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

I love this little animation of a yellow guy running. It really gives a good idea of the quiet and calm that I can get from an early morning run.

Running on the treadmill never felt like this, so that’s why I started filming the Starling Fitness Walking Videos. Now I get that same sense of calm and wonder on my treadmill as well.

Via: Spokane Al: Another Nice Video

I LOVE this video of an Exotic Aerobics class dancing. They are from Lady of Essence fitness club in Texas.

Every one of the women in this class is a DIVA! I loved watching them all! Women of all sizes shaking their booty! Terrific motivation to keep exercising and to keep healthy!

If my digestive tract is a symbiont inside of me, how do I communicate with it? If there is a dumb animal inside of me that controls how much I eat, how do I tell it what I want? If there is a beast within me that makes me overeat, how do I retrain it?

It all made me think back to my dog, Sid. We adopted Sid as an adult dog from a rescue shelter. He came knowing a few tricks, but he didn’t know the most important three: sit, come and stay. How did we teach him those tricks?

• Positive Reinforcement: We gave him treats when he did things right. He usually did them right by accident, but when he did, we gave him a treat and LOTS of praise.
• Negative Reinforcement: We scolded him when he did things wrong. We withheld the treat when he didn’t do the trick correctly.
• Repetition: We spent HOURS and HOURS working with him. There were some days when we put his food in a bowl and doled it out a few kibbles at a time as treats to teach him what he needed to know.
• Mimicry: I’ve heard that some dogs learn tricks from other dogs. We’ve never been able to do that with Sid because he’s an only dog, but I’ve seen that happen with others.

The problem is, my symbiont isn’t a dog. Most importantly, it’s a lot dumber than my dog. How do I retrain the beast within me?

Animals want a lot of things. You can reward them with food, but there are a lot of things that the beast inside of me may be appeased with:

• Sex
• Food
• Praise
• Play
• Comfort
• Safety
• Community / Pack / Herd

Whenever I’m thinking about how to reward the beast within me, I look at this list.

I think it’s very important that I give the reward immediately after the healthy act. So, if I exercise, I eat some healthy food immediately afterward. If I choose a healthy dish, I immediately praise myself. If I refrain from eating dessert, I grab my Nintendo DS and play a fun game as a reward. If I have a perfect day, I spend some time with a good friend either on the phone or in person.

I realize that this is not a quick process. It took us MONTHS to train Sid how to sit, come and stay and he was only a two year old dog. My symbiont has had forty years of controlling my actions, so retraining it to do things that are healthy for me will take some time.

Thinking of my body as a joined species with my intellect as one and my digestive tract as the other has really helped me. There are times when I call Sid and he STILL doesn’t come. He’s just a dumb animal and needs a little more training. The same is true for my symbiont. I’m in the process of retraining the beast inside of me.

I have always felt like there was something else controlling me when it came to eating. I could always get the motivation to exercise consistently, but eating healthy has been a struggle for me my whole life.

I always chalked it up to lack of self-control, but honestly it was more than that. When I filmed this video back in 2006, I was struggling with a beast:

It was like there was a beast inside of me that wanted to eat as much as I could because Mike was out of the house. To be completely honest, that beast won that war. Not that day, but over the last three years, I have been unable to control it.

Yesterday, I talked about my digestive tract being a symbiont within me. An animal that lives within my body that controls how much I eat. It might be an incredibly DUMB animal with only one hundred million neurons in its “brain,” but it is a STRONG animal. It can take control of me when I least expect it.

How can I retrain the beast within me? How can I make it understand that I want to be thin? It’s not like I can just sit down and have a little conversation with the animal inside of me. I have to train it like a dog to do what I want instead of what it wants.

Tune in tomorrow for some ideas on how to retrain the beast within all of us.

Back in February, I had a nasty case of food poisoning. It was like my digestive tract was at war with the rest of my body. I was hungry, but anything I ate was immediately expelled (from both sides). I could feel my entire digestive tract complain in pain from my throat to my colon.

In my fevered state, I imagined my digestive tract to be a completely other being inside of me just like the Trill in Star Trek. This portion of the episode, The Host, explains very quickly about the Trill:

The Trill are a joined species with a host and a symbiont. When Odon’s host body was injured in an attack, Dr. Crusher must implant the symbiont into Commander Riker. The symbiont controls Riker’s body and both consciousnesses live in the body together. Odon makes Riker do things that he normally wouldn’t do, like kiss Beverly Crusher.

In my fevered state, I realized that I have a symbiont: my digestive tract.

According to Wikipedia, my digestive system has a huge array of nerves that control it called the enteric nervous plexus. It has as many as 100,000,000 neurons. Now, that’s only a thousandth of the neurons that we have in our brains, but still, that’s a lot of brain matter for stomach.

So, my symbiont is like an animal inside of me. For all I know, long ago, we used to be two animals and now we exist as one, just like the Trill in Star Trek. With only one hundred million neurons, it’s a pretty DUMB animal, though.

After a couple of months of considering myself a joined species, I’ve had a few revelations. Tune in tomorrow to read all about them.

I have been looking for a good iPhone application to keep track of my Weight Watchers Points for a long time. Weight Watchers Online has a page that works with the iPhone, but it is SEVERELY lacking in usability, so I kept looking.

Back when I had a Palm Treo, I used to keep track of my points using WWCalc. It was a GREAT program, but Weight Watchers shut them down. I used to wish that the programmer would alter his program so that it could just keep track of anything and allow me to put a formula of my own in it. That is EXACTLY what Edibles has done for me.

