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

This Summer posted an image of this tank top the other day and I just love it.

It reads:

Sore Today STRONG Tomorrow

I couldn’t find that exact tank top for sale, but I found this nice one on strongconfidentYOU on Etsy.

Buying the shirt, however, doesn’t create the results. If you want to be strong tomorrow, you pretty much have to exercise TODAY. So, make sure you get your workout in today, no matter what excuses pop into your mind.

I love these images from DIEThoroscopes.

They are great goals:

• Sleep Eight Hours Each Night.
• Drink Eight Cups of Water Each Day.
• Exercise Three Times Each Week.
• Eat Three Snacks Each Day.
• Eat Three Meals Each Day.
• Focus On One Goal At A Time.

These are all great goals to have and such a visual way to remember them!

This image from I CAN DO IT is a perfect visual reminder of your goals.

In particular, the bulletin board on the left that says, “Pounds to Lose” and “Pounds Lost” is such a good visual indicator of your goals that it would be hard to ignore. Just think how good you would feel when you got to move a little clothespin over to the lost section. Think how HORRIBLE you would feel if you had to move it back!

You could do this with a jar and pretty stones or glass beads like in this picture from My Sister’s Jar.

You could use popsicle sticks with rewards like 365(ish) Days of Pinterest did.

I’m imagining a bulletin board with push pins and rewards at the end of each five pounds. I think that might break it up nicely.

You have to do SOMETHING to motivate yourself with weight loss. If not, you’ll end up rewarding yourself with food and you don’t want that.

In Jennifer Lawrence’s Elle Magazine interview, she said that Hollywood makes her feel like she is “fat.” So when she was training for Katniss, she kept one thought in mind:

“I’m never going to starve myself for a part… I don’t want little girls to be like, ‘Oh, I want to look like Katniss, so I’m going to skip dinner. That’s something I was really conscious of during training, when you’re trying to get your body to look exactly right. I was trying to get my body to look fit and strong- not thin and underfed.”

Hollywood really needs a kick in the pants if they think she is “fat.” Most people dream of looking as good as she does.

The next time you look at yourself in the mirror and wish that you looked more like an actress, remember that your idol is under EXTREME pressure to literally STARVE herself to look like she does. Don’t judge yourself by Hollywood’s insane standards.

Images via:

• WIL WHEATON dot TUMBLR, karenhallion: lifewithkitty: …
• I CAN DO IT

I found this video clip on YouTube the other day and it made me laugh. It’s from Jimmy Fallon and it’s called, “The Evolution of Mom Dancing.”

The funny thing is that Michelle Obama makes EVERYTHING look cool, even “The Sprinkler!”

I just realized that every time I play Dance Central on the Xbox, I probably look like this but even WORSE!

Don’t care…

I’m gonna get fit anyway!

Via: Geek Culture – Michelle Obama rocks!

When I started watching this video, I thought Riffraff67 was a cute little guy and I was going to enjoy watching him play Dance Central 2. It was a song I haven’t played yet, so I was just interested is seeing how the moves went, but I found myself entranced by Riffraff67’s dancing!

While I was watching this video, everything I had thought about this guy at the beginning evaporated like water spilled on a hot stove. I thought he was cute and kinda cuddly before the video started, but afterward, I thought he was a DANCE GOD!

The next time you feel like you’re not in good enough shape to do something, remember Riffraff67’s dancing. With enough practice, it doesn’t matter what your body looks like. All that matters is how good you can do what you are doing. Whatever it is that you like to do, get out there and practice! Practice! Practice until you can do it with such grace and skill that no one can argue with how awesome you are.

If you have been letting your New Year’s Resolutions slip, here is a video to get you back on track. It’s called “This Is The New Year” by A Great Big World [iTunes link].

The lyrics are so inspirational:

Another year you made a promise

Another chance to turn it all around

And do not save this for tomorrow

Embrace the past and you can live for now

And I will give the world to you

Apparently, it was a song featured on Glee [iTunes link]. Here is that performance:

The lyrics and tempo of the song are so upbeat, it doesn’t matter who lip syncs the song. If you have fallen off the wagon, get back on and put this song on your workout playlist!

This week on PostSecret, they recognized Eating Disorder Week. They posted a bunch of postcards about eating disorders.

It reads:

Eating make me feel vulnerable. Starving give me strength.

It reads:

My favorite habit is putting red lipstick on after I throw up. Nobody knows I’m bulimic.

It reads:

My friend is bulimic. I’m scared to confront her about it. Instead, I made this postcard for millions of people to see. I am a coward.

It reads:

I was called an elephant in school for being so fat.

It reads:

I became a vegetarian to have a reason for the weight loss caused by the eating disorder.

It reads:

If I were honest about my eating disorder when my mom asked me about it when I was younger, I could have saved myself from 8 years of hell.

It reads:

Even though it made me completely miserable & sickly, I miss my anorexia every day.

The National Eating Disorders Association has a quiz you can give yourself to see if you have disordered eating. They have some support options to help you and refer you to a professional, so if any of these secrets ring true to you, please contact them.

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.

Back in 2004, when I fell in love with Yourself! Fitness, I dreamed of a game that could tell if I was doing the moves right or not. With Nike+ Kinect, it looks like that dream has finally come true.

I haven’t tried this game yet, but there are lots of videos on YouTube, showing how the game plays and what it does. I’m excited about it and I can’t wait until my copy comes in the mail!

Here is the E3 Trailer for the game:

Here is a quick video showing a five minute drill.

I love the moving obstacles in Split Decision. It reminds me of a Japanese game show called Human Tetris.

You can see full-blown workouts on YouTube. This guys shows everything, so if you want to try to workout with it, you can.

It looks like a good workout game with lots to do. Some people complained that they had to have LOTS more room than they usually have for Kinect games, so that worries me a little.

In nine short years, exergaming has gone from Maya telling me what to do and never knowing if I was following along or not to a game system that can see my every move and log each rep and whether I did it correctly. It’s one of those rare times when I am pleasantly surprised at how much technology has advanced!

We bought a Kinect for our Xbox over a year ago, but I just wasn’t in the mood for exergaming. I had played with Wii Sports and DDR for a long time and the Kinect had such an awkward user interface that I just threw those games into the game drawer and forgot about them.

Until last week…

I reconnected the Kinect to the Xbox and dropped in Dance Central 2. It had the same awkward interface, but Sean noticed something that I had never realized before. You can control the menus with a game controller! Suddenly, that frustrating and stupid game turned out to be lots of fun! (more…)