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

This old commercial for Kentucky Fried Chicken got me thinking:

The premise of the commercial is, “When there is great chicken like this, why cook?”

Why indeed? Not only is there chicken, but I can find any kind of food that I would want almost any time of the day. Why should I ever cook? I thought about it and here are a couple of reasons cooking is still a good idea:

When I cook, I choose the ingredients

I know EXACTLY what is going into that fried chicken when I cook it myself. There are no mysterious blends of 11 herbs and spices. I have COMPLETE knowledge. Instead of my choices being taken away, I can choose to cook with healthy oil, whole wheat flour and free-range chicken. I can be eating the SAME food, but know it is healthier.

I feel more connected

There is a sense of accomplishment with cooking and I feel more connected to my meal when I cook it. Even if it is a grilled sandwich, it is better when I’ve made it for myself than when I’ve grabbed one through the drive-thru window. There is something to be said for the pride of cooking.

It doesn’t take that long

I always imagine getting fast food to be so much more faster than just whipping something up at home, but when I time it, cooking usually wins. If I have all the ingredients in my cupboards, fridge and freezer, I can beat the drive-thru window every time. It’s easy to forget how time consuming just getting into the car and going to the restaurant can take. With traffic, long lines at the window and the drive back, I can usually have a meal made at home in just as much time.

It’s not that hard

As good as the Food Network has been to inspire people to cook, I think it has done just as much harm. Meals don’t have to be something like Martha Stewart would serve. They can be simple, easy to make and ugly. Making food pretty is important in a restaurant or a photo-shoot, but when your are making food at home, it doesn’t have to look gorgeous. Frankly, when you get food at a fast food restaurant, it NEVER looks like those commercials, so you really don’t have much to compete with.

After all this thought, the words still linger in my head. “Why cook?” The real question should be, “Why not?”

Friday night, I was up late. Not just normal late, but LATE late. I had eaten dinner at 7pm, so by 2am I felt like I was STARVING. No wonder, since it had been SEVEN hours since I had last eaten. I was out of points for the day.

What should I have done?

What I did do was go to Del Taco, one of the few places still open at two in the morning, and had a four point taco. I counted it on my eating journal as breakfast for Saturday morning. I went to bed a half hour later, woke up so late that I missed breakfast and my next meal was lunch. I technically didn’t lie on my journal, but I felt like I cheated. I was out of points, so I counted those points toward the next day.

But it WAS the next day!

My watch said it was August 2nd. At midnight, Cinderella’s finery turns back into the bland and I can count that taco as breakfast, right?

Now before you go all “late night eating is BAD for you” on me, do a Google Search for “Diet Myth Eat After 7” and plenty of experts will tell you that your metabolism doesn’t just shut down at 7:01 pm. They say that in the end, what counts is energy in and energy out. I don’t know if I believe that, but I DON’T believe that eating after 7pm will make me fat, because I have lost a lot of weight not heeding that advice.

This is an issue of score-keeping. When I run out of points for one day, is it acceptable to start working on the points target for the next day? Why do I feel like I have to sleep eight hours before I am allowed to start eating for the next day? What if I didn’t sleep at all? Should I starve until I am allowed slumber?

In the case of last Friday night, it worked out because I was just having my breakfast before I slept, but if I run out of points at 3pm, I really don’t think counting the full meal at 7pm as breakfast for the next day is the way to go. Where do I draw the line? Is it really the midnight hour?

What about you? How do deal with situations like these?

One of the benefits of living in Salt Lake City is that it’s the kind of place that attracts people like nakedjen. She moved here last January and after seven months in the town, she knows it better than I do now. I was enjoying the joy of her company at the Geek Dinner last Thursday when she told me about eating locally. She posted her entry about her thoughts here:

• nakedjen: Eating Local, Eating Organic, Eating Well

This is the crux of her challenge to us all:

I want each of us to really think about the food on our plates. To be mindful of the food that we’re eating. To forge a relationship with it. To understand where it has come from, how far it traveled, the energy it took for it to get from the farm to our belly. Do you know that if each and every one of us ate just one local meal a week, just one, a meal that is purchased and prepared from foods found in season and locally, we would save, as a country, 1.1 million barrels of oil per week?

Could I do it? Could I eat locally grown food for just ONE meal a week? Sure, I could! That one meal a week would cost me a fraction more than it would have at the grocery store, but isn’t that worth saving THAT much in oil?

How would I do it? Well, in the summer, it’s easy. Our city had a local farmers’ market every Saturday where I could get locally grown food. In the winter, however, I would have to rely on Liberty Market, a small store that specializes in local and organic food. Depending on your town’s size, this may or may not be an option for you. Of course, the more rural you are, the more likely you’ll have access to people who grow food for a living.

Can you do it? Can you eat one locally grown meal a week?

Yesterday, I posted a detailed list on how to ride your bike to work. Today, I found this excellent video about just that subject:

Each and every day 550,000 thousand Copenhageners ride their bike to work or school. Here are some of them.

