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

I LOVE this commercial for the new Weight Watchers plan:

I’ve always felt at war with the part of myself that wants to eat EVERYTHING. Seeing hunger personified by that furry orange thing was so motivating to me. It was like Weight Watchers gave a body to the demon that has haunted me my entire life. With that fluffy and orange body, it is so much easier to see the constant desire to binge as a pathetic monster that needs to be ignored and shunned.

Via: Funnymoods: Weight Watchers has a new program and it’s called Momentum

When I saw this ad, it brought back a ton of memories:

This particular ad came from a magazine run in 1990, but they ran this ad for a long time, starting in the late 1980’s. I used to look at this ad and wonder who Cristina Ferrare was. I looked at the before and after picture and was TOTALLY fooled by the different style of clothing hiding the fact that she didn’t lose very much weight.

I never even considered that using Slim Fast might be BAD for me.

When I was a senior in high school, I spent one month eating nothing but Slim Fast. I lost five pounds, but the month-long “fast” ended with a box of Twinkies from the discount bakery store. I still have that weight loss journal today. Days upon days of keeping track of how many Slim Fast shakes I had and then one day where I wrote, “Ate a whole box of Twinkies,” with a big frownie face.

Slim Fast might not cause binges in everyone, but for me, denying myself FOOD made me want to eat all the more.

Ad via: Found in Mom’s Basement: 1990 ad for Slim Fast featuring Cristina Ferrare

This ad for Pepsi shows how food advertisers will say ANYTHING to get you to buy them:

It reads:

Wonderful what a figure can do for a dress.

Those are mighty handsome creations they’re showing in today’s finest dress shop windows and in the stunning pages of our current fashion magazines.

But what fashion editor or window trimmer would even dream of showing them on anything but the typically slender figures of today?

Wonderful what a figure can do for a dress! But just as wonderful what the modern trend to lighter food and drink is doing for the modern figure.

That is the trend with which Pepsi-Cola has kept pace. Reduced in calories, today’s Pepsi is never heavy, never too sweet.

It is the modern, the light refreshment. Refresh without filling. Have a Pepsi.

This ad isn’t a lone rogue out there in the advertising world. Pepsi ran a LONG line of ads like this. You can see them here:

• Found in Mom’s Basement: Vintage ad campaign: Pepsi-Cola, 1950s, Part I

• Found in Mom’s Basement: Vintage ad campaign: Pepsi-Cola, 1950s, Part II

Considering how many calories Pepsi has, I have no idea how they even considered promoting it as “light refreshment.” I wonder, did anyone actually believe them?

Update 11-25-09: Here is another Pepsi is Light Refreshment ad:

• vintage_ads on LiveJournal

If you have made a New Year’s Resolution, this podcast from Fat 2 Fit Radio is truly inspirational.

• Fat 2 Fit Radio » Blog Archive » Fat 2 Fit Show #51 – The Most Important Show of the Year

If you have been feeling a little low because you might have fallen off your New Year’s Resolution wagon, listen to this podcast and DO what they say. Have your goals, WRITE THEM DOWN and make sure that they are achievable.

Last year, I wrote a weekly plan to get you on track for a healthy and active life. If you followed the plan last week, then here is the link to this week’s plan:

• Starling Fitness » New Year’s Resolutions: Week 3

The Short Version:

• Reduce your daily caloric average by 100 calories. Write down EVERYTHING you eat including measurements and calories.
• Avoid the feeling of deprivation by finding non-food activities to nurture yourself.
• Eat three or four servings of vegetables every day.
• Save enough calories to eat one serving of dairy products each day.
• Increase your mileage. Walk 1.0 miles five days this week. You are allowed to increase your speed to the point of sweating, but if you are sore the next day you MUST go slow again.
• Give yourself kudos for coming this far.

If you like to log your runs outside, you might want to look into Trailrunner.

• TrailRunner – Mac OS X route planning and journaling for iPhone, Nike+ SportBand, Garmin ForeRunner GPS

It’s a software program that works with the iPhone, Nike+, and the Garmin ForeRunner to log and map your workouts. Since I use the Nike+ on all my runs, I used it to download all my runs for the last two and a half years. Of course, the Nike+ doesn’t have a GPS, so it can’t show any maps of those runs. If I download iTrail, on my iPhone, however, it will log my runs AND map them on the screen.

Personally, I like the desktop application that works with my iPhone. It’s like they took the online capabilities of RunKeeper and let ME control them on my desktop instead of making me log onto a website.

The biggest problem with both TrailRunner AND Runkeeper is the lack of interactivity. The killer feature of Nike+ is that I can compete with other people. There are thousands of people online at Nike’s website that I can run races against. When I’m trying to rack up the miles on my Nike+, I do it to kick somebody’s butt. That feature of the Nike+ makes all of these other applications pale in comparison.

