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

I HATE the name. I just want to say right up front that I absolutely HATE the name. My sponsor told me to make a God Box. She said she used a lock box, but I could make mine out of anything. I told her I would do it because I decided that I would just do whatever my sponsor said because obviously I had NO idea how to keep my eating under control. If she said I needed to make a God Box, I would.

But I procrastinated. Instead of just making my God Box like she asked me to, I looked at God Boxes on the Internet.

They all turned my stomach a bit until I realized I didn’t like the name. It’s supposed to be a box for things that you just can’t change. You write on a tiny slip of paper the problem that you have no control over and put it into the box to let “God” take care of it. I don’t believe in God, but “Higher Power Box” sounded stupid. “Part of my brain that I haven’t used for so long that it feels like it’s another presence box” sounds stupid, too. So I clung to the name God Box just because it was two syllables.

And I finally made one.

As much as I railed against the name and even the idea of it, it has been incredibly helpful. Every time I feel myself ruminating about something that I can’t control, I just write it on a post-it-note and put it into the box. Somehow, just stuffing it away in that Pringles can helps me.

I hate the name, but the concept and the execution has been something I’ve quickly become thankful for. Every time something irritating or upsetting crosses my mind, I can just stuff it into that can instead of stuffing my face with food. I can’t stress enough how grateful I am for that simple Pringles can.

If you have found yourself ruminating about things or felt the need to eat in order to ease your feelings about something, make yourself a God Box. Create a place to contain your worries and fears so they don’t consume you and, in turn, make you consume more food than you should.

This postcard from PostSecret reminded me of my worst of days suffering with my compulsive eating.

It reads:

I only eat fast food if I’m near a place to throw it up.

I never was bulimic. I could never make myself throw up my huge binges. For some reason, that made me think that I wasn’t THAT bad. “Sure, I ate over 4000 calories in one sitting, but at least I didn’t throw it up,” I would think to myself. I knew I had a problem because eating that much food made me feel sick, yet I felt like I couldn’t stop.

But at least I wasn’t barfing. I wasn’t ruining my teeth. I wasn’t THAT sick.

I now know that my compulsive eating was just as dangerous and harmful as bulimia. Bingeing and purging is bad. Bingeing all by itself is just as bad. BOTH of them hurt the victims of these diseases.

And don’t fool yourself. It IS a disease. It is just as damaging as a disease. It leaves its victims just as powerless over it. It is a physiologic response to food that makes you need more and more. I’ve talked about this before here:

• Starling Fitness – Refeeding: A Treatment for Obesity?
• Starling Fitness – The Skinny on Obesity

Watch this video if you don’t believe that compulsive overeating is not a disease:

This is the most important quote:

No one can exert willpower over a biochemical drive that goes on every minute of every day of every year.

If you are telling yourself that you’re not THAT sick because at least you don’t make yourself barf after your binges, you are WRONG. Get some help. For me, I found help at Overeater’s Anonymous, but there are mental health professionals who might also be able to nurture you back to health. The most important thing is realizing that you have a problem and getting some help for it.

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.

I LOVE this comic talking about his apple juice. It attracted me because the first thing he says is:

“I realized recently that my judgment gets more messed up by food and juice than it does by drugs and alcohol.”

I have made that same realization myself…

I love that point where he realizes that the man is judging him differently than he thought.

“I was so caught up in the euphoria of having all that apple juice, that for like a minute, I lived in world where racism didn’t exist.”

YES! Food can literally make me forget that there are other ills in the world. I can be so involved in thinking about what I’m going to eat next that I forget about everything else. THAT is the craziness about food. THAT is the powerlessness and I need to admit and accept about myself EVERY day.

Via: WIL WHEATON dot TUMBLR — aspeckamongdots: I don’t think I’ve ever laughed…

I absolutely ADORE this animated GIF from Believe To Achieve.

It reads:

Change is in the Challenge.

It is SO right! I only see changes in my body when I challenge myself. If I just keep coasting, everything stays the same. This realization got my butt off the comfy chair today and put my feet right on my treadmill desk where they belong. I made that desk for a reason, so I could work AND move.

Don’t forget, the change is in the challenge!!

Ever since I was a little kid, people have been saying, “There is no magic pill that will help you lose weight.” No matter how often they say it, I see new diet pills come and go on the market over and over.

Here’s a diet pill that REALLY works:

EXERCISE

It reads:

Prescription: EXERCISE

Use 30 minutes daily. Free Refills

Uses: Broken Heart, Belly Bulge, Holiday Binge, Anxiety, Bad Day, Anger, Sadness, Over Energized, Healthy Body, Tight Jeans, Saggy Butt, Flappy Arms, Heavy Breathing After Walking Up A Flight Of Stairs, Relationship Revenge, Boredom, Training, Longer Life, Couch Potato Syndrome, Reality TV Binge, Concentration, Weight Loss, Metabolism Enhancer, Disease Prevention, Energy Boost, Bonding Date, and for absolutely no reason at all, just because.

I would also add that it’s great for breaking down the mental barriers to meditation. It’s FAR easier for me to meditate and get that self-transcendence feeling when I exercise right beforehand.

The next time you are wishing for that magic pill that just makes you skinny, throw on your running shoes and take a run or walk around your neighborhood. Nothing like a little physical activity to dispel the depression and start the blood pumping.

Image via: work sweat achieve

I saw this motivational quote on Fit Facts the other day and it really hit home for me.

It reads:

One day this pain will make sense to you

This is such a good thought for EVERYTHING. Sure, it explains away the muscle soreness with an eye on the final outcome, but the truth is, there is a lot more pain in this world than simple muscle soreness.

