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

I saw this quote today and it really made sense to me.

It reads:

You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you.

• James Lane Allen

Whatever you are thinking about mostly will be what happens. If you are thinking about how fat you are, then you will be fat. If you are thinking about helping other people and working to make the world a better place, then you will find yourself doing that. Focusing on helping others is one of the best ways to get your mind off food. Keep your thoughts on helping others and you will be happier and thinner as a result.

I found this picture in my grandmother’s photos.

I don’t know who the two girls are. Neither one is her or any of her sisters. I know what they looked like. So they must be friends of my grandma.

But maybe they’re not. Maybe they are the rich girls in town and have a bike that is cooler than she has ever seen. They might have a really cool bike, but she had a brownie camera and she got a picture of them.

Friendship or envy, it doesn’t matter so many years after the fact. It is almost certain that everyone in this photograph and even the photographer is dead.

Sometimes that’s how I feel about all the things that used to bother me enough to make me eat. It’s like that quote from Fight Club:

On a long enough timeline. The survival rate for everyone drops to zero.

• Chuck Palahniuk

When I used to use food as a drug, I would eat when someone was mean or difficult. If there was tension or if my feelings got hurt, I would turn to the food. Now, (thanks to Overeater’s Anonymous), I have other tools to use when those feelings show up. Instead of eating, I can use one of the many tools in my toolbox to figure out how to deal with the problem instead of just covering it up with food.

So, in the end, it doesn’t matter if that photo was taken in friendship or envy. All I can see are my grandma’s friends on a bike.

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.

My friend sent me a link to this Washington Post entry:

• Five words you should stop using when you talk about food – The Washington Post

I immediately thought of the words that I thought should be on that list. The words they chose, however, weren’t anywhere near to what I was thinking: Detox, Cleanse, Skinny, Never and Perfect. While I might agree with “Never” and “Perfect,” they didn’t come up on my list.

Here are the REAL five words we should stop using when talking about food: (more…)

When I was a teenager, I loved Mrs. Field’s Cookies. The walnut milk chocolate chip cookies were my favorite. I loved going to Valley Fair Mall in West Valley to eat them with my binge-buddy.

Lately, though, the cookies haven’t tasted the same. They just don’t taste as good as they did when I was a teenager. I kept eating them, trying to get that same flavor. I blamed the frozen cookie dough, so I tried making them on my own with the recipes I found that said they tasted “just like” Mrs. Fields, but they didn’t taste right either.

What I was looking for is that first high.

We addicts will NEVER again experience that first high from food that we used to feel when we ate. It just takes more and more food or richer food to get even close to how it used to make us feel. Just like heroine addicts, we are searching for a high that we can NEVER get again. Unlike heroine addicts, it’s very difficult to OD on food. We just end up getting fatter and fatter and eating ALL day long.

Knowing that food will never again make me feel like it used to make me feel really depressed me, but it has also helped me to prevent binges. My binge foods don’t have as much attraction to me because I know that my brain is broken. I know they won’t taste as good as they used to. I’m sad about that, but at the same time, accepting it is my only option if I don’t want to eat myself into oblivion.

Two months ago, when we went to Cottonwood, AZ to camp, we passed through the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. There was a little shop there that sold cookies (and had gas and a bathroom). Mike asked if I wanted a bite of his cookie and I said yes. It tasted just like a Mrs. Fields Cookie used to taste and I KNEW that I couldn’t eat any more or I’d have a binge. Ironically, it was some insane “loaded” cookie with a THICK layer of chocolate in the middle. Probably THREE times the sugar and fat that was in those original Mrs. Fields Cookies.

THAT’S what it now takes to get me to that first high: a diabetic coma in a cookie.

The only thing that ever helped me was Overeater’s Anonymous. If it is taking more and more food to feel the same as you did when you were younger, you might have the same problem as I do. Get yourself to an Overeater’s Anonymous meeting, tell the truth, get a sponsor and DO WHAT THEY SAY. There IS hope. It’s just not in the form of a diet, workout or pill.

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.

