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

Update 02-02-15

I’m kind of peeved today because this review was a TAD premature. I have now had THREE separate failures of this application. Each time, I was adjusting the volume or skipping a song and the app advanced the workout to the next activity. For example, today, I was in the middle of the W6D2 workout. This workout has a five minute warmup, ten minutes of running, three minutes walking, ten minutes of running and five minute cool down. I was in the fourth minute of the first run and a song came on that was a lot louder than the others and I pushed the volume button on my phone to turn it down. It advanced me all the way to the cool down. Definitely UNCOOL.

The worst part is that when I tried to start it again, it was at the beginning. I had already done almost ten minutes of my workout. I could advance it to the three minute walk, but basically, I was screwed. I did the workout on my treadmill and turned off the app. When I checked off that I had done it, it didn’t let me post to Twitter, like I usually do with the stats. That REALLY made me mad because I had done the workout and I didn’t get to brag about it.

So, not even this program is bug-free. AND the truly irritating part is that the program even has a “feature” of being able to advance to the next section. When you’re in a workout, you don’t want to easily skip the next ten minutes. The whole part of the workout is to DO it. The ONLY reason this program has that “feature” is so that the programmers can test the app without actually DOING the workout. Bad form, 5K Runner, bad form.

Oh, and you can bet I’m not buying the 10K runner or your stupid sit-up and pushup apps. Here I am, looking for another app to train with. Why do they all suck so hard?

Don’t get me started talking about Couch to 5K apps. I will rage and spew hatred for all the crappy apps out there. It will be an hour-long rant about how the MOST important thing about a Couch to 5K app are the audio cues.

So, if you want to learn to start running and want an app to help you with that process, DO NOT SEARCH FOR COUCH TO 5K ON THE APP STORE!!! You will find SO many apps and they are ALL garbage. All of them, except 5K Runner.

• 5K Runner: 0 to 5K run training on iTunes

With a Couch to 5K program, you learn to run by doing intervals. There are times when you run and times when you walk. This app will tell you when to run and tell you when to walk. It will also play your workout music in the background and gently break in to tell you when to run and walk.

All Couch to 5K apps say that they will tell you when to run and when to walk, but 5K Runner actually DOES it. It never misses an audio cue. You see, with those crappy programs, they will gladly tell you when to run, but then some bug happens and they forget to tell you to start walking, so you end up running WAY longer than you should. Or maybe they only work with the audio cues if you keep the screen on the entire run. Some of them only have trouble if your headphones accidentally get pulled out when you dropped your phone. Others break down when your halfway mark audio cue coincides with a cue to run or walk.

I have tested 5K Runner in every possible way to make it break and it has never once missed a cue. Without fail, it has ALWAYS told me when to run and when to walk. It has ALWAYS told me that I’ve reached the halfway mark. It has always given me a little extra incentive when I am in the middle of that last running interval of the day (I REALLY need that one).

5K Runner just WORKS the way it’s supposed to.

That’s how low a bar I set for this program and every other program I tested failed. They all missed an audio cue of some sort and left me walking too long or running too long (that was the worst).

I do have ONE caveat, however. DO NOT LOOK AHEAD! Don’t look at the workout for next time. ESPECIALLY don’t look at the workout next week. It will scare you to think that the next time you run, you’ll have to run for FIVE minutes straight with only three minutes walking for a break. That happened to me. I just finished the W4D2 Run. Before I started, I was so terrified of that run this morning that I tried to avoid it because I had looked ahead.

The funny thing is, by the time you get there, you CAN do it. It might sound impossible, like running for five minutes with only three minutes to recover, but you WILL be able to do it when it comes time for that run. Don’t look ahead, just plug in your headphones and do what the nice lady tells you to do.

That is ONE thing that I wish I could change. I wish I could record audio cues for myself. I would have the people I love record the “Motivate Me” sections. I would MUCH rather hear my husband tell me, “You can do this, we’re almost done.” Or my mom saying, “I’m proud of you for doing your workout today.” Even if it were just me, I wish I could record my own voice saying, “Keeping going, Laura. I know you can do this.”

I really like that you can just turn off the voices altogether and just have beeps telling you when to run and walk. I love that you can choose whether it tells you that you’re halfway done or whether you want motivation. Those settings will really come in handy after I have been using this app for several years, but I’m sick of the audio cues.

Finally, there are the badges. When you do workouts, you earn badges, which feels really good to have one pop up every week or two. Of course, all the motivational cues and badges in the world won’t work if the app crashes or forgets to tell you that you can walk now after a hard run. I love the badges, but they don’t mean anything to me if I am angry at the program for making me run too much.

