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

A funny thing happened to my thinspiration Tumblrs and RSS feeds. They turned into naked ladies and food. I don’t know what happened, but instead of inspiring images to help me stay on my program, all I see now are naked ladies and food.

Now, my biggest question is this: Did they change or did I? I used to see pictures of healthy, nearly naked women and get inspired to exercise. Now, they just look like porn to me. I used to see pictures of food and think that I could use a new recipe to mix things up. Now, they just look like food porn to me.

Did the nature of the photos change or am I different somehow? I don’t know, but all of my favorite Tumblrs are useless to me now…

Original Images Via:

• Fitness, Health, And Confidence ?
• Feel Good Inc. — beautifulpicturesofhealthyfood: Submitted…

I saw this quote and it made me realize that it doesn’t take a HUGE effort to get healthy and stay there.

It reads:

It is just the little touches after the average man would quit that make the master’s fame.

• Orison Swett Marden

It doesn’t take grueling workouts or starvation to get to a healthy weight. You just have to KEEP GOING. It’s the Christmas season and it’s the time when everyone quits their healthy diet and exercise and proceed to gain ten to fifteen pounds. If you just add those little touches to your masterpiece, you wouldn’t have to face grueling workouts and starvation in January.

DON’T QUIT right now. THIS MONTH is the “little touch” to your program. Just like that extra effort that a master painter would make to her work, this is your little touch to your program. The average person quits during December, but keeping up with your eating and exercise routine is the difference between you and the average person. It’s what will make you a master.

If you are keeping track of your exercise, abstinence or any other good habit, you might like this Don’t Break The Chain calendar the Karen Kavett made.

If you keep track of things in an 8.5″ X 5.5″ planner, like I do, then here is one that will print up on Letter Size paper and fit in your planner:

Don’t Break The Chain 2015 8.5″ X 5.5″

Karen Talks about her calendar here:

This is a better video talking about not breaking the chain:

So, whether you are tracking your exercise, abstinence or work habits, here is a pretty little calendar for you to keep track of things. Hope you like it!

I saw this poster on Symphony of Awesomeness. It’s from an article on PostiveMed and it reminded me of how it felt to be so desperate.

Here are the 12 Tips:

1. Water: Drink lots of it. Before meals and between meals. Dehydration often masks itself as hunger.

2. Eat Your Calories: Don’t drink them, except for healthy smoothies. No sodas (even diet)or most juices. Eat your fruit when possible, the extra fiber helps you feel full.

3. Use Smaller Plates: And a bigger spoon or fork. Trick your body into thinking you are eating more food. If you see a plate filled with food your brain thinks, “Wow, I just ate a whole plate of food.”

4. Pile Up Your Food: Heap your food into a tall pile, same philosophy as above, a tall pile of veggies looks much bigger.

5. Veggies First: Put your vegetables on your plate first. They should cover about half of it.

6. Make It Look Bigger: If you eat half a chicken breast and save half for another meal, cut it the long way so it looks bigger.

7. Spice It Up! Spicy food fools your taste buds into being more satisfied with smaller amounts. Tip: Sprinkle popcorn with a spicy pepper blend, delicious!

8. No Fad Diets: Starvation mode freaks your body out so that it holds onto every fat cell for dear life. In case you need it later.

9. Love Yourself: If you don’t love yourself heavy, you won’t love yourself skinny either. It’s not a magic fix-all for problems, you did not get heavy overnight, you will not lose it overnight either.

10. Change Your Life: There is no magic cure, the ONLY way to lose weight and keep it off is to consistently burn more calories than you take in. It’s a life change, not a two week change.

11. Make It A Mantra: Today I will eat food that nourishes my body and makes me feel good I will do some gentle exercise to stretch my muscles because I deserve the best I can do for myself.

12. Keep Track of Inches: When you think you have hit a plateau in weight loss its your body exchanging fat for muscle. Muscle tissue is half the size of fat and burned calories more effortlessly.

These are all valid tips, but not ONE of them could help me when I was at my worst. Eating disorders don’t need tips. I could drink water and use small plates, but that didn’t stop me from bingeing. I didn’t need tips. I needed a complete overhaul of my spiritual and emotional life. Going through the steps with my sponsor gave me that and I work on it EVERY day now.

The funny thing is, when I take care of the emotional and spiritual side of my life, I don’t need to worry about the physical aspects. I don’t want to binge. I don’t need tips to shed pounds. They just came off because I didn’t feel the CONSTANT need to eat anymore.

