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

I saw this quote this morning and it made me nod in agreement.

It reads:

To lengthen thy life lessen thy meals.

• Benjamin Franklin

You don’t need to starve. You don’t need to change everything about what you eat. All you need to do is LESSEN. Make all of your meals a tad smaller and you will live longer. That’s all you need to do. Being fit is 80% what you eat and 20% exercise. You can’t outrun your fork, so put it DOWN. Eat a little bit less and you will be healthier and happier.

I found this postcard at PostSecret a long time ago and forgot to post it here:

It reads:

Thank God I’m not thin. I would spend WAY too much money on clothes.

This is just an excuse. It’s one of the many lies we tell ourselves that keep us fat.

The last time I lost a substantial amount of weight, I had this anxiety. None of my bras fit. My pajamas didn’t fit. My swimming suits were huge and floppy. It spawned a HUGE freakout and I gained all the weight back.

Now that I’m at that same weight as the last freakout, I can feel myself having it again. This time, it was the swimming suits. My bras had been so old that I NEEDED new ones, so they didn’t bother me. Pajamas are for sleeping, so the fact that they are too loose wasn’t a big deal. Swimming suits, however, are essential when I need them and I was caught off guard by the fact that mine are too big. There was only one top and one bottom that could adequately cover me without threatening to fall off.

Even the board shorts that I altered last year were too loose.

For some strange reason, this made me want to binge. Shouldn’t clothes that are too big for me make me HAPPY?! Shouldn’t they be a reason for rejoicing?! Instead, it caused a freakout, but this time, I vowed to move beyond the freakout instead of letting it get in my way like last time.

I altered some of my old swimming suits so they would fit and I bought a few new ones. Since it’s so late in the season, most of them were on clearance and there were a few left in my size.

This time, the disaster was averted. I was worried that I would be naked or have to spend “too much money” on new ones. Until I am able to decimate the idea that being thin will cost me too much money, I will still have this problem.

And, it’s such a stupid idea.

Being thin is CHEAPER than being fat. Firstly, I’m not shoveling tons of food down my throat, so I save that money. Secondly, thin clothes are less expensive than plus-sized clothes. Thirdly, I will spend less money on health care in the future because I’m closer to a healthy weight. Finally, since I’m not gaining and losing over and over, I don’t need to replace my wardrobe every time I “get it under control.” My clothes actually have the time to wear out now.

The next time you feel that tiny burst of gratitude that you aren’t thin because you think you would spend too much money on clothes, remember that being thin is CHEAPER than being fat in every possible way.

The National Institute of Health has a pretty cool booklet called Aim for a Healthy Weight Patient Booklet. It’s not perfect, but it’s a really good nutritional basis for those who don’t know what to do when choosing their definition of abstinence.

You can download it here:

• Aim for a Healthy Weight

Every time Weight Watchers would switch up their program, people would want to know what the new plan entailed. In the end, it’s simple. Eat vegetables, fruit and lean meats. Keep your calories low enough to lose weight, but not so low that you are hungry all the time. Increase your exercise so that you get your heart pumping.

Programs like Weight Watchers may make some things easier to understand. For example, it’s a lot easier to keep track of 24 Points than 1200 calories. Since veggies and fruit are so healthy and low in calories, not having to track them is a good idea. They have good ideas, but in the end, a weight loss program is available to you free of charge from the NIH. Take advantage of it.

I don’t know where this image originally came from, but I saw it on Facebook and immediately loved it.

It reads:

Did you ever realize how much your body loves you? It’s always trying to keep you alive.

It’s making sure you breathe while you sleep, stopping cuts from bleeding, fixing broken bones, finding ways to beat the illness that might get you.

Your body literally love you so much…

It’s time you start loving it back.

It’s true. For an atheist like me, the miracle of a body that takes such good care of me is the closest thing I can imagine for a loving God. Imagine that your body is your higher power, doing its best to take care of your health and well-being. Its sole intent is to keep you living and thriving. EVERYTHING that it does is to keep you alive. If you are at a loss for imagining a higher power, you have your miraculous body right there to take its form.

I love this motivational poster from Gymaholic.

It reads:

The only bad workout you had is the one you didn’t do.

This is so true. Consistency is FAR more important than anything else. You don’t have to kill yourself in the gym. You just need to get your butt in there EVERY day. Weeks of easy workouts are better than one intense workout and weeks of avoiding the gym because that’s where the pain happens.

SHOW UP.

All you have to do is show up every day. If that means walking on the treadmill at 2 mph for twenty minutes, then that is MUCH better than not showing up. Doing anything is better than doing nothing.

