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

Each week, I will give you step by step instructions on how to get into a swimsuit this summer. If you’re short on time, scroll down to the end and read “The Short Version” to get your weekly tips.

If you haven’t been following along with the program, it’s not too late to join in. Go back and do week 1 and 2’s assignments this week and you’ll only be a week behind.

• Starling Fitness » Get Into That Swimsuit This Summer: Week 1

• Starling Fitness » Get Into That Swimsuit This Summer: Week 2

If you HAVE been following along, your job last week was to wear your swimsuit around the house for an hour each day, totaling seven hours for last week. This week, you only need to wear your swimsuit and sarong for only about three hours. There’s only one catch.

You have to wear your swimsuit while you clean your house.

It’s best to just plan a three hour stretch so you can do all the normal chores that you might be spreading out over the week for this project. The reason I want you to spend a few hours in your swimming suit cleaning house is because it’s an EXCELLENT test of how your suit will handle something active like swimming, snorkeling or boogie boarding.

Notice how your suit feels when you are doing the following activities:

• Bending down to pick up laundry.
• Splashing yourself with water when cleaning the tub.
• Reaching above your head to put away dishes.
• Getting on your knees to clean out from under the couch.
• Sweating as you push the vacuum.

Whatever you normally do while cleaning, do it wearing your swimsuit and sarong. This will show you how well it will handle the beach or pool. Does the sarong keep falling off? If it does, you either need to learn a new way to tie it, a handy way to keep it attached or a new one. Does any intimate part of your body fall out when you are reaching or bending? Then you probably chose a suit that’s too tight and you need to go back to week one’s exercise. Save the tight suit for when you are thinner, but get a suit that fits you NOW.

If you feel a little embarrassed doing the house cleaning in your swimming suit, pretend that you are an island maid in Hawaii. If you were visiting Hawaii and a maid showed up at your door in a swim suit and sarong, you probably wouldn’t be that surprised. Imagine that you are cleaning a Hawaiian bungalow and enjoy your three hours testing out your suit.

The Short Version:

• Wear your swimming suit while you clean your house this week (at least three hours).

• If any intimate part of your body falls out of the suit when you are cleaning, buy a bigger suit.

Linda was a fat cat.

We knew she was getting sick because she started getting thin. In the end, she wasted away to a skeleton with fur.

When she was fat, we worried about her and put her on a restrictive diet. It never helped her get thin. It just made her a pest at feeding time.

When she finally died, I regretted every morsel of food I denied her. Why did we nearly starve her every day? It didn’t help make her thin?

She lived to be seventeen years old, which is a long, healthy life for a cat. The fat that she had back in 2001 didn’t make her less healthy. I should have just given her normal food and let her eat from a kibble dish like I did with Maggie.

Since September when Linda died, I’ve been thinking about this. What if it all is the same for me?

Each week, I will give you step by step instructions on how to get into a swimsuit this summer. If you’re short on time, scroll down to the end and read “The Short Version” to get your weekly tips.

Last week’s job was to buy a swimming suit. Did you do it? There’s still time to get into that swim suit by summer, but you need to act now. If you didn’t buy your suit and lovely sarong last week, get to the store TODAY and buy one now and then proceed with this week’s task.

If you did buy a swimming suit, the first thing you need to do is give yourself kudos. Good job for taking that first step to feeling like a goddess this summer.

This week’s challenge is simple. Wear your swim suit around the house for a total of seven hours. Now, you can do this however you want. If you want to come home from work each night and wear it for an hour, you can. If you want to wear it for seven hours in one sitting, that’s fine. However you want to do it is fine with me.

Personally, I think the best thing to do is wear it for an hour each night. That slowly eases you into the idea of wearing your swim suit.

Note that no one needs to see you wearing your suit. No family, friends or lovers need to glimpse you wearing it. You can put it on, lock yourself in the closet reading a book for an hour if you want. You don’t need to leave your room or bathroom.

You DO have to be conscious, however. Wearing your swimming suit to bed really won’t do the trick unless you like to lounge around in your P.J.s for an hour before you go to bed.

That’s all you have to do. Wear your suit for a total of seven hours this week. Have fun and see you next week!

The Short Version:

• Give yourself kudos for buying a swim suit last week.

• Wear your swimming suit around the house for a total of seven hours this week. Recommended: Wear for an hour each day this week.

• No one needs to see you. You can lock yourself in the closet, your bedroom or even the bathroom as long as you wear your suit for the allotted time.

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 keeping your body healthy. If not, here it is:

Keeping your body healthy is an expression of gratitude to the whole cosmos – the trees, the clouds, everything.

• Thich Nhat Hanh

What did you do today to show gratitude to the whole cosmos? Did you get enough sleep? Did you exercise? Did you choose something healthy? These aren’t chores. They are the best way you can tell the universe that you are grateful for your most exquisite body.

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 have been lucky enough to get to know Naked Jen in person. Introduced online by a mutual friend, I learned that she would be moving to Salt Lake City. I was so happy to have such a revolutionary woman come to live in my hometown!

Jen really talked about what she was all about in this article from her website. Be warned, her blog is EXACTLY what it sounds like, so if you are reading this from work, you might want to wait until you go home to click on the link.