This video is brought to us by this weblog:

• Copenhagen Cycle Chic – Streetstyle and Bike Advocacy in High Heels

Go there to look for more inspiration about riding your bike instead of driving. You’ll be healthier and you’ll save money.

Back in 2005, I happened to work at a place that was close enough to my home that I could ride my bike to work. I learned a lot from that experience and I thought I had shared it here, but it looks like I never wrote that entry. Now that gasoline is SO expensive, I am sharing what I learned so that you can save money AND get fit.

• Get A Cruiser Bike: Racing bikes might prevent wind resistance, but they are a poor excuse for riding in the city. You need to be upright so you can see what is around you. A mountain bike with less bumpy tires might be a good alternative, but I was happiest with my crusier bike.

• Shower Before You Ride To Work: Since most employers won’t have a place for you to shower after your bike ride, you will have to shower at home beforehand. Even though you’ll get sweaty on the ride, you will feel better if you shower first. If your company DOES have a shower at work, then EVERYTHING is easier.

• Don’t Wear Your Work Clothes: After your shower, you’ll have to sweat it out on the ride and try to freshen up before your work day. Pack your work clothes in your backpack including an extra set of underwear. After my ride to work, I was sweaty, so I brought athletic body wipes to freshen up along with deodorant/antiperspirant and perfume. I saved my sweaty workout clothes for the ride home as well.

• Give Yourself PLENTY Of Time: When you’re driving to work and encounter a detour, it will add maybe a couple of minutes to your commute. When you’re riding your bike, however, a minor detour can add FAR more time. On my route to work, I had to cross a train track, which was usually abandoned, but one day, there was a train PARKED on the tracks, blocking my access. I had to detour, which took me an extra 20 minutes. There was hardly enough time for me to change that day. After that, I ALWAYS gave myself an extra 15 minutes to bike to work.

• Lock It Up: Just because you are at work doesn’t mean that your bike is safe in the stairwell without a lock. It is best to lock up your bike at an approved bike rack, but if none is available, make sure you find a secure place and lock it up, running the cable through your wheels AND the frame. I used this Bell Cable Bike Lock, which is not the best lock, but it packs up small and is enough to keep someone from walking off with your ride home.

• Ride Safely: There were so many times when I was cut off by cars who didn’t see me. I was never injured because I was so aware of all the ways a car could accidentally hit me. Here is a link to the website that helped me be more aware: Bicycle Safety: How NOT to get hit by cars.

• Prepare for Weather: Sometimes a beautiful morning ends with a wet and soggy ride home. I found that camping supplies really helped me prepare with this emergency poncho. It was cheap and packed up SMALL in my bike bag, but would cover me and my backpack on the ride home.

• Have A Backup Plan: If the weather becomes completely impassable or if there is a personal emergency, you need someone you can call to get you and your bike home safely. Whether it’s a spouse, family member or close friend, you should set up a plan so you can call them and get home quickly if you need to. I had this set up with Mike, my husband. I only had to use it twice that year that I rode my bike to work, but knowing that he could come get me if I needed eased my mind quite a bit.

Riding my bike to work that summer was the best thing for me. I lost an additional ten pounds that summer and I saved enough money in gas to pay for the bike (and that was before the gas prices exploded). If you have been considering taking an alternative method of transportation to work in an effort to save money or burn calories, biking to work is a wonderful choice. With just a little planning you can bike to work with ease and joy.

I saw these slippers on Amazon.com called Slipper Genie. You’re supposed to use them to mop the floor. They are said to make mopping easy. They actually look kind of cool.

This video describes them and lets you see them in detail:

The question that I have is: if they are supposed to make mopping easier, does that mean that I’ll burn less calories by using them instead of a mop? Wouldn’t it be better for me to bend over the mop using my legs, back and arms to wash the floor than to just skate around the floor with some funny looking slippers? Do I really want to make my housework easier when it is one of the few things left in my routine that burns calories (besides official exercise, of course)?

What do you think? Is Slipper Genie better for me or should I stick with a traditional mop?

Via: Slipper Genie: Mop Floors While Burning Calories

The July 17th New England Journal of Medicine has published a report that followed three groups of dieters for two years. They compared low fat, The Mediterranean Diet and Atkins (low carbohydrate). You can see the full results here:

• NEJM — Weight Loss with a Low-Carbohydrate, Mediterranean, or Low-Fat Diet

The overall weight changes among the 322 participants at 24 months were:

• –2.9 kg for the low-fat group
• –4.4 kg for the Mediterranean-diet group
• –4.7 kg for the low-carbohydrate group

A graph of the weight loss for each group is here:

One note about the study is that while the low-fat and Mediterranean diet followers had a restricted caloric intake of 1500 to 1800 calories a day, the low-carbohydrate group were not restricted in their calories.

I find it difficult to maintain a low-carb diet, but I know I feel better when I follow one. Here is a little incentive for me to monitor my sugar and carbohydrate intake.

