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

Faintstarlite went to Weight Watchers to lose weight and after a little over a year, she finally hit goal. Here is her YouTube video:

When I first started watching this video, I thought that she was just another beautiful girl who needed to lose 15 pounds to be “perfect,” but she lost a total of 58 pounds. Her before and after pictures are stunning!

For the guys out there, here’s a wonderful motivational video for you:

He lost 236 pounds in two years. He lost an average of two pounds a week. His advice?

“You can do it. I’ve averaged just a little over two pounds a week. The only thing I’ve done is not quit. That’s the key: don’t quit. And you’re gonna want to… you’re gonna want to. I had a six month plateau where I didn’t lose a pound. This is not six month of me playin’ Nintendo or whatever. This is six months of me running 5Ks, me exercising, me bustin’ my butt, watchin’ what I eat every single day and I didn’t lose a pound. That was a test and I’m proud to come out on the other side of that.”

If you are feeling like skipping your eating plan for the weekend, watch these videos instead. It is possible to eat healthy and get to a healthy goal weight.

Watch this commercial:

Next time you think of one of those excuses, remember that there are NO EXCUSES! If that guy can get up off the couch, then all of us can.

Via: AdFreak: If this guy can get off his ass, so can you

Every week, I’ll be giving you some direction for how to actually KEEP your New Year’s Resolution to lose weight or get more active. If you’re short on time, scroll down to the end and read “The Short Version” to get your weekly tips.

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Last week I asked you, no begged you, to take it easy on yourself. I know you have a New Year’s Resolution to finish, but honestly you can’t finish it in a week. You had three options last week: Take it easy, overdo it or give up. Let’s figure out what to do this week based on your performance last week.

I Overdid It

If you jumped into your New Year’s Resolution to lose weight and get active, you might have overdid it. Your muscles are sore and you feel like you’re STARVING. If that’s the case, STOP IT! Seriously, right now, throw whatever plan you had to lose weight out the freakin’ window. I’m not asking you to give up on your resolution, I’m just asking you to stop abusing yourself and move on to the “I Gave Up” section.

I Gave Up

I can’t tell you how many January firsts started with a strict New Year’s Resolution plan that ended up with a Twinkie binge by January third. Okay, that’s a lie. It was one year. The other years, I binged on something else.

If you find yourself in the position of giving up, that’s completely fine. Seriously, you don’t have to kill yourself to get healthy. All you have to do is pick yourself back up, time after time. Instead of going back to your old ways, try my New Year’s Resolution plan. You’ll be one week behind, but that’s just fine. Start from here and move on:

• Starling Fitness » New Year’s Resolutions: Week One

Evelyn Underhill said,

“Every minute you are thinking of evil, you might have been thinking of good instead. Refuse to pander to a morbid interest in your own misdeeds. Pick yourself up, be sorry, shake yourself, and go on again.”

I’m not saying that eating poorly is evil, but if you use this idea for every time you eat poorly, you WILL succeed at weight loss.

I Took It Easy, Just Like You Said

The first thing I want to say is, “Good Job!” It is SO hard to take it easy, despite how it sounds. Here is your plan for Week 2:

Learn Serving Sizes and Calorie Counts

If you followed last week’s plan, you wrote down everything you ate. Excellent work. I want you to do that again this week, but this time, I want you to put the calorie counts next to all the food you ate. That means you need to measure and you need to start learning the calorie amounts for all of your favorite foods.

This is a week for education. You need to train yourself what a cup of rice looks like. You need to train yourself to know how many calories are in a Big Mac.

This is NOT a week of deprivation. You still need to eat just like you would eat before. All I’m asking you to do is to WRITE DOWN everything you eat and its caloric amount.

Eat Your Veggies and Fruits

This week, I’m going to recommend that you add two or three servings of vegetables to your diet every day. There are little check boxes on the forms for you to check off vegetable servings. You need to check off at least two servings a day. According to the USDA, you should have between 3 and 5 cups of vegetables a day. One cup is a mighty big bite to swallow, so I divide servings into half cups. Here’s a good list of veggies to try:

• MyPyramid.gov – Inside The Pyramid – What foods are in the vegetable group?

