be like a fuzzy weeple-like animal and I suddenly felt guilty for all of those I have killed over the last year.

If I had an ACTUAL baby animal who was depending on me to keep it alive, there is no way that I would leave it alone in the house while I went out of town. I would defer my trip, find someone to take care of it, or bring it with me.

Since habits can’t be sent to the kennel and I’m not willing to put my life on hold until I get to goal weight, I guess I’m going to have to take this baby animal habit pet with me when I go out of town again. If I think of my habits as a defenseless baby animal who needs to be nurtured and cared for constantly, what would I do differently?

• Find a hotel that will allow me to have my pet: If I had a puppy that I had to take with me on my trip, I would need to find a hotel that allowed dogs. The same is true for new habits. I need to make sure that the hotel has an exercise room and a fridge in my room for healthy snacks and meals.

• Take care of my pet EVERY day no matter what: Just because I’m out of town doesn’t mean that my habits should suffer. I wouldn’t allow my puppy to go without attention all day. I need to give just as much attention to my new habits as I would a helpless puppy.

• Provide special food for my pet: I wouldn’t expect the hotel breakfast to have the proper food for a newborn puppy. Why do I expect it to have it for my healthy diet? The truth of the matter is that it’s possible to eat healthy at most complimentary hotel breakfasts, but depending on them to provide me with the food I need is just as stupid as expecting a hotel to have puppy chow on hand.

• Make sure my pet has fresh water: I don’t know why I tend to skimp on drinking water when I’m out of town, but I continually find myself thirsty and parched. I can’t even imagine leaving a small animal without fresh water. Why do I do it to myself?

Imagining my newborn habits as a baby animal has made me more aware at how stupid I have been over the last year. I have allowed countless habits die of neglect and I have brushed each of their deaths off as “falling off the wagon.” If each of those habits had been a hamster, I would feel like a serial killer by now, but I’ve let them die with hardly a thought.

I always knew that nurturing my new habits was more difficult when I was traveling. Now, I have a visual representation of why it’s harder and what I need to do to keep my precious little ones alive while I’m out of town.

This postcard from PostSecret made my eyes fill with tears.

It reads:

I did not get enough of these as a kid.

Despite my many awards and certificates, I feel like I didn’t get enough stars as a kid either. No matter how many gold stars I earn, it never feels like enough. I would probably feel the same even if I won an Webbie, an Academy Award or a Grammy.

What do I do when all the accolades aren’t enough?

PostSecret‘s beneficiary is the National Hopeline Network. It is a 24-hour hotline (1 (800) SUICIDE) for anyone who is thinking about suicide or knows someone who is considering it.

You might think that getting a pedicure or massage has nothing to do with losing weight, but I’ve been shocked to realize that they do. I went to my favorite nail shop today to get a pedicure and I was surprised by how good it made me feel.

I use food to make myself feel better. I know I’m not alone in this. Not everyone who is overweight uses food to pamper themselves, but an awful lot of us do. When I’m eating healthy, I don’t get that nurturing effect from carrot sticks and hummus as I do from potato chips and sour cream.

Pampering myself with a pedicure gives me the same relaxation and comfort as eating an entire box of cookies, but what works for me might not work for you. You need to ask yourself what makes you feel nurtured and pampered.

What do you avoid doing because it costs too much money? I always think that pedicures cost too much, but the truth of the matter is that they cost less than a binge at a fast food restaurant. If getting a new coat of polish on my toenails prevents me from eating us out of house and home, it’s totally worth it.

The next time you’re tempted to binge, try something different that will make you feel pampered. You might just find that food doesn’t work nearly as well as the other options available to you.

At the end of December, Weight Watchers started including little magazine handouts at every meeting. This year’s New Year’s Resolution that I set was to attend Weight Watchers EVERY week so I could collect all of the handouts.

It’s funny how something as simple as a little paper handout can get my butt into the Weight Watchers door. The desire to “collect all 52” is so strong that I actually have attended meetings in Las Vegas and Del Mar already this year. Even though it was a pain in the butt to find a meeting in a unfamiliar city, I made sure that I attended my meetings.

Ironically, just getting my body into the door helps me every week. They always have something motivating to talk about and even if I HATE the teacher in the other towns, the members have stories that have kept me going.

I know Weight Watchers doesn’t work for everyone and I certainly accept that their program isn’t PERFECT, but attending the meetings every week has kept my motivation level far higher than it was last year at this time. And I can thank those weekly handouts for it all.

From the very start of this video from John Dilworth at Ignite Salt Lake City, I was so inspired!

We live our lives by a code of action. We’ve gotta keep busy doing everything we can to avoid doing nothing. We’ve been taught that doing anything is better than doing nothing.

Here are some quotes from his presentation:

There are good actions and bad actions, but there is another type of action, where we think we’re doing something good, but we’re really doing something bad that is harmful to ourselves and to others.

Inaction is instant. The very second you decide to do nothing, you’re done.

Inaction is inexpensive. If you don’t do crap that you don’t need to do, you save time and you save money.

Inaction is infinitely scalable. You can NOT do an infinite number of things simultaneously.

When you’re deciding what to do, remember that sometimes inaction is a viable option and sometimes it might be better than doing just anything.

