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

If you are one of the many people who have bought a Starling Fitness Yearly Journal, then you know that the quote of the month is about improving yourself. You can see the quote here:

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.

Anne Frank, Diary of a Young Girl, 1952

If you have been planning to just let go of your eating and fitness routine because the holidays are coming, now is THE TIME to rededicate yourself to being healthy. You don’t need to wait a single moment before you can start improving yourself. You don’t need to wait until January first. You can do it RIGHT NOW.

Just think about it. If you lose one pound a week from now until January first, you will have lost TWELVE POUNDS! Most people GAIN fifteen pounds over the holidays, so you’ll be almost 30 pounds thinner than you would have been if you just gave up.

If you have been thinking about giving up because the holidays are coming, turn right around and dedicate yourself to living healthy again. Go to Weight Watchers. Buy a food journal. Start a new class at the gym. Whatever you have to do to get motivated, get up and do it NOW. You need not wait a single moment!

If you would like to order your own Starling Fitness Yearly Journal, you can do so here:

• Starling Fitness » Order Your Starling Fitness Yearly Journal

If you order it now, you can choose the month you want it to start and it will last you a year from that date. You won’t have to throw away any unused days from the first of the year. You can start fresh now.

I saw this LOL Cat this morning and it looked like the perfect breakfast:

Two servings of fruit and one serving of cute. Sounds like a perfect combination to me. Fruit for breakfast is a great way to start your day, but don’t forget about your soul. You need to feed your soul as much as your body when you are learning how to eat healthy.

Giving yourself some cute kitten time is the perfect recipe for your morning soul feeding.

Photo via: 2 servings of fruit . . . « Lolcats ‘n’ Funny Pictures of Cats – I Can Has Cheezburger?

If you are one of the many people who have bought a Starling Fitness Yearly Journal, then you know that the quote of the month is about health. You can see the quote here:

As I see it, every day you do one of two things: build health or produce disease in yourself.

Adelle Davis , 1904-1974

Adelle Davis was a nutritionist who proposed that vitamins and minerals are essential to health. before then, science was unsure about macronutrients of food. There had been some inkling to these connections, such as citrus fruits prevented scurvy, but narrowing the search down to Vitamin C was a new science. Adelle Davis brought these concepts to the general public with her books. Her most famous book, Let’s Eat Right to Keep Fit, was originally published in 1954 and changed the way we look at food.

Next time you eat something because you think it’s good for you, send a tiny burst of good karma out to Adelle Davis who brought that idea down to its most basic level.

If you would like to order your own Starling Fitness Yearly Journal, you can do so here:

• Starling Fitness » Order Your Starling Fitness Yearly Journal

If you order it now, you can choose the month you want it to start and it will last you a year from that date. You won’t have to throw away any unused days from the first of the year. You can start fresh now.

I found this photo on Flickr a long time ago. I checked it as a favorite and then promptly forgot about writing about it. You can see the full image here:

• Modesty Ain’t A Virtue by Antarix from Flickr

I love this pile of race medals hanging on a doorknob. They are tarnished with age, but they are an easy way to measure how much has been accomplished.

How do you measure your accomplishments?

Unlike race medals, I find it hard to measure my accomplishments in the marathons of my life. If I weigh less today than I did last week, is that an accomplishment? If I go on a binge this week and gain that weight back, does that invalidate my success of last week? How do I measure my achievements?

The Scale

The scale is a pretty undeniable measure of where I am at any particular moment. It doesn’t lie to me as often as I’d like to imagine that it does. Sure there are fluctuations, but over the course of dedicated weeks, I almost ALWAYS see results. When I haven’t seen results on the scale, I have been able to track what I’ve been doing wrong, even though they seem pretty hidden to me.

• Starling Fitness » The Hidden Plateau – Part 1

• Starling Fitness » The Hidden Plateau – Part 2

Clothing

When my clothing is tighter, it’s pretty obvious that I haven’t achieved my goals, but when it gets loose and baggy, it’s an incredible motivator.

Daily Achievements

Setting goals every day and week help me notice when I’m doing well. Sometimes it takes weeks for the scale to tip or for my clothing to get looser, but if I track my daily achievements, I can feel a sense of accomplishment regularly. Here are the forms that I use to track my daily and weekly goals:

• Starling Fitness » Weight Watchers Form

• Starling Fitness » Bribe Yourself

External Validation

This can come in the form of compliments from people. It can also be as subtle as a look from a stranger. I recommend writing down every inkling you have of a compliment in a journal so you can go back and remember them when you are feeling down or when things feel hopeless.

