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

Kevin Smith is known for his Silent Bob character, but he is also the acclaimed director of movies like Jersey Girl (my favorite), Chasing Amy and Clerks. He writes regularly on his weblog and in January, he started a lifestyle change. You can read about it here, but if the title of his entry bothers you at all, don’t click the link.

• Kevin’s Boring Ass Life – I’m cutting two ugly, fat bitches out of my life!

He has a family history of diabetes. Considering his weight, he was worried that he was also going to become a victim of that disease.

So I took the glucose tolerance test – the blood test one undergoes to see if they’re diabetic or at least pre-diabetic. You fast for twelve hours, have blood drawn, down a bottle of sugar-heavy medicinal soda (in my case, orange-flavored), wait two hours, then have blood drawn again – all in an effort to track your body’s ability to deal with sugar (diabetes is, after all, the body’s inability to metabolize sugar normally). After taking the test, I went to Jersey for a week to hit some Devils games and play some poker – all while ignoring the distinct possibility that I’d passed the point of no return, and had, indeed, developed diabetes. Today, I went to the doctor’s office for my weigh-in and to face down the test results…

Which I passed with flying colors.

Apparently, my body knows what to do with sugar: it stores it as fat. Not great, but very awesome, considering the alternative. It was a wake-up call. I’ve beat the genetic odds thus far, but just because you haven’t shot yourself yet doesn’t mean you keep playing Russian Roulette. I’m putting the gun down, folks: the gun that’s filled with cake frosting.

He will be chronicling his efforts with weight loss and diet management on his weblog, so you can read more about his life there.

On another note, I feel for Kevin. The picture above was on his website with the following name: fatfuck.jpg. When I downloaded it, I renamed it to KevinSmithBefore.jpg because I couldn’t bear to let that name stand. Fat Fuck is something a grade school kid calls you, not something you call yourself. We become very attached to names, even when they hurt our feelings. I don’t want Kevin Smith to think of himself as a Fat Fuck, even if he’s overweight. Sorry, buddy! You’re going to have to be the glorious and grand Kevin Smith. I won’t let you be Fat Fuck.

What names have you been calling yourself? Time to let them go…

Update: Kevin decided to starve himself using the OptiFast program. If you care about this guy at all, please email him and tell him not to do this to himself. I have starved myself enough times to know that it will only make his weight issues worse. He is already teetering on the edge of a binge.

• My Boring Ass Life » Fat-Fuck vs. Food, Week 2

If you have ever had trouble with binge-eating, you need to buy this book today. Seriously, stop reading this review and buy The Four Day Win by Martha Beck. I have been dealing with my bingeing for years and this book has the best thing for me ever since I realized I had a problem.

Unlike most diet books, she starts at the beginning. Most diet books jump right into what you should eat and how you should exercise. They spend most of their pages on recipes and exercise descriptions. Not so with The Four Day Win. She spends most of the book helping you heal your brain and body from all the dieting damage you have been doing over the years.

Damage? Yeah, the psychological damage of starving yourself every time you go on a diet. THAT damage.

Remember Margaret Cho’s F**K It Diet? Martha Beck has taken it to the next level to help you heal that child within yourself who has been starved over and over.

Remember how I told you that you shouldn’t get rid of all your favorite food in the house like EVERY other fitness expert tells you that you should do? Martha tells you why that it is so important to keep lots of your favorite foods in the house.

Remember how I told you that you could eat anything you want? Martha gives you even more ways to heal yourself so that when you eat, you are able to keep yourself healthy.

This book is EVERYTHING that I knew instinctively about my own bingeing, plus a bunch of ways to make myself able to eat healthy. If you have ever had trouble with bingeing, buy this book right now.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve written a few entries about Valentine’s Day that I feel still apply today. You can see them here:

• Starling Fitness » Have a Healthy Valentine’s Day

• Starling Fitness » Valentine’s Breakfast In Bed

• Starling Fitness » Choose a Healthy Valentine’s Dinner

This year, I’d like to hear from YOU.

What do you do to keep your Valentine’s Day healthy and still enjoy it?

What do you do with the treats? Do you eat them? Do you you save them? Do you toss them? Do you give them away?

What about dinner? How do you handle eating out?

What about depression? If you don’t have a Valentine in your life, what do you do to prevent wallowing?

I would love to hear everything you have to say about Valentine’s Day. Please tell me all about it in the comments section!

I love this photo of the Eureka Dunes from Jon Huang. Here is his description:

“Walking up a steep sand dune feels like being on a stairmaster. Every step upwards you take, it sets you back half a step. To prevent yourself from slipping back you need to make faster steps. The Eureka dunes are over 600 ft high from base to peak, probably the tallest dunes in N. America. Hiking up was quite a workout — especially with camera gear and tripod!”

