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

This postcard showed up on PostSecret today. I feel like giving this girl a big hug.

Stop trying to lose weight to get a boyfriend. Just stop it. You deserve love right now, just as you are. There is probably someone who loves you right now. He is hiding in the wings, wondering what to do. Quit wasting time trying to make yourself fit into a hole that wasn’t made for you and go find him.

Eat healthy. Move around. Find love. Quit starving yourself.

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.

Some time before 10:28 pm last night, we crossed over to New York and finished our Race Across the USA! Here is a complete list of all the participants:

The winners are:

• krisjames – 1st place – Most miles run – Four DVD set of Starling Fitness walking videos: Swami’s Beach, Sugarhouse, Moab and the San Antonio Riverwalk.
• filo666go – 2nd place – Choice of three Starling Fitness DVDs.
• SOKAR – 3rd place – Choice of three Starling Fitness DVDs.
• DatabaseDiva – 4th place – Choice of two Starling Fitness DVDs.
• SLB’s Nike+ – 5th place – Choice of two Starling Fitness DVDs.
• Rossanne – 6th place – Choice of one Starling Fitness DVD
• abelisle – 7th place – Choice of one Starling Fitness DVD
• uberjeph – 8th place – Choice of one Starling Fitness DVD
• noels71 – 9th place – Choice of one Starling Fitness DVD
• shornke – 10th place – Choice of one Starling Fitness DVD

Congratulations to everyone who participated (if you notice, I came in at 31st place)! I hope you had as much fun as I did imagining our run across the United States!

After a heated discussion on whether we should cancel the Reader Meetup, we let the fortune cookie decide our fate. It said, “A man who dares to waste an hour of time hasn’t discovered the value of life.”

It’s not like we don’t want to spend an hour with our readers; we really do. Unfortunately, the few people who contacted us in Austin have either not responded to our email announcing the event or cancelled. No one has RSVP’d on the UpComing.org site, so the underwhelming response says: CANCEL.

If you live in Austin and were considering going to the Reader Meetup, contact me. Mike and I are are going to this event, which is open to the public, so you’re free to show up here as well.

Your Video Blog Can Save the World

Friday, March 9th, 2005 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm

Carver Museum Cultural Center (1161 Angelna Street). Google Map FREE admission, no badge or pre-event signup needed to attend this session.

Michael and I are going to be in Austin, Texas for SXSW. While we’re there, we wanted to allow our readers to have a chance to meet us, so we set up a reader meetup at the Sunset Valley Barnes and Noble:

Location: Barnes & Noble – Sunset Valley
5601 Brodie Lane Suite 300, Austin, TX 78745 Google Map
Phone: 512-892-3493

Date and Time: March 9, 2006 6pm-7pm

Please RSVP using Upcoming.org so that we don’t feel like we’re going to be waiting at the bookstore all alone:

• Upcoming.org: Starling Studios Reader Meetup at Barnes and Noble Sunset Valley (Friday, March 9, 2007)

We are going to hang around for an hour, gathering readers and then we are going to let you pick a restaurant where we can eat and hang out for longer if you want. We are really interested in what we can do to make Starling Fitness a better place to be. What are you interested in? What bores you? How can we help you? Come with ideas and helpful hints because we’re all ears!

This photograph was taken by Dru! and posted on Flickr. Whenever I exercise. I try to remember that I’m on the treadmill so that I can hit the mountain trails in summer. I want to see sights like this!

Dru!’s comments on this photograph:

“Fortuitous lighting on Elk Mountain near Chilliwack. I seem to be lucking out with the good light lately! This is currently the shot that I would most like to revisit, if someone gave me a time machine…”

Times like these are the reason that we eat healthy and exercise. This is where fitness can get you!

Via: Two-Heel Drive: February 2007 Archives

We are going to be in Austin, Texas from March 8-13th this year and we want to meet up with the readers of Starling Fitness. We want to hear your ideas about the site, what you like, what you hate and how we can be better.

Here’s the problem: We don’t really know the town. We’re hoping that you folks can tell us the best place and day to meet.

Please email us if you would like to come to the meetup here:

• Starling Fitness Meetup: Contact Laura Moncur

We are excited to meet our readers face to face and hear just what you want from us!

If you have a Nike+iPod setup, you can join my weekly challenge. The challenge starts every Friday. This running/walking challenge is for people who regularly log 12-35 miles a week. It is considered Level 3. If you would like to join this challenge, go to this thread on the Nike+ forum and ask to be added.

