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

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

Thanks, world! I’m so glad that my legs and arms and lungs and heart and head all work. They work really well, even though I left them dormant for so long. Sometimes they ache from the effort, but they keep moving.

(more…)

Yesterday, I talked about writing when you feel lack of motivation. Here is an example of what I was talking about taken from my personal journal completely uncut and uncensored. It usually takes this much writing to get to the bottom of my problem, sometimes more. When you try this, just keep writing until you feel better and motivated to stay the course.

(more…)

Every few months, I lose my motivation. It happens quite regularly. In fact, because I’m such a statistician, I have tracked my dips in motivation. They happen for two reasons: I’m too strict with my diet or something hurt my feelings.

(more…)

Sometimes, when I’m exercising, I look at the time left on the machine and think to myself, “Twenty minutes. Less than an episode of Gilligan’s Island.” I don’t know where that phrase came from, but I find that thought in my head often. Logically, it’s a useless phrase. I no longer watch episodes of Gilligan’s Island. I don’t think I could consciously sit through one without wanting to claw my eyes out. I don’t think kids watch Gilligan’s Island anymore. If it shows anywhere, I’m sure it has been relegated to TV Land.

Why do I find that phrase inspiring? Why do I tell myself, “Less than an episode of Gilligan’s Island?” When I was a kid, I loved the show and it always felt like it ended far too soon. I realized commercials took up a third of its time, so each episode was really only about twenty minutes. It was motivational to me. Twenty minutes is short. It will fly by quickly.

I don’t know why measuring my workouts in Gilligan Time helps speed them along. I don’t even know if thinking that phrase even helps me. I seem to feel better about the time left on the treadmill when I think of it as “less than an episode of Gilligan’s Island,” but I don’t know if I actually perform better when I console myself in that manner.

Only recently have I even become aware of this phrase residing in my head. I wonder where it came from. I must have been very young for it to make any sense to me. I wonder if Richard Simmons said it once on his show and it has become permanently lodged in my memory. It doesn’t matter where it came from. All I know is that it is repeated in my mind every time I look at the treadmill and it reads less than twenty minutes and, strangely, it helps me finish up. It’s very rare that I ever start a workout and end it early.

Here is an interesting collection of tips from a fitness instructor’s blog.

• Resolutions 2005

This isn’t your ordinary “pump you up” pep talk. He talks about the reality of life teaching exercise classes. Check out the first few sentences:

“The gym was full today. There were several new faces in my spin class. At the beginning of the new year, I make my classes a little easier so that those trying to stick with their New Year’s resolution don’t get too discouraged. But, by the end of the month most of those new faces will be gone.”

This Saturday at Weight Watchers, my leader, Janece had a discussion about being positive. She wants us all to be an inspiration to those around us. For homework, she gave us the following items:

1. Only watch television shows that are inspirational.
2. Only listen to music that is inspirational.
3. Inundate ourselves with motivational things (positive magazine articles, books, etc.)
4. Only say positive things. Not one negative word out of our mouths all week.
5. Be positive at the scale, no matter what it reads.

How can negativity affect our weight loss?

(more…)

My cheekbones are back. I saw them in the mirror yesterday and they scared me a little bit. I have been losing weight steadily for the last month and a half and I’m starting to see the results in my face. The last time I saw my cheekbones; I rebounded and started eating like a pig again. I don’t know if that was because I had been denying myself too much or if I got scared and wanted to hide my beauty again. I don’t know what was going on in my head then, but right now, I’m scared of a relapse.

It feels so good to be back on track. I have been fighting this since the Bosu Incident and I’m scared it won’t last. Man, I’ve been fighting with this since April. I can still see that brown haired girl in my mind’s eye. She is pointing at me behind her left hand, trying to get her friend’s attention, but I can see her in the mirror. She got my attention instead.

Now, I’m going to a different gym. I still go to Xcel on Tuesdays for the Trekking class. If I go once a week, it’s worth the money that I still have to pay until my year contract is up. Mike and I have been going to 24 Hour Fitness at least twice a week. Then there is all that DDR that I’ve been playing.  All of this activity is just helping me melt away until there is nothing left but bone and muscle and tendon.

Where is my next brown-haired girl going to be?

(more…)

I’ve been within the same ten pounds for over a year now. It’s not like I’m within 15 pounds of my goal weight. I have about forty pounds to go, but I am stagnating at this weight. It’s not Weight Watcher’s fault. When I follow the program correctly, I lose weight. The problem is that I haven’t been following the program. Sure, I’ll be really good for a month, lose ten pounds and then inexplicably start dinking around. Before I know it, I’m back to this same weight.

(more…)

When you are not practicing, remember, someone somewhere is practicing, and when you meet him he will win.
– Ed Macauley

The temptation was so great. I am having a little bit of muscle soreness in my left leg. I worked myself a little too hard on Saturday on my hill workout. I found a treadmill at the gym that goes up to 15% incline, which is the highest I’ve ever seen and way too steep for me right now. I didn’t think it was but my inner thigh and hamstring have the final say.

I’m tempted to take it easy until my leg feels completely better. There are many options for me at the gym. I could do those elliptical trainer things or maybe a stair stepper. Neither one of those would put any stress on the sore muscle, yet I was tempted this morning to just not go to the gym at lunch today. I’ll practice for the 5K tomorrow.

When I read The Runner’s Book of Daily Inspiration, it told me how great it was to run in the rain at this time of the year. Whoever wrote that entry has never run in Salt Lake City, Utah in January. It is very rare when we have rain in January and snowy egrets are such a rarity that I’ve only seen one once in my whole life. Yes, this morning it was very tempting to just blow off my workout today.

I was tempted until I got the Motivational Quotes email. That Ed Macauley is right. Some bitch is going to be at the gym working out today and I might be running alongside her in the SLC 5K. I can’t let her get the jump on me. I have to keep going. I’ll work on the elliptical trainer today. I’ll baby my sore muscle, but I’ll keep working on my endurance and strength.

It’s strange where motivation can come from. I get the Motivational Quotes of the Day email so that I can make sure that the quotations have been typed in correctly. I signed up for my own quotations so that I could catch my mistakes. Every quote is something I’ve seen before and personally typed in myself. Every quote was one that I personally found inspirational. I forget that when I’m typing for hours or going through books in which I’ve underlined all the quotes that need to be put into the website. That website was originally something that I created because I wanted it to exist. It was something that I created for myself. I only remembered that this morning, when I really needed it.