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

In the early nineties, I exercised a lot with Denise Austin. She was on ESPN back then and while I jumped and bounced during the commercial breaks, I saw this commercial ALOT:

To this day, I can hear that guy’s voice in the back of my head:

Hey baby! You gonna hog the court forever?

Ironically, this commercial NEVER made me want to hit tennis balls, but it did make me want to hit dorky guys with tennis rackets.

And they say video games cause violence…

Seeing this commercial again on YouTube made me so happy in a quiet way. I remember jumping and moving while this and commercials for NuSkin flashed by my eyes. I never fast forwarded through the commercials because I was supposed to be exercising during them.

I’ve never owned a pair of Reebok shoes and I feel a little guilty about that. Life IS short, so play hard, even if it’s not in a pair of Reebok shoes.

I want to have a conversation with the writer of this postcard from PostSecret.

It reads:

I eat all the ice cream so my kids don’t end up fat like me.

I don’t know how well that method might work. I DO know that my dad used to have binges. He would eat all the food in the house in the evening and come morning, we’d be hard pressed to find anything for breakfast. I learned to eat as much as I could when we had food just so I would get my share of it.

Is that the lesson that you were trying to teach your kids by eating all the ice cream?

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.

The snow has already blanketed the Wasatch Mountains, leaving hiking to be a cold and potentially dangerous pursuit here in Utah. Fortunately, Tom Mangan was nice enough to share his hike through the Sunol Wilderness in California.

• New hike video: Sunol Wilderness

A beautiful video showing the perpetual spring in California. THIS is why we exercise. So we can enjoy sites like this in real life. When you are pounding away on the treadmill this winter or biking your butt off at a spinning class, remember that THIS is why you’re doing it. Enjoy the mountains and the trails in the summer and train for them in the winter.

I just read about an advertising study that noticed that seeing thin women modeling a product makes you more likely to rate that product highly. Of course, you end up feeling insecure about yourself, but the marketing for the product is positive.

• Go figure: Skinny sells best

More importantly, seeing thin models also affects eating behavior:

Advertisers like to mess with your head and so do researchers, so here come the free cookies. The researchers tried to gauge the short-term link between seeing thin models and eating behaviour, and used the ploy of offering free Oreos as a thank-you to their study participants. Those who had just seen the thin models were almost four times as likely to refuse the cookies.

So, if you look through the latest issue of Elle magazine, is that good for you or bad for you? Your self-esteem might suffer, but your eating behaviors might improve.

Maybe these words from Jay Leno actually help in this case:

I think high self-esteem is overrated. A little low self-esteem is actually quite good…Maybe you’re not the best, so you should work a little harder.

Jay Leno (1950 – ), O Magazine, February 2003

Honestly, I think the whole self-esteem issue is moot. It doesn’t matter how you feel about yourself as long as you do what you need to do to be successful. Photos of thin models or not, the most important thing to keep you healthy is DOING what needs to be done to be healthy.

Via: Diet Blog: Women Prefer Products Pitched by Thin Models

SLB+ has been training for a big race. He did his first 20 mile run and logged it with 20 photos. You can see them all here:

• Quadrathon: 20 miles in 20 photos

Twenty miles was on the plan yesterday. It is the first 20mile distance that I’ll run, increasing steadily up to the final week before I start to taper and culminate in a 35 miler.

Next time you feel a little sluggish during your morning workout, remember SLB+’s 20 miles. If his shoes can take him that far, so can yours.

Despite my best efforts, I haven’t been able to stop watching The Biggest Loser. I have to admit that I get really motivated watching all those people working out.

If you missed it, this little video will catch you up:

I was just SHOCKED when Colleen lost seven pounds. That is just a HUGE amount to lose in a week. Unfortunately, her father had gained two pounds, so they voted to send him home. His leg injury just pushed him over the edge. You can see how he’s doing now here:

I don’t like to see any of the contestants being screamed at, but I have to admit that I do like to see the success that these people have. Of course, I’d like to see them ALL five years later to see how many keep the weight off.

If you are one of the many people who have bought a Starling Fitness Yearly Journal, then you know that the quote of the month is about improving yourself. You can see the quote here:

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.

Anne Frank, Diary of a Young Girl, 1952

If you have been planning to just let go of your eating and fitness routine because the holidays are coming, now is THE TIME to rededicate yourself to being healthy. You don’t need to wait a single moment before you can start improving yourself. You don’t need to wait until January first. You can do it RIGHT NOW.