I saw this motivational poster on Facebook the other day and it really spoke to me.

It reads:

If you are losing your balance in a yoga pose, reach higher. It will steady you. This is true, not just in your practice, but everywhere in your life!

This advice has helped me when I’m trying to hold a pose in yoga. I feel my body elongate and the pose has more length to balance, making it easier.

In life, I have constantly and vigorously reached higher. I don’t know if it has helped me or not. Sometimes it seems that when I relax and let things happen naturally, they work out better than when I’m constantly striving. Perhaps I just don’t know how to properly “reach higher” in life. Maybe it has less to do with pushing myself and more to do with making myself a better person.

This commercial for the Apple watch is quiet, calm and shows EXACTLY what it’s like to have an Apple watch for your fitness goals.

It is always there, counting every movement and step, right down to bedtime when you do a few jumping jacks to close out your circle.

More than that, it tells me of my text messages and phone calls, even when I’ve left my phone in the other room. The Apple watch has become so important to me that I have done strange things like accidentally left my phone at home because I don’t carry it around with me everywhere I go anymore. I also had a bizarre anxiety when I left my watch in the car while I kayaked, swam and road in the motor boat last weekend. I would have gotten lots of credit for all that activity, but I didn’t want it to get hurt by the water. It’s resistant, but not waterproof, and FAR too precious to lose.

The Apple watch went from a fun toy to a desperately needed item in my daily routine within a month. I am so grateful for it and it was worth every penny I saved to buy it.

I found this quote yesterday and it really seemed like a sad thing.

It reads:

Tao. Some of us look for the Way in opium and some in God, some of us in whiskey and some in love. It is all the same Way and it leads nowhither.

• W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil, 1925

It’s true that people look for Tao in many places where it is not. You will not find The Way in opium or other drugs. You will not find The Way in religion. You will not find The Way in alcohol. You will not find The Way with sex.

And I certainly did not find The Way in food.

Tao is an INNER JOURNEY. It is a mastery of our emotions and thoughts. It is a way of looking at life that allows you to see EVERYTHING at once, which is extremely difficult. Drugs, alcohol, sex and food only mask it and give us the illusion that we can see everything, until the end when they kill us. Religion gets a little closer, but so many religions are just tribal hatred with a pretty face.

I am not there yet. I have not found The Way, but I am certainly closer than I was when I used food to dull my senses and emotions. Instead of controlling and mastering my emotions, food just took them away. That sounded like a good thing to me at the time until I was drugged all day long, eating constantly and unable to do anything but eat.

I have been practicing yoga for the last two months. I’ve been watching some videos on YouTube to get started:

• Yoga With Adriene – YouTube

I have been doing the same few poses every day for two months and I’m getting pretty good at them. Today, I was feeling a little bored, so I decided to try Eagle pose and I was SHOCKED.

Image via: Eagle Pose – We Are Yoga

I suck at it.

Every time I try a new pose, I am a rank amateur. I am a beginner. Just because I have been able to hold Downward Facing Dog without my arms shaking and losing my balance, doesn’t mean I am good at Eagle Pose. Every pose is a beginning.

Honestly, that’s how life is. Every new thing we try is a beginning and we are rank amateurs.

The funny thing is, I didn’t get frustrated like I did when I was first starting yoga. I got excited. I had gotten a little bored with the poses that I had worked on lately, but this Eagle pose thing was HARD, and somehow, that was a GOOD thing. When I first started yoga, I was VERY frustrated with the fact that I couldn’t hold most poses for more than five seconds. I had to keep starting over to get my full 20 seconds of hold. Today, however, I had a tiny jolt of adrenaline from it. Here was something that I couldn’t do and I knew that if I kept trying for a couple of months, I COULD do it. I just needed to keep trying. It was beautiful.

The next time I realize that I am a rank amateur at something in the “real” world, I’m going to remember this. I’m going to recall that jolt of excitement that says, “This is HARD! And that’s a GOOD thing!”

This quote from Thomas Jefferson reminded me of what overeating was like:

It reads:

Do not bite at the bait of pleasure till you know there is no hook beneath it.

• Thomas Jefferson

For me, overeating ALWAYS has a hook beneath it. If I have a meal when I eat too much, I am sincerely tempted to eat too much the next meal and the meal after that. I can eat almost any kind of food without being tempted to binge, but if I eat a LARGE meal, I always have repercussions.

The bait of pleasure always has a hook. It’s not about the pleasure. It’s about WHY I want the pleasure of overeating. Whether I’m nervous, angry or happy, those emotions are the REASON I want to overeat. If I can deal with those emotions in a healthy way, then the food loses its appeal.