I’m going to be BRUTALLY honest here. Up until now, my favorite option for Couch to 5K was the 5K app for Zombies, Run! I have been VERY positive about that app because I do love it so much, but even that program has betrayed me. Once it left me running, running, running, and the doctor never came back to tell me to walk. I didn’t hear from her again until she said, “Ok, Runner Five, it’s now time to run.” By then, I couldn’t breathe. I was very mad at the app for that, despite my love for it. THAT’S how important audio cues are when we are learning to run. And I said that I wouldn’t go on an hour-long rant about just that…

I absolutely adore this art from That ARThletic Girl — First fitness art for 2015! Yay! ???? #arthlete.

It reads:

Persist Until Something Happens #PushYourself

I am going to remember this every time I’m thinking of quitting my workout because it’s too hard…

I found this motivational poster on Your Weight Is Over. I really liked the idea.

It reads:

Be so busy loving your life that you have no time for hate, regret, or fear.

This has been, hands-down, the BEST way to feel better about myself. There are things in my life that I want to do. I want to write books. I want to have a healthy body. I want to go years and years without bingeing. I want to go to Quebec and speak French with the locals. So, I make a checklist every day. EVERY DAY!!

I set TINY goals every day that have something to do with loving my life. Exercising, meditating, writing, practicing French and all the things that will eventually take me where I want to be. Every time I check something off my list, I feel a tiny surge of feeling good about myself. In fact, I spend my whole day giving myself little doses of dopamine every time I check something off a list.

It’s WAY better than eating all day long.

And those negative emotions like hate, regret and fear all evaporate when I accomplish things. Because if you work a LITTLE bit toward your goals every single day, you WILL accomplish great things. You won’t hate other people. You’ll bask in their envy. You won’t fear the future. You will plan it out just like you want. You won’t regret what you never did. You’ll actually DO it!

Loving my life comes one check mark at a time!

I love this quote I found on the Quotations Page:

It reads:

Life is too complicated not to be orderly.

• Martha Stewart

I immediately applied it to my home gym. When I am trying to work out, I don’t want to be rooting around trying to find a weight or plug in the exercise bike. Back in October, I organized my exercise room and I find that it’s a lot easier to exercise in a neat and clean room.

I don’t know why clutter makes it harder for me to exercise in a room, but tidying up and organizing has definitely made it easier for me to get my workout in every day. If you have a corner of a room that’s a home gym, try to make it as neat and orderly as possible so that it’s a PLEASANT place to visit. You might find that it becomes your favorite place in the house.

THIS! This is what you miss when you blow off your workout…

Feel Good Inc. was out in the cold the other morning and she saw this sunrise. This is the kind of thing that you miss when you listen to that voice in your head.

It’s too cold outside right now.

I’m so tired from exercising every day.

I’ll just do the workout later.

When you listen to that voice, you miss out on the good things like a beautiful sunrise and an invigorating workout. The next time you have that nagging voice in your head trying to talk you out of getting your butt out of bed and doing your workout, remember this gorgeous morning sunrise that you could be enjoying if you just do the next right thing.

Last weekend, I got my one year abstinence chip in my Overeater’s Anonymous meeting.

Before I came to OA, I had no hope. ZERO hope. I was managing my eating by counting the minutes between my alarms on my phone.

• Starling Fitness – Refeeding: A Treatment for Obesity?

I had no hope for a cure for my brain, and honestly, there IS NO CURE for a broken brain. There is, however, a treatment and it takes everything you have to follow it. Fortunately, I haven’t had to sweat has hard as I did in the past, but I did have to learn how to be humble.

• Starling Fitness – How To Be Humble

In fact, just writing this entry makes me worried that I’m not being humble, but as a recovering binge-eater, it’s my responsibility to share my hope, strength and experience.

In October 2013, I couldn’t go more than an hour without bingeing. I would eat ALL DAY LONG and I felt hungry all the time. Now, I hold in my hand, a one year chip. It has been over a YEAR since I have binged. There is hope. If you thought that you would start the new year right and are disgusted with yourself because you just cannot follow your program, get yourself to an Overeater’s Anonymous meeting.

Overeater’s Anonymous does not endorse anything on this entry or blog. I speak only of my personal experience and not for OA as a whole.

This quote is one of those that really helps me DO something with my life.

It reads:

This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.