• nakedjen: Real Women

“But the reason I started writing Nakedjen, the reason I get naked and share the photos of myself on line, is because I want all of us to appreciate the bodies that we have. To love ourselves. Just the way that we are. All bodies are beautiful. Our media will have us believe otherwise, as many of us who pick up any big fat glossy magazine these days can attest.”

Like the rest of us bloggers, she regularly writes about everything that fill her life, but once a week, on Naked Fridays, she shares her body with the world. This week, she let me be the photographer and we got some beautiful shots of her at home. Here’s a work-safe photo that we can share.

Next time the fashion and women’s magazines make you feel like you just don’t stack up, remember Naked Jen. She believes that you are beautiful and that you should love yourself just the way you are.

When I was watching this video, I was surprised at how sexy the main character of it is. She’s fat. She’s what the doctors would say morbidly obese, but she’s so cute.

Is it possible to be sexy and fat? What if you lose weight, does that make you even MORE beautiful?

I don’t know if you noticed, but the main character in this little animation is named Avant, which means “Before.” She was the before picture cut out of a weight loss advertisement. If you watch after the credits, she comes back and kicks the Apres (After) picture out of her spot and poses for the camera once again.

The fashion industry doesn’t care about me. The movie industry doesn’t care about me. All they want to do is sell clothing and DVDs. They are like the food industry, actually, trying to find the perfect mixture of flavor that will sell their products to as many people as possible.

So, I ask again, can you be sexy and fat? Hell ya! Remember that next time you’re getting ready for your day. You can be a red hot sexy machine and all you need to change is your attitude.

Via: Living and Loving Yourself Now and Not Only When You Reach Your Thin Dream! « HoneyBee’s Blog

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 bravery and patience. If not, here it is:

“We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world.”

• Helen Keller, US blind & deaf educator (1880 – 1968)

If you started the New Year off with a bang, then you might be running into the first stumbling stone right about now. Maybe you’re feeling hungry or you’re sore from exercising too much. Whatever it is, know that the joy from achieving your goals will outweigh whatever unpleasantness you’re feeling right now.

Take a few moments right now to really think about why you want to lose weight and get fit.

• What do you want to look like?

• What do you want to feel like?

• What do you want when people see you for the first time? What about old friends who haven’t seen you for a while?

• What kind of person will you be when you finally reach your goal weight?

Sit down with a piece of paper or write out what you want here in the comments section. Really visualize what you want and imagine the joy that you will feel when you finally get there. The stronger of a vision that you can get of the outcome you want, the more likely you’ll achieve it.

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.

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 real joy. If not, here it is:

“Real joy comes not from ease or riches or from the praise of men, but from doing something worthwhile.”

• Sir Wilfred Grenfell (1865-1940)

Whenever I start to feel down or depressed, I make a list. Not everyone is a list maker, but it works for me. I make a list of EVERYTHING that needs to be done, no matter how insignificant.

• Get out of bed
• Shower
• Get dressed
• Clean the clutter off the table

You get the idea…

Then I DO the things on the list and allow myself that brief moment of joy by checking them off the list. It’s the doing things that makes me feel better.

Sir Wilfred Grenfell insists that the things that we do must be worthwhile in order to get real joy and I won’t argue with him there. Taking care of yourself is one of the most worthwhile things that you can do, so make a list of healthy things you can do to take care of yourself and gladly check each item off every day.

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.

If you ordered yourself a Starling Fitness Yearly Journal, then you know that the quote of the month for December is:

The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work. – Richard Bach

I want to get to my goal weight. I’m not going to let Christmas get in my way. Are you? Will I call it work or deprivation? What will I do to prevent myself from feeling left out?

What about you? Are you going to let the holidays stop you from achieving what you want? Let’s get this done together and it won’t even feel like work. Take a few minutes to write down what you want to achieve this month.

The Quote of the Month is meant to be an Inner Workout for you. Find some time during the month and allow yourself to write the answers to the questions posted. You can write them on paper, on a word processor or here in the comments section. Whatever works for you as long as you do it.

Keep writing until you find out something about yourself that you didn’t know before. I’ve also heard that it works to keep writing until you cry, but that doesn’t really work for me. Whatever works for you. Just keep writing until it feels right.

To order your own Starling Fitness Yearly Journal, click here:

• Starling Fitness » Order Your Starling Fitness Yearly Journal

I used to read Dear Abby every day. Despite her never-changing hairstyle from 1956, I agreed with her advice over and over. Even when I dyed my hair black and wore combat boots, I still believed in Dear Abby’s advice.

The only problem is that Dear Abby wasn’t real. Sure, there was a real person, Pauline Esther Friedman Phillips, who was the writer until Alzheimer’s took her abilities away from her. But the woman behind that never-aging face wasn’t real.

I’m real. My face changes. When I’ve been bingeing, my face changes dramatically.

I’ve decided that I don’t want to be like Dear Abby. I want you to be able to see exactly what I look like every day. From now on, Starling Fitness will have a little photo of me by each entry I wrote, just like Dear Abby did, but I’m not going to use the same photo over and over again. I’m going to take a new photo every day. Warts and all.