Image via:

• Retroist – It’s the Mall Showdown: Old Malls vs. New Malls

Almost five years ago, Nike ran the “Make Yourself” ads. I wrote about them back then:

• Starling Fitness – 10/25/2010 – Make Yourself

Back then, I said,

I love these advertisements from Nike. They encourage me to be strong, to let myself shine and to become fit. Sometimes I need encouragement like this and these are the perfect ads to tear out of a magazine and put on my wall right in front of the treadmill.

I found another Nike ad from that collection, but I don’t quite like it as much as the other ones.

It says:

Make yourself proud

I have written about humility and how it has affected my weight loss journey MANY times. You can read some of the articles here.

• How To Be Humble
• Accepting Your Limitations
• Appreciating Others
• Rediscovering a Sense of Wonder
• Eat Train Sleep Be Humble

Time and time again, I have learned that when I’m humble, I lose weight. When I start to get proud, the weight comes back on. Humility is not about thinking I’m not as good as everyone else. It’s about thinking that we are all of the same value. You are not more important than me. I am not more important than you. We are BOTH important. There is room for BOTH of us to be great.

So, do I want to Make Myself Proud?

Strangely, no. I do not. I want to make myself humble.

Over two years ago, I wrote an entry about Dance Central:

• Starling Fitness – Dance Central: Dance Your Butt Off!

I really loved to play DDR and really worked my butt off playing it years ago. Dealing with dance pads that kept breaking after only a month or so of play, however, just killed my love for that game. With Kinect, however, there is no dance pad taking a pounding. The camera just watches me dance and gives me a score based on how well I did. For the first time in years, I’m exergaming again and I LOVE IT!

I wrote that entry, played a few more times and then stopped playing and fell into a pit of depression and bingeing.

I’m out of the pit and I thought I would fire up the game to play again. I needed to get 30 minutes of exercise to register on my Apple Watch and walking the dog just wasn’t doing it. I’ve been playing for four days in a row now and I STILL love that game. The funny thing is, if you never bought the games back then, you’re in luck, because they are WAY cheaper to buy now.

Here’s what you need to get started:

• Xbox 360 4GB with Kinect Value Bundle at Amazon.com
• Dance Central at Amazon.com
• Dance Central 2 at Amazon.com
• Dance Central 3 at Amazon.com

There is an Xbox One version of the game that is available for download if you have already moved on to the new console. There is also the Just Dance 2015 game that I’ve never tried. Considering how happy I am with the old 360 version, I’m in no mood to upgrade. I just find it funny that I STILL love that game, despite all that I have went through.

I saw this ad for M&Ms a while ago. It was before I had started OA, so it was QUITE a while ago. When I saw it, I immediately wanted to go out and buy M&Ms.

Somehow that ad had triggered my desire for them and I didn’t know why. I took a screen shot of the ad, which was, ironically, in a health and fitness magazine, and didn’t think about it again until today.

I looked through my folder of ideas to write about Starling Fitness and saw this ad. I was going to write about how advertising triggers cravings, but I now know it goes further than that. This advertisement triggers the Artificial Scarcity craving. We want it because it won’t always be around. We want it because we think it’s scarce.

Do those M&Ms taste any different than normal M&MS? No.

Do I even like regular M&Ms? Not particularly.

Because those M&Ms are in special “Fall” colors, they won’t be around for long. This is a limited time product, so I better act now. They do the same thing at Christmas, Easter and even Independence Day. The same M&Ms, only in red and green, pastels and pink, or the old red, white and blue. They are desirable because we can’t get them all the time.

I talked about this before here:

• Starling Fitness – There’s No Pumpkin In Pumpkin Spice Flavoring

Back then, I said:

The problem is PERCEIVED SCARCITY. We could cook a turkey any time, but we only have them at Thanksgiving. We could buy that Torani Pumpkin Pie Sugar Free Syrup for our coffee at any time, but Starbucks has somehow convinced us that it is only available in the fall. None of these things are actually scarce. The food manufacturers use marketing and self-imposed limits to make them scarce and even create hoarding.