• Ralph Waldo Emerson

The part that was always hard for me is the “…if we but know what to do with it.” I had the hardest time knowing what to do because I always want to do it ALL. In my mind of over-everything, I want to do the grueling training workout every day. I want to write a hundred pages in my book. I want to write twenty entries for Starling Fitness and The Gadgets Page. I want to do ALL THE THINGS!

At some point, however, I have a system failure.

This was explained very well by Hyperbole and a Half:

Just my list from earlier sends me into system failure, where I sit on the couch not knowing what to do. The ONLY thing that has ever worked for me is to set my goals LOW! Not just normal low. LOW LOW! So low that they feel like I am not accomplishing anything. You can’t imagine how very MUCH I can do by “not accomplishing anything.”

I’ve talked about this before:

• Starling Fitness – Start Out PATHETICALLY Slow

Instead of a grueling training workout every day, my goal is twenty minutes of EASY exercise, like leisurely walking the dog. Instead of writing a hundred pages in my book, all I need to do is write a SINGLE sentence. That’s it. Instead of starving myself or keeping my calories below a certain level, I need to eat moderately every two and a half hours. I eat when my alarm goes off. I don’t when it doesn’t.

Instead of doing ALL THE THINGS and shutting down, I’m doing some small meaninglessly trivial things and getting a ton of stuff done in the process. This was brought home to me when I got my yearly email from Fitbit.

In one year, I walked over a thousand miles and took 2.3 MILLION steps. You probably did the same amount last year, you just didn’t have a little device measuring your every move. You can accomplish so MUCH by just doing a little bit every day. Whatever your big goal is, break it up into small steps. Then break those steps into even SMALLER steps until the thought of doing that one thing sounds trivially easy. THAT should be your daily goal. Sure, dreaming big helps you stay motivated, but working small actually gets things done.

DREAM BIG, BUT WORK SMALL.

Fitbit has added a watch, called the Fitbit Charge, with a bunch of extra features to its lineup.

If you already own a Fitbit, like I do, there is no reason to upgrade, but if you haven’t bought one, there is no reason to buy the Flex when the Charge has so many additional features. I especially like the fact that it’s a watch as well as a activity tracker.

Here is a very thorough review of the Fitbit Charge here:

He was really disappointed with the pulse rate monitoring, but any gadget with optical pulse reading will have the same problems, including the revered Apple Watch. The one feature that the Fitbit Flex has that makes it WAY better to me is the changeable band. I absolutely ADORE the fact that I can change out the band on my Flex to match my clothing. In fact, there are so many options on Amazon that I want to spend more money on my bands than I did on my Flex.

If you already have some sort of Fitbit, then the Fitbit Charge isn’t going to be anything exciting to you, but if you are in the market for a fitness tracker, it’s awesome!

I absolutely adore this quote from Lady Gaga!

It reads:

Sometimes in life you don’t always feel like a winner, but that doesn’t mean you’re not a winner.

• Lady Gaga

That statement, “Sometimes in life you don’t always feel like a winner…” is an understatement. It has taken me YEARS to realize that sometimes I feel like a complete and utter loser and it doesn’t matter. I just get up and do the work anyway.

The way I FEEL doesn’t matter.

It has taken my entire adult life to learn this. My emotions are sometimes up. They are sometimes down. No matter how I feel, though, I get up and do the work anyway. Just show up. That’s all I need to do.

I have have lost 59 pounds. FIFTY-NINE POUNDS and yet, most days, I feel like a complete and utter loser. I can’t even look at myself in the mirror or look at my weight loss graph to remind myself that I’m not a loser. Somehow those things don’t matter when I feel like a loser.

The only thing that matters is doing the work, whatever the work may be.

On the flip side, sometimes I feel a bit manic and feel as if I am a complete success and I don’t need to work anymore. That might feel good, but it STILL doesn’t matter. I still need to get up and do the work anyway.

This is not just true with weight loss. This is true about EVERYTHING: career, relationships, physical fitness, healthy eating, EVERYTHING.

I have published three books now. THREE books and yet, most days, I feel like a complete and utter loser. I can’t even look at the books and remind myself that I’m not a loser. Somehow those books don’t matter when I feel like a loser.

It doesn’t matter what you feel. Feelings might make you feel good. They might make you feel bad, but the MOST important thing is to keeping working through the feelings.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE this quote!!!

It reads:

Ever tried? Ever failed? No Matter, try again, fail again, Fail better.

• Samuel Beckett

I have been “trying” for ten years. I have been “failing” for ten years. And the BEST part is that I am actually failing better now than I did ten years ago. I will never be cured. I will never conquer this eating disorder, but I can keep trying and keep failing better and better.