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

When I first started Weight Watchers, it was strickly to lose weight. I was willing to do whatever they told me baring surgery or pill-popping. My only focus was getting my butt smaller. I had a dim glimmer in the back of my mind that maybe my stomach would feel better if I ate correctly, but I didn’t have high hopes for that. The thought of doing it strictly to get more healthy or to “see what I could achieve” never crossed my mind.

• About.com – Real People, Real Results – by Paige Waehner

This article is a compilation of comments from those people who have been living healthy for years and enjoying exercise along the way. They have learned, as I have, that weight loss has many benefits. My stomach is much less troublesome now. I can hike up mountains and trek around the city without losing steam. I try new forms of exercise just to see what I can achieve. There are so many benefits to having a stronger and healthier body that I want to shout it out to the world, but then, that tends to make me seem annoying…

Last week, I came to the realization that I’m one of those annoying people who think exercise is fun. I felt that twinge of guilt because I have been subjecting my favorite people to continual talks about health, fitness and nutrition. This article makes me feel a little better.

• About.com – Enjoying Exercise & Healthy Eating – by Paige Waehner

What I am feeling is a normal response to eating healthy and exercising regularly. The best part of this article is that it gives you a clear picture of what healthy living will feel like once you get to your goal weight and maintain it for awhile. Pull this article up each time you are lagging in motivation because it’s the closest thing to what being thin feels like I have ever found.

Braidwood has written a great piece about Self-Sabotage and how it can show you the reasons why you make plans and don’t follow them:

Yes, please! – Self-Sabotage Can Be Healthy – by Braidwood

Each time you find yourself in the middle of a binge or guiltily driving past the gym, don’t berate yourself. Don’t beat yourself up. This is an opportunity to find out why you are doing these things and how to get what you really want out of your life.

“See how I had a spike in my stats on that day. That’s when that website linked to me.” I was showing Mike my webstats last year. He replied, “Yeah, you’ll notice that your numbers will go back down, but they will be a little bit higher than they were before they linked to you. It’s called Punctuated Equilibrium.” I crinkled my brow at him and he continued, “It’s a biological term, actually, but it describes this… I guess because we are dealing with people and people are biological, it works…”

Punctuated Equilibrium is a theory that states that jumps in evolution can happen suddenly with long periods of stabilization afterwards. I see it in my webstats. I will get linked to a big site, I’ll have a huge jump in traffic, it will ease off, but never as low as it was before the huge jump.

It took me three years to notice the same phenomenon in my weight loss. After looking at the graph, my weight loss has followed the same pattern. I will have a large loss and the next week or two, I will either gain a little or maintain. On the whole, the graph has gone down consistently, but there were just months where things would stay the same.

It was hard for me not to panic during the Equilibrium time. When things felt like they were stagnating, it really meant that my body was catching up. When that scale didn’t move, my mind was getting used to the idea of being thin. My weight loss journey has taken so long that by the time I get to goal, I am going to be completely acclimated to life as a thin person.

Next time you feel discouraged that the scale hasn’t moved and you know that you did everything perfectly the week before, remember the phrase Punctuated Equilibrium. You might be waiting for that big loss that is coming in the next week or two. Just hold on.

Comment by Sinistar on “Getting Past Your Excuses” – 3/6/2005 @ 7:25 pm

Okay, here’s my excuse for why I haven’t so much as waved to Maya in the past month.

The company I work for is on the brink of ruin, is in the midst of a split (half the assets were purchased by another company), and the IT guy resigned. So, for the past month, I have been promoted from web server admin to Director of IT, requiring me to show up early and work late. I suppose I could wake up earlier to get my workouts in, but I’m epileptic, triggered by sleep deprivation, so I try to be careful about that. I could probably work out in the evenings, but by the time I get home, make dinner, spend some time with my son, and say hello to my wife, it’s already late. On Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday nights, I don’t even really get to say “Hello” since my wife has to go to sleep early while I stay up late monitoring our son (who has cerebral palsy and a tracheotomy – we need to listen out for him to make sure he is suctioned when needed) so she can get a few hours of sleep before she has to be up from 1AM to 11:30PM the next night (which is when our home health nurses come in for their shift).

I was managing to get in 30 minutes of exercise a day before the work situation exploded, but right now, I don’t even know where I’d fit it in.

Though, I guess I could have exercised in the time it took me to write all this. 🙂

Sinistar,

I just got your comment on Getting Past Your Excuses. All I can say is that you need help. I don’t know if you have family in town that could help you, but that might be an option. Another option is a second shift of home health nurses. Sometimes the hardest thing to do is admit that you need help, but if it was me, I’d be asking my family to help me or even ask my mother-in-law to move in with me.

You have two people who depend on you. To take care of them, you need to take care of yourself first. If you die at a young age because of a heart attack, they will be all alone in this world.

It’s obvious to me that you are tired and stressed beyond belief. Exercise will help relieve some of that stress and eating healthy will too (although I’ve noticed that it only relieves my stress about eating…).

I would recommend tracking everything you do for one day. Just make a list of all the things that you do (reading email, surfing the Internet, cleaning, watching TV, etc.) Just keep a log of what you do. When I did this, I set my watch to beep every 15 minutes and I would write down what I did those last 15 minutes. Only do this for one day, but try to keep your day as realistic and typical as possible.