Every time I see tips like this now, it’s just reminds me of how hopeless I felt before I found Overeater’s Anonymous.

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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.

I saw this motivational poster on LiveToTheBeat and it made me say, “YES!”

It reads:

Find your greatness.

I don’t want to see some genetically blessed person in my motivational posters. I wanna see THIS guy! This guy is inspiring! He’s sweating! He’s working hard!

The next time I think about blowing off my incredibly easy workout, I’m going to have THIS guy in my head. If he can do his workout, then so can I.

Over the last year, I have lost 59.8 pounds by keeping my bingeing at bay and walking a slow twenty minutes a day.

But, I’m getting weak…

I talked about this a little over a month ago here:

• Starling Fitness – Better to Look Weak And Be Strong

So, I added some weight training every other day to my workouts. Here is my list:

It is EMBARRASSINGLY trivial. It’s PATHETICALLY slow. It’s so little weight and so few reps and only ONE set! It takes nine minutes. But when I think about my weight training days, I don’t dread them anymore. I tell myself that it’s hilariously easy, so it’s no big deal.

For me, right now, it’s more important to be consistent than to challenge myself. I have challenged myself. It made me thinner, and then it made me binge. I’m going to try gentle and consistent and see if that works out better for me. It sure did with slow walking every day with the dog. Maybe it will with the weight training as well.

In the Overeater’s Anonymous group that I attend, we have a sentence in the meeting format that says, “Please do not mention specific foods in this meeting. If you are having trouble with specific foods, please discuss them with your sponsor.”

I have heard this phrase in many meetings, so it’s not that unique, but I really don’t know how I feel about it. I have so many conflicted feelings.

I am no one else’s Higher Power

I don’t think we should be bossing other people around. I don’t think we should be telling people what they can and cannot share. We are so isolated in this disease that when we tell others what they can share, it puts up a wall that I really think shouldn’t be there.

I don’t want to hurt anyone

At the same time, I don’t want to hurt anyone. I don’t want to trigger them. I don’t want to make my friends in my meeting uncomfortable. If I mention food that is on my plan, it might not be on someone else’s plan. In fact, it might be a former binge food. I don’t want to cause anyone any pain.

I can’t shield you from temptation.

Then again, ANYTHING I say could be a temptation for you. It doesn’t matter WHAT I say, whether I’m talking about healthy food, exercise or other behaviors. There is nothing I can do to prevent you from being tempted.

I was reading in Alcoholic’s Anonymous (the Big Book) in Chapter 7 Working With Others and it said:

In our belief any scheme of combating alcoholism which proposes to shield the sick man from temptation is doomed to failure. If the alcoholic tries to shield himself he may succeed for a time, but he usually winds up with a bigger explosion than ever. We have tried these methods. These attempts to do the impossible have always failed.

So many people have tried to control my eating, now they want to even control my talking about eating.

A big part of my disease stemmed from the fact that I was starved by my grandmother as a child. When people try to control what I can say about my food, it kind of reminds me of that. In fact, you could say that it triggers me.

The Big Book talks about that, too. (Chapter 7 Working With Others)

We are careful never to show intolerance or hatred of drinking as an institution. Experience shows that such an attitude is not helpful to anyone. Every new alcoholic looks for this spirit among us and is immensely relieved when he finds we are not witch-burners. A spirit of intolerance might repel alcoholics whose lives could have been saved, had it not been for such stupidity. We would not even do the cause of temperate drinking any good, for not one drinker in a thousand likes to be told anything about alcohol by one who hates it.

It’s NEVER about the food.

Just like my sponsor says every time, it’s never about the food. If you want to eat something just because I mentioned it in my share, that has NOTHING to do with me and everything to do with you.

This is what it says about that in the Big Book Chapter 7 Working With Others:

Assuming we are spiritually fit, we can do all sorts of things alcoholics are not supposed to do People have said we must not go where liquor is served; we must not have it in our homes; we must shun friends who drink; we must avoid moving pictures which show drinking scenes; we must not go into bars; our friends must hide their bottles if we go to their houses; we mustn’t think or be reminded about alcohol at all. Our experience shows that this is not necessarily so. We meet these conditions every day. An alcoholic who cannot meet them, still has an alcoholic mind; there is something the matter with his spiritual status.