Just think about it. If you lose one pound a week from now until January first, you will have lost TWELVE POUNDS! Most people GAIN fifteen pounds over the holidays, so you’ll be almost 30 pounds thinner than you would have been if you just gave up.

If you have been thinking about giving up because the holidays are coming, turn right around and dedicate yourself to living healthy again. Go to Weight Watchers. Buy a food journal. Start a new class at the gym. Whatever you have to do to get motivated, get up and do it NOW. You need not wait a single moment!

If you would like to order your own Starling Fitness Yearly Journal, you can do so here:

• Starling Fitness » Order Your Starling Fitness Yearly Journal

If you order it now, you can choose the month you want it to start and it will last you a year from that date. You won’t have to throw away any unused days from the first of the year. You can start fresh now.

A couple of weeks ago, The Office season premier was called Weight Loss. You can see it here:

Dunder Mifflin paper is having an office competition in which the branches compete for an extra week of vacation time. The winner is the branch that loses the most weight. Of course, things at the Scranton branch get out of control, culminating with Phyllis being abandoned without her purse in a bad part of town by Dwight because she needs the exercise. Even Michael goes over the line telling tiny Angela to lose weight and her replying, “My doctor wants me to GAIN weight.”

I actually loved this episode because it shows just how fat people are treated in the workforce. If you think that it was an exaggeration when Dwight accused the heaviest people in the office of not pulling their weight, it wasn’t. Considering that Stanley had lost FOUR pounds that week, it was quite ironic, but entirely typical.

I’ve worked at offices that have sponsored weight loss competitions before and they have ALWAYS ended badly. The only time I’ve ever seen the idea of weight loss in the workplace actually WORK was when my sister’s office sponsored Weight Watchers to come to their office for an At Work program. Those who wanted to participate were given an extra hour to do so and the weight of everyone was kept anonymous.

Next time it feels like everyone in your office is against your weight loss because they happened to bring in donuts, remember this episode of The Office and know how much worse it could be if they were rooting for you.

The final irony are the commercials that NBC has thrown into this episode. They are for Hungry Man Frozen Dinners. I wrote about how entire un-dietable these dinners are here:

• Starling Fitness » Hungry Man Sports Grill

They are marketing treadmills to little kids now:

There are quite a few companies making these treadmills for children:

• First Fitness Kid’s First Treadmill
• Kid’s Gym Treadmill Junior Workout Kit
• Redmon 9201 Fun & Fitness Health Systems for Kids-Treadmill

And there is even an exercise bike in primary colors for your child:

• Kid’s Gym Stationary Bike Junior Workout Kit

I think this could be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on whether the kid wants a treadmill or not. When I was a kid, my grandma insisted that I was fat and forcibly enrolled me in dance, baton, swimming, and tennis classes in an effort to slim me down and make me graceful. Honestly, I kind of liked those classes and they kept me busy for many summers, but I did feel the shame of “needing” a class in the first place. Instead of saying that it was a fun thing to keep me entertained while I was in Billings, she told me that I needed them to lose weight.

If I had asked for the classes, it would have been an entirely different story.

The kind of kids that want these treadmills are the kind of kids that see their parents on the treadmill and want to pretend that they’re grown up like Mom and Dad. In that case, SURE! You can have your treadmill and even an exercise bike in primary colors. Whatever you want!

If you as a parent think that buying one of these treadmills will make your kid lose weight, then you’re lost. Not only will they resent the toy, but they will have a more difficult time staying at a healthy weight as adults. The problem is with the attitude of the parent, not the toy.

Via: Treadmills for Kids? : Complete Running Network

Found in Mom’s Basement posted this 1962 ad for milk last week.

• Found in Mom’s Basement: 1962 ad for milk, “Get on the Vitality Wagon”

It says:

Popular “Seventeen” models take a refreshing milk break while modeling new plaids.

Get on the Vitality Wagon

Top teen models have discovered how milk helps keep their vitality up through the busy modeling day… keeps ’em with the group on dates! Milk with your meals refreshes… gives lasting energy that keeps you going and glowing. Make milk at mealtime a regular habit. It’s your ticket to join the gang on the vitality wagon!

American Dairy Association: representing the dairy farmers in your area who bring you The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet on ABC-TV.

There is so much WRONG with this ad. Drink milk because teen models do. Drink milk because it refreshes. Drink milk because they sponsor Ozzie & Harriet. Really? Did this sort of advertising work?

Of course it did, just like this commercial worked on ME back in the 80’s:

Milk, it does a body good is a slogan I can STILL repeat even after all these years.

Is milk good for you? Yeah, I think it is, but do we really need all this advertising to prove it to us?