• Support Forums : Starling Fitness Weekly Challenge …

There are also lots of other challenges available. You can see them all here:

• Support Forums : Challenges

Check out Nike’s forums and find a challenge that is right for you or join the Level 3 challenge even if you’re Level 1 or 2. You can eventually work your way up to where the rest of us are!

Every year we get a bunch of new readers in January. If you’re one of them, let me introduce you to Starling Fitness. We created Starling Fitness back in December of 2003 because I was writing so much about my eating and fitness endeavors that they threatened to take over my personal weblog, Pick Me! At times, I struggle with bingeing, so maintaining a healthy weight is an effort for me. I write about the things that interest me, the things that worry me and the things that just seem kind of cool in the health and fitness industry.

I’m not a doctor. I’m not a nutritionist. I’m not an exercise physiologist. Sometimes I do stupid things. Don’t you do the same. Sometimes I find cool stuff. Check it out and see if you like it too. Sometimes I’m tempted by diet pills, diet plans and exercise equipment that promise more than can be possible. Let’s stay away from them together.

I orginally started writing about my eating problems and exercise endeavors to help keep me accountable. The whole reason Starling Fitness exists is to help me eat healthier, stay away from stupid diet plans and exercise wisely. If even one other person is helped by this website, then that’s icing on the cake.

If you’re new to the site, here are a few entries that will give you an idea of what Starling Fitness is all about:

• Starling Fitness » New Year’s Resolutions

• Starling Fitness » Video Confessional

• Starling Fitness » Losing Motivation

• Starling Fitness » Can’t Buy Me Fitness (Part 1)

• Starling Fitness » Can’t Buy Me Fitness (Part 2)

Starling Fitness isn’t for everyone. I’m very skeptical about weight loss surgery, diet pills and diet fads. I’ve been betrayed too many times to believe that these are permanent answers. If you have put your faith in the quick fix, then you probably shouldn’t read Starling Fitness, because I am all about making small healthy choices every day.

If you have made a New Year’s Resolution to live a healthier life and you came across our website because of it, you have come to the right place. Have a healthy and active 2007 with us!

I took a walk last night and enjoyed the unseasonably warm weather. It’s almost Thanksgiving and it feels like early October right now. Of course, tomorrow we may be buried in three feet of snow. You can never tell with Utah weather. Sometimes I wonder whether living somewhere else would affect my exercise routine. Would I be more faithful if the weather was good all the time or would my ability to withstand weather extremes close in on me and I would find myself shivering at 71 degrees?

Yesterday, I walked further than I usually do and found different sites to look at while out and about. I have been running the same 2.27 mile course over and over so many times that just walking a different route felt refreshing. I really enjoyed seeing parts of my neighborhood that I usually only see in my car. I can catch more details when I’m walking, like the rust on the sign at City Dry Cleaners or the flowers around the hippie store. It’s November. How are they keeping those pansies alive? If the pansies can stand this weather, then I sure can and I’ll be out again today.

I just received an email verifying that I have been approved to attend CES 2007 with a press pass! I haven’t received my pass yet, but I’m excited to announce that we will be covering CES 2007. If you would like to see the entries of all the cool stuff we saw at CES 2006, here is a list:

• Starling Fitness » CES: Konami and DDR

• Starling Fitness » CES: PowerGrid Fitness

• Starling Fitness » CES: ArcadeMX

• Starling Fitness » CES: GameRunner

• Starling Fitness » CES: XaviX Console System

• Starling Fitness » CES: XaviX Jackie Chan J-Mat Fitness

• Starling Fitness » CES: XaviX Jackie Chan Powerboxing

• Starling Fitness » CES: XaviX Baseball

• Starling Fitness » CES: XaviX Prototypes

• Starling Fitness » CES: Garmin GPS and Heart Rate Monitor

• Starling Fitness » CES: TacX and Intel

• Starling Fitness » CES: Tacx Videos for Your Bike Trainer

• Starling Fitness » CES: NavMan

• Starling Fitness » CES: Journey to the Wild Divine

• Starling Fitness » CES: FitCentric

• Starling Fitness » CES: Wrap Up

I saw a lot of items that are STILL not available for widespread distribution yet. Others are available, but they didn’t work for the machines that they said they would work for. It’s the cutting edge. When they finally DO become available, you can be the one to say you saw it first on Starling Fitness.