How many times have I been so desperate to lose weight that I’ve tried a stupid diet? Umm… How about EVERY time a new stupid diet comes along?! It would have been so much better for me to just NOT try the diet. I didn’t keep the weight off anyway, so I ended up doing one of those actions that I thought was good, but was really doing harm to myself.

My long-time readers might think that this goes against my favorite quote from my grandfather:

Make a decision, even if it’s wrong.
– Jarvis Klem

You can always decide to do nothing. Just make the decision.

The next time you’re tempted to start a fad diet that goes against all that you know about healthy eating, remember the power of inaction. The next time you’re tempted to exercise too hard, risking injury, remember the power of inaction. It would be better to do NOTHING than to do something harmful to yourself just for the sake of doing ANYTHING.

Next time you’re feeling like overeating, take a moment and watch this animation for a little while.

Sometimes just seeing the phrase, “I love you,” is enough to distract me from eating and helps me keep on track. It turns out that sometimes I try to eat instead of just letting myself experience positive emotions.

Animated GIF via: * Your daily gif blog *: For That Special Someone!

Shame on The New York Times for saying that Christina Hendricks is anything but the totally hot babe that she is. For their review of the red carpet for the Golden Globe Awards, their fashion critic wrote, “You don’t put a big girl in a big dress.” Apparently, only size zero is good enough for The New York Times.

Christina Hendricks is one of the stars of Mad Men and her curvy beauty makes all the men’s heads turn. What the frak could that fashion critic for the New York Times have been thinking?!! Just look at her give Betty the low down on the office here:

• Mad Men – Joan (Christina Hendricks) gives Peggy the 411

I first saw Christina Hendricks in the excellent science fiction series, Firefly, over eight years ago. She played the evil genius, Saffron, who nearly wiped out the brave crew of Firefly and almost outwitted Captain Malcolm Reynolds.

You can see her in her evil and busty glory here:

The next time a comment from someone makes you feel like your body doesn’t quite measure up, remember the idiotic fashion critic at The New York Times. There are always imbeciles out there whose sole goal in life is to bring other people down. Don’t let them decide how you feel about your body. Walk with the grace and swagger of Christina Hendricks and keep your head high.

Last month, I wrote about this song and why I put it on my workout playlist.

• Starling Fitness » Monday Music Motivation: Week One

Everything You Know Is Wrong by Weird Al Yankovic: This song is kind of silly and the verses sing about everything EXCEPT working out (unless you count the Almighty running past your room in heaven). The chorus, however, reminds me that sometimes I believe things that aren’t true. If I’m feeling like I can’t finish my workout, listening to this song is really good at showing me that I might be wrong.

Apparently, this concept is new and can be a revelation to some. Here is a TED Talk about this very idea from Derek Sivers:

I love this quote from him:

I love that sometimes we need to go to the opposite side of the world to realize assumptions that we didn’t even know we had and realize that the opposite may also be true.

• Derek Sivers, TED Talk: Weird, or just different? Nov 2009

It’s the truth. Everything you know is wrong. If you think diets don’t work, then you’re wrong. If you think exercise makes you hungry, then you’re wrong. If you think your diet is the perfect one for everybody, then you’re wrong. If you think hard exercise is the best way to lose weight, then you’re wrong. No matter what you think about diet and fitness, you’re wrong. There is always someone out there who does well on a wacky diet. There is always someone out there who reacts to exercise differently. We are such a diverse species that there is a way for everything to work and there is a way for everything to fail.

You need to find what works for you and keep doing it until it doesn’t work anymore and then start the process all over again.

The next time that you feel like you can’t follow your diet anymore, repeat to yourself, “Everything you know is wrong.” The next time you feel like you are going to stop your workout before it’s finished, repeat to yourself, “Everything you know is wrong.” Make it your mantra any time that little voice inside your head is telling you that you cannot do something and you’ll find out all the different ways you have been wrong your entire life.

This postcard from PostSecret gave me a new motivation to get fit and thin.

It reads:

I often wonder if I’ve ever been caught in an obesity news segment.

The thought of seeing myself on the news as an example of the obesity epidemic made my stomach turn. I know they have the right to film people in public and show them on television as long as they don’t show their faces, but it just seems cruel and wrong to me.

It’s just one of the those reasons for me to get my butt on the treadmill every day. If eating healthy and exercising every day is what I have to do to keep myself from that embarrassment, then I’m ready and willing to do it.

PostSecret‘s beneficiary is the National Hopeline Network. It is a 24-hour hotline (1 (800) SUICIDE) for anyone who is thinking about suicide or knows someone who is considering it.

Last November, we took a trip to Houston to see the NASA control center. They sold these bracelets there.

I bought myself one because I had just heard the story about Apollo 13 again.

After four days of nail-biting tension, the Apollo 13 command module Odyssey splashed down into the Pacific Ocean. Astronauts Jim Lovell, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert had safely returned to Earth despite an explosion that took out much of their service module during their aborted trip to the Moon.

And although he never actually said the words back then, it was the Kranz character in the Ron Howard movie “Apollo 13,” who said aloud what everyone at NASA believed during those tough days in 1970: “Failure is not an option.”

Every time my workout gets a little hard or I’m tempted to eat when I don’t really feel hungry, I look at this bracelet. Failure is NOT an option. Keep on running. Walk away from that dessert. Get enough sleep and drink another glass of water.