All I’m asking is that you make sure you eat 1 or 1 and 1/2 cups of vegetables or fruit every day.

Increase Your Exercise

I’m still telling you to go slow and easy. When I did this, the second week was actually HARDER than the first week, not because I increased my mileage, but because I wanted to increase it MORE. It was so frustrating, I complained about it on Twitter:

• Twitter / Laura Moncur: Workout finished. 1 mile doesn’t seem enough, even though I’m running fast. It’s hard to take it slow.

Here’s the run I was talking about:

• LauraMoncur’s run log for Wednesday, June 06, 2007 at 10:32 AM – RUNNER+

And I was pushing myself too much that week. This week, I want you to increase your walking mileage to 0.75 miles five days a week. I want you to do it at the same time every day. If you want, you can increase your speed to really get yourself sweating, but if you end up sore the next day, you MUST slow down. It’s more important to exercise every day than to push yourself. Consistency is key. You need to learn the habit of exercising every day and that is WAY more important than going fast or covering a lot of miles.

Give Yourself Kudos

If you are still working toward your New Year’s Resolution, then you need to give yourself kudos. There are little boxes on the forms every day to give yourself a shiny sticker. Each day that you stay on the program, you need to acknowledge yourself and how good you are doing.

See you next week!

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The Short Version:

• DO NOT change your eating regime at all, but write down EVERYTHING you eat, including the measurements (i.e. 1 cup of rice) and calories.

• You are allowed to ADD two or three servings of vegetables every day, but you are not allowed to restrict anything in your diet.

• Increase your mileage. Walk 0.75 miles five days this week. You are allowed to increase your speed to the point of sweating, but if you are sore the next day you MUST go slow again.

• Give yourself kudos for coming this far.

Every week, I’ll be giving you some direction for how to actually KEEP your New Year’s Resolution to lose weight or get more active. If you’re short on time, scroll down to the end and read “The Short Version” to get your weekly tips.

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Did you make a New Year’s resolution to lose weight? It’s a very popular resolution. I’m sure there are statistics to tell us how many people all over the U.S. decide to lose weight at the first of the year. The only problem is that for years, I made that resolution, but in the pit of my stomach I worried that it was going to be like last year.

No, this year is going to be different.

I would say that to myself every year as well.

It took me a long time, but I finally realized that those big New Year’s resolutions were actually part of my weight problem.

I would promise myself that I would lose weight this year. I would go on a strict diet. I would exercise until my muscles hurt. I would be diligent about everything and in the end, it would be too much. Something about restricting my diet that much and suddenly increasing my exercise would set off a survival instinct in my mind. I would become obsessed with whatever food the particular diet had restricted.

Then I would binge.

This year, if you have resolved to lose weight, please do me a favor. Don’t go on a restrictive diet. Seriously, just don’t do it. Don’t exercise yourself to exhaustion either. Really, do you think it’s going to work when it didn’t last year?

Let’s try something different.

Don’t change your eating habits just yet. Just write down EVERYTHING you eat. Don’t judge yourself when you do it. This week just write down everything you eat. If you want to do something good for yourself, ADD some veggies into your diet. Don’t take anything away from yourself, just add something healthy.

Here is a Microsoft Excel Form you can download and print up to write down your food:

• Starling Fitness » Weight Watchers Form

If you aren’t spreadsheet saavy, you can order a Starling Fitness Journal here:

• Starling Fitness » Order Your Starling Fitness Yearly Journal

Exercise?

Yeah, I want you to exercise. I want you to think about what you would have done this week. Did you have a book that you were going to follow? Did you have a plan that you wanted to torture yourself with? That’s great!

Cut it in half.

Honestly, no matter what you were planning on doing, cut that plan in half. I want it to feel hilariously easy. I want you to feel frustrated because you’re going so slow or doing so little. Next week, you can do a little more, but this week keep your workout out short, slow and EASY.