Romancing the Food

Then again, if someone is going on and on about a specific food, it’s an indication that they aren’t spiritually fit. It’s called, “Romancing the Food,” and it means that you’re just setting yourself up for a binge. Limiting shares to focus on the positive and not the specific foods, might actually be helpful.

Control is one of my character defects

I have a BIG problem with control. The desire to control myself, others and my environment is one of my biggest character defects, so I have to be on the lookout for anything that feeds it. Telling other OA members what they can and cannot say is something that my desire for control likes very much, so it can’t be good for me, even if it prevents me from being triggered.

Principles Before Personalities

It seemed like our Twelfth Tradition might have been the answer to this question. It reads:

Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all these traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.

If we place principles (what is right) before personalities (people’s feelings), then it seems like we shouldn’t be limiting what our members can share. Then again, if we place principles (the desire to stop compulsive eating behaviors) over personalities (what people want to share), then we should limit their ability to mention specific foods. And I’m right back where I started.

I Don’t Know What’s Right

After all this research and thought about this issue, I don’t know what is right. I don’t want to hurt someone else. I don’t want us to control what people can and cannot share. If I was asked what I thought our group should do, I literally wouldn’t know how to answer.

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Original Image Via: Disease Proof – The anatomy of a binge

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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.

Sometimes I need a little boost and this animated GIF really made my day:

It reads:

And you will be brilliant!

I don’t know why having Doctor Who telling me that I’ll be brilliant if I just keep working is so motivating to me, but it is.

This is one picture from a series encouraging you to study. You can see the whole series here: WIL WHEATON dot TUMBLR — kittydoom: cavykatie: …

Sophrosyne: It’s a word I’ve never heard of before. In fact, it’s a word that my spell-check has never heard of before. It was never taught me in school or religious classes, despite being the one thing that would have helped me most in life.

The definition of Sophrosyne is:

A healthy state of mind, characterized by self-control, moderation, and a deep awareness of one’s true self, and resulting in true happiness.

We all know the word hedonism (a school of thought that argues that pleasure is the primary or most important intrinsic good), which is the OPPOSITE of sophrosyne. My spell check believes that it is a real word, but sophrosyne has a red line underneath it, denying its existence.

Is it no wonder that our society is spending too much, eating too much, exercising too little and mired in addictions? The basic concept of self-control and moderation isn’t taught in schools. It is so unknown that the word describing it isn’t even in our vernacular.

It’s not like the ancients weren’t trying to tell us about it. Just look at this Goethe quote:

Out of moderation a pure happiness springs.

• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The more I try to be ordinary, the better my life becomes. The more I try to be boring, the happier I am. I don’t exercise like a crazy woman anymore. I don’t binge like a glutton anymore. When I’m moderate with my exercise AND my eating, I lose weight, feel better and am happier. When I try to exercise and restrict my eating, I end up bingeing. Staying away from the extremes has literally saved my life. Sophrosyne is my new catchphrase.

Images via:

Sophrosyne definition: Wanderlust

Goethe Quote: 3 steps for achieving sophrosyne – positively present

I saw this motivational poster on thefitnesselements and I didn’t know what to think about it.

It reads:

There is no diet that will do what healthy eating does.

This seemed like arguing semantics to me. ANY plan of eating you choose could be considered your diet. Any plan of healthy eating is, in fact, a diet.

Then again, this poster does remind me of a truth that I have found.

Diets just don’t appeal to me anymore.

I used to scour fitness magazines and book stores, looking for “inspiration.” Whenever eating healthy became hard, I would look for a new way of eating that would solve my problems. Until I learned the truth about my eating disorder.

It’s NEVER About The Food

Whenever I am having a hard time eating healthy, I know that something ELSE is wrong in my life. Maybe I was rude to someone and didn’t apologize. Maybe I was hurt by something someone said. Maybe I am holding onto a grudge or resentment that I just need to let go.

Whatever my problem, it is NEVER about the food. If I am tempted to eat poorly, I do NOT need a new diet. I need to apologize to someone, forgive them or accept them as they are. There is something in my life emotionally that I need to deal with, not a diet.

The truth is, it’s also never about the exercise either. Whenever I am tempted to really bump up my exercise program, that is yet ANOTHER indication that something is off in my life. I don’t need to increase my speed or do hill work. I need to apologize to someone, forgive them or accept them as they are.

This motivational poster is RIGHT. There is no diet that can do what healthy eating does. In fact, diets and new exercise regimes can’t do anything for me except give me a clue that something else is amiss in my life.