Whenever I feel a little bored on the treadmill, I try to remember WHY I exercise. I walk on the treadmill and ride the exercise bike in the winter so I can hike and mountain bike in the spring, summer and fall. I want to be fit enough to see beautiful sites like this every day.

Via: Two-Heel Drive: January 2007 Archives

Remember? Remember what it felt like to run? Run when you were a kid and running was how you got from here to there? Remember when they said they knew a great place and let’s go there? How did we go there? You can only run to a great place! There’s no walking if we’re going to some place great!

The advertisement at the bottom of Prevention Magazine’s website said,

“Need motivation to lose those extra pounds? See how you’ll look with your new body!“

I imagined uploading a photo of myself and having a computer program show what I would look like at my goal weight. Unfortunately, it linked me to a computer generated model of what it thought I looked like based on my weight and height and then showed what that computer generated person would look like at their pre-determined goal weight. Sadly, neither picture was even close to looking like me.

Even worse, My Virtual Model has been brought to me by Prevention’s Sugar Solution, which is a diet book that blames sugar for everything from memory lapses to weight gain. When I clicked on the link, it redirected me to WalMart’s website and a picture of Velvet Chocolate Cake (?!).

Prevention magazine has been selling quick fixes for a long time with headlines that scream “Lose 10 pounds in 10 days!” but I have never seen them go this far. Maybe the Walmart link is broken and it was supposed to link to their book. Maybe the Virtual Model is supposed to be motivating instead of strangely insulting. Maybe Prevention magazine wants to help people, but sadly, this time they missed the mark.

Kirstie Alley has had a very visible weight reduction using Jenny Craig. She recently went on Oprah Winfrey’s show and was willing to wear a bikini for the cameras. She actually looks amazing and I find her bravado inspiring.

Whether Jenny Craig is any better than eating whole, fresh food in moderate portions is another story, but kudos to Kirstie for being willing to show off her newly toned body.

This postcard from PostSecret made me want to scream, “Tell her!” An emailed response was far more powerful, however:

—–Email Message—–
Sent: Friday, September 08, 2006 12:30 PM

Subject: fat crush on jenny

I am so fat and I did tell Jenny I have a crush on her and she did fall for me. And I didn’t even send that secret in. Crazy.

What are you avoiding because you consider yourself too fat? Is it a swimming suit? A trip to the beach? A new job? A beautiful relationship?

Don’t put your life on hold because of the shape of your body. Life is too short to hide your feelings for someone you love. Life is too short to wait until you have the perfect body. Live the life you want now.

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 bought the book Silent Bob Speaks because I enjoyed Kevin Smith’s story about his struggles with Jason Mewes and trying to help him stay off drugs. I thought that it would be more of his writing (since the word writing is in the title) and I expected some entertainment.

I got that, but I didn’t expect a hilarious story about morbid obesity and fat-blocking prescription drugs.

The doctor also discerned that I suffer from what I used to call heartburn, but now call Acid Reflux Disorder.

“How’d I develop this?” I asked, fascinated to learn about the high drama going on in my gut. But I wasn’t prepared for his response.

“It’s often associated with cases of morbid obesity.”

He prescribed me something called Xenical, a pill that prevents 30% of the calories you digest from being stored as fat. What follows is not for the faint of heart…

Kevin learned what everyone who was prescribed Xenical learned. He continues to give you the “official” Xenical descriptions for what might happen and translate them into the unpleasant truths, with humor, of course.

I’ve never laughed so much at the phrase, “oily, fatty stools” in my life!

More importantly, he mentions to his readers that he wants support in his effort to lose weight. He talks about becoming accountable to his wife, parents and friends, but he finally adds all his fans to the list of people he wants to help him in his weight loss journey. He has since lost the extra “baby” weight and is living a much healthier life, hopefully without Xenical.

If you enjoy Kevin Smith’s writings, you can read his weblog here: My Boring Ass Life

There were times when I tried to find exercise clothes to fit me and left store after store in tears. I kept thinking to myself, “Don’t they know that I need exercise clothes more than skinny people?” It was such an ordeal to find exercise clothes that when I finally found some that fit, I bought all they had. Now, you can find plus size exercise clothes in all the best brands from Greater Salt Lake Clothing Company.

• Greater Salt Lake Clothing Company

“The GSLCC offers the opportunity for all women to be active and to participate in sport and exercise. Plus size women are no longer held back by the lack of appropriate and attractive clothes THAT FIT. The GSLCC will continue to seek out genuine outdoor wear and specific sports wear for your active lifestyle.”

A great big shout out to GSLCC for bringing exercise clothes to us easily. They have online shopping, so anyone can get biking shorts, ski bibs and running tights from them.

Update 01-30-08: It seems that Greater Salt Lake Clothing Company has changed since July 2006. I wouldn’t recommend buying anything from them now and I’ve removed the link to their site.

That’s a shame, really. Is it possible to retract a “shout out?”