DON’T FALL FOR IT!

M&Ms in Autumn Colors. Don’t Fall for it…

I’m glad to know that I’ll be able to use my Lose It! app directly on my Apple Watch.

• Lose It! for Apple Watch

As you know, I have religiously used Lose It! for years on my iPhone. I talked about it here:

• Starling Fitness – My Higher Power: Lose It!
• Starling Fitness – Lose it! App: Best Weight Loss App I’ve Found

I got my Apple Watch yesterday, so I don’t have a review yet, but as soon as I’ve played with it for a while, I’ll add details here.

Update 04-29-15

The Lose It! app on the Apple Watch is VERY limited. Since I don’t have the calories for everything I eat memorized, I can’t just add my calories for a meal on my watch. I would like it if I could look up food like I can on my phone, but the watch app doesn’t have that capability yet. Until it does, it’s not really helpful to me.

I was looking through my saved images in a folder called “Starling Fitness Ideas,” and I found this one:

It reads:

The Cake Is A Lie Diet: Lose 17 pounds a week by changing your diet with this one simple tip!

Awarded for: “Watch an inspirational video on YouTube or TED.”

I have a vague memory of an app that I played with that gave me awards and kudos for doing good things in my life, but I cannot for the life of me remember where this came from or even why I saved it.

“The Cake Is A Lie” is a meme that came from the game Portal. In that game, the computer voice kept promising me that if I completed the tasks, that there would be cake at the end. About halfway through the game, you come to this creepy hallway and the phrase, “The cake is a lie,” is scrawled over and over on the wall.

At the end of the game, you realize that there is no cake and you have been doing all these things for nothing. The phrase “The Cake Is A Lie” has come to mean that a promised gift is being used to motivate you without any intent of delivering it. For a while there, I couldn’t log onto Facebook without seeing this image it was so popular.

The truth of the matter is, the cake IS a lie. Every time I eat cake, I am trying to recreate that intense feeling of ecstasy that I had the first time I ever ate cake. I am trying to get that same hit of dopamine that I got when I first had cake. The problem is that the more cake I eat, the less of a dopamine hit I get until I need to eat cake all day long EVERY day to just feel normal. The promise of the cake is a lie.

Then again, the promise of the “fit” life is a lie, too. I remember being at 150 pounds and being so close to goal and STILL feeling miserable. I had told myself that when I got skinny, I would be happy. I had told myself that when I lost the weight, I would love myself. That was a lie just as much as the cake was.

Eating the cake was a lie. Not eating the cake was a lie.

THAT is the sense of hopelessness I had when I stepped into my first Overeater’s Anonymous meeting. I hated myself when I was fat. I hated myself when I was thin. I couldn’t stop eating and I didn’t want to eat anymore. I was in a No-Win situation and I had no idea what to do. That’s why I got a sponsor. That’s why I did EVERYTHING she told me to do. That’s why I cleared the wreckage of my past and started fresh. That’s why I was willing to meditate every day and make a “God Box.”

I knew the cake was a lie and I knew that I couldn’t stop eating it.

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 wrote about Ali Vincent winning the Biggest Loser back in 2008.

• Starling Fitness – Fitness, diet, and health weblog » Ali Vincent Wins Biggest Loser

The weird thing is that I read her book, Believe It, Be It: How Being the Biggest Loser Won Me Back My Life, and I never talked about it here, despite LOVING it. I find it so strange when there is something that has really helped me and I somehow forgot to mention it on this blog. This book is one of those things.

Ali Vincent is still very active and has her own website here:

• Ali Vincent: BIBI Lifestyle

I remembered her and that inspiring book because her quote from it came up on the random Quotations Page:

It reads:

When you have the courage to tell the truth about what you’re really afraid of, fear doesn’t have control over your life.

• Ali Vincent, Believe It, Be It: How Being the Biggest Loser Won Me Back My Life, 2009

I really liked her book when I read it and there are TONS of quotes from that book that are inspiring:

• Ali Vincent Quotes – The Quotations Page

If you are feeling uninspired, give her book a chance and read it.