After you’ve gathered this data, see if there is any place that you can squeeze in 30 minutes of exercise. What about your lunch hour? Bring your gym clothes, change, and run outside the office for 30 minutes. If you get a full hour, there’s just enough time to change back into your work clothes and eat a healthy lunch. Your lunch hour is just an example. You’ll have a better idea when you’ve taken a hard look at your day where you can squeeze in exercise.

You deserve 30 minutes a day. It’s essential for your health. You’re worth the time it takes to get and stay healthy. Your exercise doesn’t have to be Dance Dance Revolution or Yourself! Fitness. It can be taking a walk with your wife or riding your bike to work instead of driving. It doesn’t matter what kind of exercise as long as you schedule it into your day and protect that time. Guard it as if your life and the life of your family depended on it, because frankly it does.

You can do this!

Laura

Even though last year’s race was poorly managed and treated like an afterthought to the marathon, I’m going to run in the SLC 5K this April. It took me a long time to decide to run it, so now I have less than six weeks to train for it.

This isn’t really a problem for me. I have been exercising regularly. Dance Dance Revolution and Yourself! Fitness have kept my cardio training up to running level. I just need to get back to running so I don’t surprise my muscles on the race day. Running works different muscles than either of the other exercise routines I use.

I decided to run the 5K while lying in bed last week. “I do what is required to weigh 120 pounds,” I told myself. It wasn’t getting me up. I imagined my daily reward (thirty minutes sitting on the heat vent, reading or crocheting or playing video games, whatever I want). Not even the comforting heat vent time was getting me up. “This isn’t working,” I thought to myself. “I need different motivation.”

At that moment, I decided to run the 5K. I imagined myself running the familiar pathway from Liberty Park to The Gateway shopping center. I sat up in bed and walked to the back door to let the dog out. Not even the potentially bursting bladder of my faithful dog was enough to get me up, but thinking about running that race got me up and dressed for a run within minutes.

Motivation comes from the strangest places. Oddly, this month, it came to me from deciding to run a race. I wish I could harness motivation. I wish I could bottle it and sell it. If I could, I would make a million dollars.

This article from Prevention.com is an intimate and emotion-driven story.

• Prevention.com – Barricaded Behind Fat by Geneen Roth

I hate that stuff. It makes me want to scream, “Go to Redbook where you belong!” Why am I recommending it? She has damn good advice.

Why Food Can’t Protect You
When you’re tempted to shield yourself by overeating, remind yourself:

• The pain will still be there after the food is gone.

• Eating only makes you feel full, not happy.

• After you’ve eaten, you have two problems: the one you ate to hide from and your physical discomfort.

• No matter how much you eat, even if you go on a monthlong binge, the feelings will someday come back to haunt you.

• Eating can’t make illness, rejection, sadness, loneliness, or fear of death go away.

There are a hundred thousand excuses for not following your eating or exercise program. I could list them here, but they all fall into one category:

BOGUS

You’re rolling your eyes right now. You think I’m just being hard and callous, but you’re wrong. For every excuse, there is someone out there who moved past it. It’s snowing? I’ve seen people run in the snow. It’s too hot? I’ve seen people exercising in the Las Vegas heat and smog. It’s just one chocolate? I’ve known people who have eaten healthy for years, forgoing every hint of chocolate. I don’t care what your excuse is, there is someone on this planet who didn’t let that barrier get in the way of their health.

How do I do it?

(more…)

Even when I know why the scale is higher, I find it extremely hard to stay motivated. I wonder how it would be for people who don’t understand the physics of losing weight. Here is some important information that can affect your relationship with the scale.

Weighing Basics:

• Use the same scale each time you weigh yourself. No scale is perfectly adjusted and each will read a little differently.
• Weigh at the same time every day. You’ll weigh the least in the morning after you have used the bathroom.
• Wear the same clothing every time you weigh. The idea that your clothes might account for that extra pound will go away when you wear the same clothes every time.
• Weigh yourself on the same day each week. That means only weigh yourself once a week. There are daily fluctuations in your body, but a week is long enough to see progress (or lack of it).

If you show a gain and you KNOW you had a perfect week, remember the following:

• It may have been extra salt in your diet. A high sodium intake can make your body retain water.
• If you have just started a workout regime or just increased the intensity or time of your workouts, your body may be retaining water. If it has been over two weeks since your last weigh-in, the gain could be extra muscle. Use a measuring tape to see if you have lost any inches.
• Constipation can show a gain at the scale.
• Pre-Menstrual Syndrome has the symptom of water retention. If your cycle is about to start, you can attribute the extra weight to that.
• If you had a large loss the week before, it is normal to maintain your weight or even show a gain the next week.

Health Issues that can create a weight gain:

• Diabetes
• Thyroid / Glandular Problems
• Pregnancy

For these reasons, it’s a good idea to check with your doctor before starting any weight loss program.

In the end, the scale is merely a tool, and often not a very accurate one. If you follow your weight loss program faithfully, the scale will become an indicator or your success, not the final word on it.

We have just added a new category to the site: Motivation. If you are feeling low and wanting to cheat or skip your workout, try this category of posts.