If you want to know what I did to get started, I walked 0.5 miles on the treadmill five days a week. A half mile felt like NOTHING. It was very frustrating and after a couple of days, I wanted to increase my mileage, but I didn’t. My goal was consistency. I wanted to exercise every day at the same time. Learning that consistency was WAY more important than killing myself trying to rack up the miles.

You won’t lose any weight this week.

Sorry. No massive weight losses that make the commercials so appealing. You might even gain weight, but don’t let that stop you. Next week, we’ll be doing a little more and after a week as easy as this, you’ll actually be willing to do a little more.

As always, check with your doctor before starting any diet or exercise regime.

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The Short Version:

• DO NOT change your eating regime at all, but write down EVERYTHING you eat.

• You are allowed to ADD a serving or two of vegetables every day, but you are not allowed to restrict anything in your diet.

• Start exercise slowly. SLOW, SHORT and EASY. Whatever you were thinking of doing, cut it in half. Recommended exercise: Walk 0.5 miles five days this week.

• Check with your doctor.

In a folder called Old Stuff, there lies another folder called Physical Progress. Inside that folder is a picture named MyGoal dated July 22, 2002. I KNOW the picture is older than that, but that July five years ago was the last time I opened it. It is a photo of my face on Jennifer Love Hewitt’s body.

I’ve never shared this before because I’m quite embarrassed by the photo. Not only is it not my best job at photoshopping, it doesn’t look like me. It probably will never look like me because my body is shaped differently than hers. I have a shorter waist and it’s a bloody pain to straighten my hair like that. Embarrassing or not, my goal was to look like Jennifer Love Hewitt.

Everywhere I turned last week, I saw Jennifer Love Hewitt defending her body. Every grocery store had her declaring “I’m not fat!” on every checkout line. Damn straight, she’s not fat. She’s freakin’ perfect! She’s my goal embodied and running around in a bikini! Why should she have to defend herself?

Apparently TMZ.com thinks that a size 2 is fat and announced it for all to see. Instead of caving to the insanity of it all, Jennifer defended herself beautifully on her website:

I’ve sat by in silence for a long time now about the way women’s bodies are constantly scrutinized. To set the record straight, I’m not upset for me, but for all of the girls out there that are struggling with their body image.

A size 2 is not fat! Nor will it ever be. And being a size 0 doesn’t make you beautiful. … To all girls with butts, boobs, hips and a waist, put on a bikini – put it on and stay strong.

Thanks, Jennifer. I think I’ll forgo the bikini right now, but I will stay strong. Thanks for being such a great role model for me.

When I first heard of SkinnySongs, I thought it would be totally lame. Seriously, what was I supposed to think with lyrics like this?

skinny jeans, skinny jeans
you’re stilll hanging ‘round
In the back of my closet
and that’s bringin’ me down
this morning, I woke up,
and made me a vow
skinny jeans, gonna get back,
into you somehow

The more I listened to the sample songs, however, the more I liked SkinnySongs. I’m not much of a country music fan, but this stuff borders on the Shania Twain side of country, so I’m okay with it. The songs are well-produced and the singer is good. You can hear samples of all the songs here:

• Skinny Songs at Amazon.com

There are so many songs that I have collected over the years to give me inspiration, but none of them have anything to do with losing weight. It’s actually quite shocking considering that so many of us are struggling with weight issues. I’m surprised that there really hasn’t been a weight loss song before.

Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger by Daft Punk is a great song, but it really has nothing to do with losing weight.

So, I downloaded the album from iTunes and I’m going to be trying it out over the next few weeks. If you’ve listened to this album, leave your thoughts here.

I while back, I logged on to Fitness Journal to see what it was like. It looked like a pretty good way to track my exercise and food. I was just playing around with it to see if I LOVED it enough to do a review of it. I didn’t, but it looked good enough that I didn’t HATE it and think I should warn people about it.

I promptly forgot about it.

A couple of weeks ago, however, I got a friendly email encouraging me to use it and get healthy. Here is the most interesting excerpt:

Here is my challenge to you: I’d like to give you FREE access to your fitness journal between now and the end of the year, and invite you to try a REVERSE New Year’s resolution. Instead of making a resolution to get fit ON the first of the year, make a resolution to get fit BY the first of the year. Imagine how great it will feel to get to January 1st and ALREADY be healthy and fit!