External validation can also come in a more structured form. That is part of the reason that Weight Watchers (and other weight loss programs) are so successful. There are little goals to strive for and when you achieve them, you get a little reward. When I was attending Weight Watchers, they gave out these award star magnets.

The Dark Side

The dark side to these measurements of achievement is failure. If you slip back to a higher weight, those stars from Weight Watchers are a reminder of how heavy you have become. If your clothes start to get tighter, they are a constant disturbance that are hard to ignore. Even those running medals can feel like a stain if you can no longer run as fast or as well as you did in the past.

Don’t let these symbols of your past achievements haunt you. Instead let them remind you that you did it before and you can do it again. Cling to the knowledge that you can achieve this and all it takes are simple and steady actions every day.

This postcard from PostSecret reminded me of a friend of my grandmother who is probably long dead now.

When I was really little, I remember my grandma’s friend. As children often do, I said what I shouldn’t have said and asked her why her face was so wrinkled. She told me that when you get to be her age, you always have wrinkles, but hers were the good kind because she had smiled her whole life instead of frowning. Whenever I feel myself frown, I consciously smile so that I’ll get smiling wrinkles instead of frowning ones.

When the fashion magazines write about wrinkles, they never mention this. It is possible to be completely covered in wrinkles and still be beautiful. I know this because of my grandma’s friend. I hope to live long enough to be a good example of it myself.

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.

This postcard from PostSecret showed up a couple of weeks ago.

When I first got my drivers license, I worried that someone might be always checking the weight that I had listed on the card. This postcard would have been my worst nightmare back then, but now, I realize that there is no hiding my weight. No matter what number I put on my license, a complete stranger can see how much I weigh just by looking at me.

For the last twelve years, I have put my current weight as of that morning on my drivers license. I have always thought to myself, “When I get to goal weight, I’ll get a new drivers license.” I STILL haven’t gotten to goal weight, but at least I am completely honest with myself where I am.

No matter how many times I tell myself that it’s just a number, I’m still embarrassed by 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.

This comic from Least I Could Do really hit home for me.

• Least I Could Do: A Lesser Man Among Men 06-17-08

Sometimes I feel like a poseur. I have lost weight. I have gained weight. I have gotten my binges under control. I have let them get out of control. Right now, I’m not at my goal weight. I’m struggling just to eat healthy and exercise.

Funny thing is, when I was nearly at my goal weight, I ALSO felt like a poseur. I felt like a fat girl inside my skinny body. Now I feel like a hypocrite writing about health and fitness when it’s a struggle every day just to play on the Wii Fit.

Is it a no-win situation, or will I eventually be AND feel like a thin girl someday?

This postcard from PostSecret showed up a couple of weeks ago and it really hit home for me. It says:

I have convinced myself that I will never be pretty or be loved because I am not thin enough.

I have been willing to let myself be loved despite my physical appearance, but I am also convinced that I will never be pretty. I shrug and tell myself that being pretty isn’t as important as being smart, witty or kind. Sure, beauty is just one aspect of a beautiful person, but it’s a mighty important one, isn’t it? People will judge me within a couple of seconds based on appearance alone.

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.

This postcard from PostSecret showed up a couple of weeks ago.

It’s a pretty intense secret. It reads:

I’m 27 years old. Two years ago, I had surgery to lose 150 lbs. I am thin and beautiful now, but in my head, I still feel morbidly obese. I CAN NO LONGER HIDE BEHIND MYSELF and I am scared.

If you have ever wondered why so many people lose weight and gain it again, this postcard gives us an honest look into our minds. On the back of the postcard were written the words, “I miss being a lardass.” Getting healthy and staying there isn’t the same as just getting thin. It takes the entire body and mind to achieve and maintain that goal.

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.

I love Braidwood’s writing on why she is trying to lose weight right now:

• Reacting to the social pressure to lose weight | Authentic Threads

I would like to just not care what society says and not have my weight, up or down, be in reaction to establishment values. BUT, I am a mammal and it’s normal for me to want enough status in my group to be treated with respect and to have access to resources.

It’s true that we are judged every day by what our bodies look like. It’s not fair, but it’s true. As much as we’d like to change that, we’re going against thousands of years of evolution and a lifetime of conditioning. I’m sure that a lot of us want to be thin just so that people will adore and envy us.

Is that a “bad” reason to want to get healthy?

I don’t think so. External validation might be difficult to maintain, but it is an important facet of being human. What do you think?