I have been downloading Podrunner onto my iPod for a LONG time and I’m surprised that I have never talked about it here. You don’t have to subscribe using iTunes. You can download the latest podcast here:

• Podrunner: – Free Workout Music
• Podrunner on iTunes

Running is much easier when I have the right music. Podrunner always gives me music with a thumping bass that makes keeping active easy. I hate it when I have my iPod on shuffle and a slow, mellow song comes on, so a mix like Podrunner lets me exercise without having to worry about skipping songs. I just start it playing and I have an hour of run-friendly music to keep me company.

The FDA has released a warning about weight loss pills.

• FDA Warns Consumers About Tainted Weight Loss Pills

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is alerting consumers nationwide not to purchase or consume more than 25 different products marketed for weight loss because they contain undeclared, active pharmaceutical ingredients that may put consumers’ health at risk.

Here is the list of potentially tainted products:

• Venom Hyperdrive 3.0
• Fatloss Slimming
• 2 Day Diet
• 3x Slimming Power
• Japan Lingzhi 24 Hours Diet
• 5x Imelda Perfect Slimming
• 3 Day Diet
• 7 Day Herbal Slim
• 8 Factor Diet
• 7 Diet Day/Night Formula
• 999 Fitness Essence
• Extrim Plus
• GMP
• Imelda Perfect Slim
• Lida DaiDaihua
• Miaozi Slim Capsules
• Perfect Slim
• Perfect Slim 5x
• Phyto Shape
• ProSlim Plus
• Royal Slimming Formula
• Slim 3 in 1
• Slim Express 360
• Slimtech
• Somotrim
• Superslim
• TripleSlim
• Zhen de Shou
• Venom Hyperdrive 3.0

With a list that long, maybe it’s just easier to never buy diet pills.

The Healthy Weight Network has released their Slim Chance Awards for 2008.

• Slim Chance Awards 2008: Fraud and Quackery

For their Worst Product category, they chose Kimkins:

WORST PRODUCT: Kimkins diet. It must have seemed an easy way to get rich quick. Founder Heidi “Kimmer” Diaz set up a website and charged members a fee to access the Kimkins diet, boasting they could lose up to 5 percent of their body weight in 10 days. “Better than gastric bypass,” there was “no faster diet,” and in fact she herself had lost 198 pounds in 11 months. Stunning “after” photos were displayed. In June 2007 Women’s World ran it as a cover story, and that month alone PayPal records show the Kimkins site took in over $1.2 million. Then users began complaining of chest pains, hair loss, heart palpitations, irritability and menstrual irregularities. This was not surprising since Kimkins is essentially a starvation diet, down to 500 calories per day and deficient in many nutrients (appallingly, laxatives are advised to replace missing fiber). In a lawsuit, 11 former members are uncovering a vast record of Diez’s alleged fraud. They found that the stunning “after” photos, including one of Kimmer herself, had been lifted from a Russian mail order bride site. According to a deposition reported by Los Angeles TV station KTLA, Diaz admitted using fake pictures, fake stories and fake IDs, and a judge has allowed the litigants to freeze some of her assets.

It was hard not to notice Kimkins. I did a couple of write ups about it here:

• Starling Fitness » How Did Kimkins Fly Under My Radar?
• Starling Fitness » Kimkins Diet Exposed on Fox

Technically, the whole problem with Kimkins imploded in 2007, but all of the deception really came to light last year. I’m surprised to see that Kimkins took in over $1.2 million, but I’m glad to know that some of that might be recovered for the victims.

The Healthy Weight Network has released their Slim Chance Awards for 2008.

• Slim Chance Awards 2008: Fraud and Quackery

In their Worst Claim category, they awarded AbGONE with the trophy:

WORST CLAIM: AbGONE. Throughout 2008 full page ads assaulted the eye in daily newspapers across the country touting AbGONE as “proven to promote pot belly loss.” Claims are that AbGONE increases “fat metabolism” and calorie burn, promotes appetite suppression and inhibits future abdominal fat deposits. These are drug claims that, if true, would alter the body’s regulation, but unlike drugs, the pills are sold as food supplements not requiring FDA approval. The bold ads feature the obligatory before and after shots of models, cut-away sketches of the abdomen with and without belly fat, and a white-coated researcher with chart purportedly confirming success of 5 times reduction in fat mass, 4 times lower BMI, 4 times greater weight loss than placebo. No added diet and exercise needed – well, except, you may want to heed the fine print disclaimer at the bottom that reminds us “diet and exercise are essential.”

This is yet another product that flew completely under my radar. I know there are advertisements everywhere for pills that are supposed to help me lose weight, but I’ve completely disregarded all of them. I don’t even see them anymore, mostly because I’ve become so numb to the idea that a pill could help me. I probably saw the full page ads promoting this product, but I immediately ignored them. That’s probably a good tactic for all of us.