While I’m not going to take them up on using Fitness Journal, I’m going to take them up on the Reverse New Year’s Resolution challenge. To get healthier by January first is the BEST time to make that resolution because the holidays are the most food-laden time of the year.

Join me and get healthier by January first. What would you like to achieve by then?

I love this commercial for Nike+!

I didn’t watch The Biggest Loser all last year because I hated the new “Barbie” that they replaced Jillian with. This year, however, Jillian’s back and she’s out for blood.

They started The Biggest Loser out with a bang by having a race across the desert to be the team captain. Once you won the race, you could choose who you wanted to be on your team. The only problem was, you could only choose five people and that left six people never picked for a team. Those six were to go home while the two teams worked out with “Barbie” and Bob.

When Jerry picked Kae for the Blue Team, she was the first to be chosen. The look of shock and joy on her face for being the first one picked was genuine.

She said, “Jerry picked me as the first person and that’s why I was so surprised. Me?! First?! I’ve never been first before!”

I’ve never been picked first before either. In fact, every fat kid knows the feeling of being last or almost last, just praying that they pick your best buddy after you just so you won’t be last.

Yes, The Biggest Loser vividly recreated that feeling of being picked last for six people right off the bat. But instead of being picked last, they weren’t picked at all and told they had to go home. As the people who were never picked for the team were waiting for their bus to go home, I felt that sick feeling in my stomach of never being picked.

Julie said, “I feel like the fat kid at camp. As a person who’s overweight, you deal with disappointment a lot, but this felt like just one more rejection.”

Then a black motorcycle pulled up.

Julie predicted it perfectly, “Who is that?! Please, God, tell me that’s Jillian!”

The motorcyclist pulls off her helmet, and Julie got her wish. Jillian is back! She screams, “You’re not going home! We’re the new Black Team! You’ll wish you were goin’ home, Dude!”

While the Blue and Red Teams are competing in the typical Biggest Loser fashion, Jillian’s Black Team has been hiding in the desert, training with bags of sand and abandoned industrial tires. For every kid who got picked last, the Black Team is there. Jillian won’t let them forget it. She screams while they work out:

“I expect NOTHING less than the BEST! Aren’t you the ones who were not chosen? Don’t let me find a reason why! Why weren’t you chosen?”

Julie answers,

“Because I wasn’t strong enough.”

Jillian replies,

“Show me you’re strong enough!”

Next time you’re thinking about skipping your workout, remember what it feels like to be chosen last for a team, get to the gym and show me that you’re strong enough.

This season is going to kick ASS!

I wondered how Patrick Deuel is doing? Haven’t seen anything after his surgery.

Karen B.

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Back in 2005 and 2006, I had written about Patrick Deuel. He used to weigh over 1000 pounds, but eventually lost enough weight to get down to 370.

• Starling Fitness » The Former Half Ton Man

• Starling Fitness » Update on Patrick Deuel

How is he doing NOW, though? Despite its name, weight loss isn’t about weight loss, it’s about maintaining a healthy weight. Once you lose weight, you have to keep eating healthy. How is Patrick Deuel doing? Rocky Mountain News did an update back in April:

• Rocky Mountain News – Denver and Colorado’s reliable source for breaking news, sports and entertainment: Local

Patrick Deuel said Tuesday that he hasn’t stepped on a scale since last summer, which was the last time he saw his doctor.

Deuel, who once weighed 1,072 pounds, was down to 370 in November. Too many holiday sweets and his attempts to quit smoking have taken a toll since then, he said. He guessed that he now weighs 425.

For all of us, weight isn’t a stationary number. It is like the waves and it ebbs and flows with our health, emotional state and physical activity. The important thing is noticing when it is ebbing too close to obesity and working to keep it at a healthy level.

Via: melting mama: Patrick Deuel Rebounds a Bit. (Like the rest of us?)