How about the pangs of hunger? Feeling hungry is worth the benefit of eating less in the long run. As long as I am eating three healthy meals a day and 2-3 snacks, there is NO risk that I am starving myself, so if I feel hungry, that means it’s not real hunger. Suffering through the pain of hedonic hunger is definitely worth the outcome and it will all make sense when I am at goal weight.

How about emotional pain? It’s never wise to go searching for relationships that hurt your feelings, but after experiencing heartbreaking pain, I can sincerely say that it was worth it. I can look back on those heart-wrenching moments and I now know that each one was worth it. It hurt when it happened, but the perspective of now has shown me that it was all to my benefit. Does that emotional pain of my past make sense now? You betcha!

Even the spiritual pain that I experienced makes sense to me now. The years of feeling no connection to that spiritual part of my brain showed me that I didn’t want to live that way. I didn’t know it then, but that feeling that said to me, “I want to go home,” was trying to tell me that something was missing. It wasn’t home. It was accessing that part of my brain that gives me all those feel-good spiritual chemicals I was missing. Once I started meditating regularly again, I had full access to that part of my own physiology. All the pain of isolation from it for years sincerely makes sense to me now.

The next time you are suffering, whether it’s physically, emotionally or spiritually, remember that one day this pain will make sense to you. Do what you must to relieve the pain. Don’t go searching for it, but if you are in pain, it will become a pristine and clear moment of clarity some day in the future.

I’ve talked before about meditation and how it has helped me in my weight loss journey, but after reading The God Gene, I now know WHY it’s so helpful.

Just as I suspected, there are aspects of our brains that can cause the feeling of “Other” or a presence. When we access these parts of our brains, it feels good. The crux of all twelve step programs is recreating a spiritual awakening. For many people, that feels like God, but no matter what it feels like, it is actually our brains producing chemicals. How able our brains can do that for us is partially dependent on our genetic makeup, but it’s not an all-or-nothing genetic roll of the dice. It’s more like height. Some people are tall. Some people are extremely sensitive to those chemicals that create spiritual experiences.

No matter where your brain is on the continuum, it is within your best interest to cultivate and strengthen this long-neglected part of your mind. That feeling of self-transcendence is what has kept alcoholics away from the bottle since the beginning of Alcoholics Anonymous. And having a spiritual awakening is your first step toward eating healthy every single day with no binges, purges or starving.

Overeaters Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous do not endorse anything on this entry or blog.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks for atheists and twelve-step programs are the first few steps. In particular, the requirement to believe in a Higher Power as you know it. I may not be able to believe in an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent being who actually CARES about my inability to stop eating, but I can lay all my trust in science.

A LONG time ago, before Starling Fitness was ever born, I wrote an entry about being an atheist and my favorite methods of gathering randomness.

• Pick Me! – 11/23/2003 – Atheist

Back then, I wrote:

Since music speaks to me louder than words, I have become particularly attached to this form of divination. MusicMatch is a shareware program that will read music from CD’s and store it in any form you wish on your computer’s hard drive. I have almost every piece of music that I own on my computer’s hard drive, now. The Auto-DJ feature will randomly choose music for me for a user-specified amount of time. I can narrow the choice by stipulating a genre or artist, but I like the joy of letting it choose for me almost completely randomly (sometimes I need to hear Sleigh Ride, even if it’s March, because, to me, it’s a song more about friends and fun than about Christmas). The interpretation comes when I assign meaning to particular songs. Many times, I have found that my mind really needed to hear a particular song or even just a particular line in the lyrics and ignored almost everything else that was chosen. The solace comes from hearing the order that the mind needs in the chaos of the Auto-DJ.

MusicMatch has long ago been replaced by iTunes. Auto DJ has been replaced by the Shuffle feature, but all the rest is the same. When I’m feeling bad, I just put my iPod on Shuffle and try to listen for answers.

Overeaters Anonymous does not endorse anything on this entry or blog.

I was doing a Google image search for humility and weight loss and this comic came up.

It reads:

Amazing new weight loss program! No pills. No books. Just two easy steps.

Step 1: Remove hand from bag of chips.

Step 2: Remove rear end from couch and take a walk

It seems simple enough. Eat less. Move more. Why did it never work for me? Why was it bad weight loss advice?

The truth of the matter is far more complicated than that two-step process. It wasn’t what I was eating. It was the REASONS I wanted to eat.

Overeaters Anonymous says that this problem is not just physical (the eat less move more advice). It’s emotional and spiritual as well. I ran away from the spiritual side of this disorder until I was so desperate that I couldn’t run anymore.

Every time I work on the emotional and spiritual aspects of my problem, the physical aspects take care of themselves. Eat less and move more is a LOT more easy when I have my resentments and guilty thoughts dealt with. It also helps that I have a Higher Power to just pass off my weak moments to, even though I am an atheist.

I think I consider that comic bad weight loss advice because it has only a SMALL piece of the picture. It’s NOT just eat less and move more. That’s a minuscule part of the problem.

Overeaters Anonymous does not endorse anything on this entry or blog.

As you can see, I have wanted a treadmill desk (treadputer, walk station, etc.) for a LONG time. The first time I wrote about it was back in 2006.

• Starling Fitness – A Whole Website About Treadputers!
• Starling Fitness – The Walking Desk Blog
• Starling Fitness – The Walkstation from Steelcase
• Starling Fitness – Treadmill Desk
• Starling Fitness – Fitness Magazine Review: April 2010
• Starling Fitness – The Best Inexpensive Treadmill Desk

EIGHT years later, I FINALLY did it to my treadmill, and I’m so excited! Best of all, it only cost me THREE bucks!!

Read more for instructions, but I’m sure you can see what I did just from this first photo. (more…)