You can download Edibles for your iPhone here:

• Edibles – Diet Journal [iTunes Link]

Here is a detailed guide to setting up Edibles to work with Weight Watchers: (more…)

Last week, Quadrathon ran a 50 kilometer race through a canyon. He wrote all about it here:

• Quadrathon: PCTR Sycamore Canyon 50k

Not only did he run over 31 miles for one race, he filmed video while he did it! You can watch him run down Pt Mugu here:

THIS is why I don’t film running videos. I can’t get them to be steady enough to be watchable for an hour. This short video from Quadrathon is SO inspirational to me, though!

Next time you’re having a hard time getting through your workout, remember Quadrathon. If he can run a 31 mile race up and down mountains, you can finish the last ten minutes of your hard workout!

When you are in transition to your new life by losing weight, the thrift store is your ultimate secret weapon. One of the good things about dropping pounds is that my clothes are suddenly looser. One of the bad things about dropping pounds is that my clothes are suddenly TOO loose. When that happens to me, I just go to the local thrift shops and buy to my heart’s content.

Since the clothing is a fraction of the price of new clothes, I feel no guilt in buying a whole new wardrobe that will only last me a few months until I get down to my goal weight. Here are my thrift store shopping tips:

• Try on EVERYTHING: Clothes vary in size. You can’t go by the size on the label. We all know that different brands are different sizes, but sizes can vary within the SAME brand depending on the year that the clothing was made. A size 14 dress from 1969 is VASTLY different than a size 14 dress from 2009. Try on everything just to make sure it fits.

• Be kind to yourself: A corollary to the fact that clothing sizes vary is the request that you be kind to yourself while trying on clothes. When you are so proud of the fact that you finally got down to a size 18, it can be devastating to try on a pair of size 18 jeans that won’t pull up over your thighs. Remind yourself that clothing sizes can change through the years and don’t let the number on the label define your self worth.

• Be patient: If shopping in normal stores is difficult for you, shopping in thrift stores will be even more difficult. You pay for those six dollar designer jeans in TIME. You have to be willing to look through EVERY pair of jeans in the store to find the ones that fit you and look good. Patience will pay off.

• Wash everything when you get home: Even if the clothing still has the original store tags on it, wash every item when you get home. Thrift stores rarely wash the clothing they receive. Most people donate CLEAN clothes, but sometimes they have been sitting in closets gathering dust for years before they go to the thrift store. Make sure you wash your new finds before you wear them.

Losing weight is a journey that takes a while. Don’t swim in clothes that are two sizes too big just to save money. You deserve to look good at EVERY point in this process. Take a trip to your local thrift stores and find some clothes that look good and fit you right now.

Photo via: Found in Mom’s Basement: Vintage thrift store sign

I love this advertisement for Target and Champion sportswear.

It reads:

Energy Spent Wisely

The ad is for Champion’s C9 running skort and tank. I love running skorts. They are feminine and they protect my inner thighs from chafing. They come in sizes as large as 2XL, so they are watching out for more women than most sportswear clothing manufacturers do.

Mostly, I love the advertisement for it’s motivational value. I love photos that show people exercising, and this one is perfect. It doesn’t show the best features of the skort (the inner shorts), but it does make me want to get on the treadmill and run.

I’ve been reading up on The Gabriel Method and trying out his ideas to see if they work.

I’m still not finished reviewing his plan, but I have found ONE very important idea in everything he says. It is possible to trick your body into getting thin by giving it positive stress.

One of those positive stresses is exercise. We need to convince our bodies that they need to be thin so we can outrun the predators or fight them off if we’re cornered. In his book, Jon Gabriel talks about a time when he was riding his bike. A vicious dog started chasing him, nipping at his heels. It took over a minute to shake off the dog and after he had pedaled himself away, he felt more vitality than he had felt all day.

The idea is to envision that we are in danger during an interval workout. Whether we are running, walking or riding a bike, it can be difficult to imagine that a pack of dogs are at our heels when the treadmill is steadily keeping its pace. Even if I boot the speed up for a minute, it’s kind of hard to materialize blood thirsty animals at my heels.

Then I remembered that I live with one…

My dog, Sid, has never been vicious with me, but every day, he turns into an panicked lunatic. It happens Monday through Saturday between 9:30 am and 11:00 am. He starts barking and beating himself against the front door each morning the mail carrier delivers our mail.

So I set my audio recorder right next to the door and recorded his barking. After a couple of days’ worth of screeching at our postal worker, I was able to compile the recordings into an MP3 that is a little over a minute long. I’ve set this MP3, called Primal Reaction, as my Power Song on my Nike+. Every few minutes, I set the treadmill to the highest speed I can maintain for one minute, hold down the middle button for three seconds and the sound of five dogs barking at my heels gets my heart rate up faster than running on the treadmill could possibly do. It really sets off my flight response.

You can download it here:

• Primal Reaction – by Laura and Sid Moncur Right click the link and choose Save As…

I’ve also been exercising with Wii Boxing. Despite the cartoony feel of my opponents, I have found that if I truly pretend that the guy wants to hit me, I get that adrenaline surge from the workout. Wii Boxing was the only section of Wii Sports that got my heart rate into the cardio zone, but I can keep boxing opponents for a twenty minute workout and by the time I’m done I’m sweating, breathing heavily and all wound up. It truly sets off my fight response.

When it comes to fight or flight, we humans have been at the top of the food chain for so long that it’s only natural that our bodies have been convinced that it’s safer to be fat than thin. Especially since we go on diets and impose a famine on them every January, our bodies are trying to hold onto the fat so that we don’t starve to death. A few primal workouts every week just might be enough to convince our bodies that it’s more important to be fast and strong. Maybe we can trick our bodies into making us thin so we can run away or fight ourselves out of sticky situations. That’s the whole goal of a primal workout.