Via: Low-Carb Comes Out Ahead in Diet Comparison

This photo from The Library of Congress attracted me. Here are a group of girls from Chicago, competing in Sokol Sports in Austria.

Chicago girls at Sokol Sports, Prague, Austria by The Library of Congress from Flickr

What are these Sokol sports? This website lent me a little information about them:

• Czech Sokol Organization

The idea of physical education as well as the promotion of moral values was formulated by Miroslav Tyrs, a professor of the Charles University, and by Jindrich Fugner. The philosophy, evolved from the ancient Greek ideals of “kalokagathia” and now propagated by Miroslav Tyrs and his followers, became the basis of the movement, which is connected with the origin and destiny of the Czech (Czechoslovak) Republic. Four times Sokol was banned or its activities were restricted by wars or totalitarian regimes. It was still alive, though- in other countries, in communities of Czech immigrants on all continents of the world.

Although these girls seem to have tennis rackets in their hands, Sokol is said to be gymnastic training. According to The Sokol in the Czech Lands to 1914: Training for the Nation by Claire E. Nolte:

The history of the Sokol, the Czech nationalist gymnastic organization, from its founding in 1862 until the outbreak of World War I emphasizes its role in articulating national values and facilitating mass mobilization in the political context of the multinational Habsburg state. By including background on the German Turnverein, this study goes beyond the Czech context to explore the intersection of gymnastics and mass nationalism in Central Europe.

All of this makes me wonder why those girls from Chicago were there in Prague, so long ago. Does anyone have any knowledge of this?

On another note, the idea of staying physically active and strong as a service to our nation has been talked about a lot in our news. It’s not addressed on a nationalism level, but the idea that America has become weak because of our obesity epidemic is an underlying theme. Is it our patriotic duty to stay fit?

Keeping motivated is a constant struggle for me. Saturday night I sat in my comfy chair desperately trying to think what I could do to motivate myself to eat healthy and exercise. I felt so out of control that I couldn’t think of anything that would convince me to take care of my body.

Toys? I have all the cool toys I could ever want. Movies? My Tivo and NetFlix bring movies that I will love to my doorstep whenever I want them. Books? I have a stack of books that I want to read and haven’t given myself the time. Time? I have the same problem with taking time for myself as I do for eating healthy. Money? I have all the money I need in that little debit card in my purse.

Then I remembered something from my teen years that hit me. When I worked at K-Mart, putting myself through college, they paid me every week in CASH. I don’t know if they still do that, but back in the 80’s, that was their policy. I would take half of that cash and hoard it away for tuition and books. I LOVED the growing stack of bills hiding in my desk.

Sure, I have a bank account that accrues interest (however minuscule), but that is for serious things like paying the IRS and saving for a home. The idea of that envelope of hoarded money was appealing to me, so I set up a bribery scheme based on that idea.

I created a new form and you can download it here:

• Weekly Goals Journal Sheet from Starling Fitness: Excel spreadsheet for use with MS Office or Open Office.

I can set goals for my diet, physical activity, work, home, family and joy. I have set dollar amounts that I can collect and hoard in my little envelope every week. Of course, you can give yourself stickers, bribe yourself with time, movies, books, whatever works for you. It took me a long time to find something that was inspiring for me. Sit down and find out what will work for you and then set some goals for yourself.

When Ingrid Michaelson released Girls and Boys, she started a MySpace blog and has faithfully added to it. Back in May, she related a story about water-skiing. She started out the entry with the words, “I am not an athletic girl.”

• Myspace.com Blogs – “OUCH” – ingrid michaelson MySpace Blog

She had such great dreams of what water-skiing would be like:

The water felt good. I felt alive. I was bobbing up and down while marla crammed my skis on my feet. I began to think that this might actually be a success. I imagined myself gliding across the lake, one handed, smiling and waving as I flew by all my friends, their jaws dropped in awe of my swan-like figure and grace. I would hop back onto the dock, kick off my skis and wrestle with some small child, not even acknowledging the applause. I would be so modest.

Unfortunately, it was not to be:

Why was I never able to stand up? Was I destined to always be dragged like a limp doll in the bathtub? My face was red in an unhealthy looking way and my chest felt like a large man was sitting on it. My confidence, like a an old sweater, was unravelling all over this lake , but there must have been one thread of it left in tact, because I held up my pointer finger and gurgled the words “one…more….time”.

In the end, the only success she was able to achieve was “water squatting.”

It took about week to feel normal again. The pain left me, the bruises, the broken blood vessels in my eyes faded. But what has not faded is the fact that I tried to do something that I feared. And while I did not succeed fully, I succeeded partially. And thats good enough for me.

Next time you’re confronted with a physical activity that looks impossible to you, remember Ingrid Michaelson trying over and over to water ski and continually ending up with water filling every orifice of her body in failure. If she can keep going, then so can you.

Via: OUCH by BlogjamComic on Flickr