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

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

• Slim Chance Awards 2008: Fraud and Quackery

This product is one I’ve never heard of: Skineez.

WORST GIMMICK: Skineez jeans ($139). A new item in the fight against cellulite, Skineez jeans are impregnated with a so-called “medication” of retinol and chitosan, a shellfish product once claimed to cut fat absorption in the stomach (see 1999 Slim Chance Awards). Friction between the jeans and skin supposedly triggers release of the substance, which goes to work on fat when absorbed through the skin. Reportedly a big hit in Europe, the “smart fabric” is also used in lingerie. Ironically, the creators of Skineez, Clothes for a Cause, profess to raise funds for breast cancer and “a wide range of other socially conscious charities.” So while the company hoodwinks women into buying an expensive pair of jeans, it promises they can “do good with every purchase … As our sales grow, so will our ability to help others.” FTC, however, is clear about such gimmicks, emphasizing that products worn or rubbed on the skin do not cause weight loss or fat loss.

As unpleasant as wearing a girdle is, I find it even MORE unappealing to think that the girdle might be oozing some “medication” on me while I wear it.

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 2

The Short Version:

• DO NOT change your eating regime at all, but write down EVERYTHING you eat, including the measurements (i.e. 1 cup of rice) and calories.
• You are allowed to ADD two or three servings of vegetables every day, but you are not allowed to restrict anything in your diet.
• Increase your mileage. Walk 0.75 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.

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

• Slim Chance Awards 2008: Fraud and Quackery

The first on the list is Kevin Trudeau. Here is their evaluation:

MOST OUTRAGEOUS CLAIM: Kevin Trudeau infomercials. It’s rare that regulatory agencies look at books, given our free speech laws, but the infomercials for Kevin Trudeau’s weight loss book and his repeated violations were just too much for the Federal Trade Commission, and this past August he was fined over $5 million and banned from infomercials for three years. In “willful efforts” to deceive, Trudeau told listeners they could easily follow the diet protocol at home, even though his book calls for human growth hormone injections and colonics that must be done by a licensed practitioner. The tortured case began in 1998 when FTC charged Trudeau with false and misleading diet infomercials. In 2003 he was charged with false claims; in 2004 he was fined $2 million and banned from infomercials. Again in 2007 a contempt action said he misled thousands with false claims for his weight loss book “in flagrant violation” of court orders.

Kevin Trudeau has been promoting this book for a long time, but I’m glad that the FTC finally caught up with him. I did I review of the book here:

• Starling Fitness » The Weight Loss Cure They Don’t Want You to Know About

Back then, I said:

Don’t let your paranoia get the best of you. The reason why everyone in Hollywood is thin is because they kick out the fat ones. They don’t have a secret cure to obesity, they just don’t put fat people on the screen. Injecting the urine of pregnant women into your body is not the answer.

I’m glad the FTC was finally able to take him out.

Plaid Stallions has an excellent collection of exercise equipment from the past gleaned from old catalogs. The only one that even has a chance of helping you lose weight is this very excellent exercise bike from Vitamaster.

• Get Fit With Brick Mantooth 1 70s excersize equipment I Plaidstallions.com

Before you laugh at the silly gadgets of yesteryear, remember that we are still being inundated with fitness gadgets to this day. In fact, many of them bear a striking resemblance to the past.

• Starling Fitness » Power Plate Diaries

The important thing to remember is that you can lose weight and exercise without any equipment at all. Take a walk or run around the block. Do some squats and push ups in your home and you don’t need to pay any money for it. The key to it is spending the TIME on your fitness, not your money.

Long ago, I suggested that you didn’t need a Gastric Bypass surgery. All you needed to do is follow the diet that they prescribe to gastric bypass patients:

• Starling Fitness » The Gastric Bypass Diet

I was being SARCASTIC, but it looks like Dr. Alwin C. Lewis took me a little too seriously. With his book, Why Weight Around? Changing The Weight Loss Strategy, he suggests that you eat five bites of food at lunch, another five bites of food at dinner. He suggests that one of those ten bites should be “high quality protein.” You are allowed to drink any liquid as long as it’s calorie-free.

He suggests that his Five Bite Diet will reset your body and you’ll be able to survive on a smaller volume of food. He talks about it here:

He suggests using this diet for everything from obesity, to bulimia and even ANOREXIA. He actually said:

This diet gives you absolute CONTROL like you’ve never had before.

It’s almost like he is purposely appealing to the eating disordered among us. Unfortunately, it’s that kind of control that this diet would spawn a binge for months in me. I was joking when I suggested that the Gastric Bypass Diet might be a weight loss option, in order to show you that the surgery is a BAD idea. This Five Bite Diet, however, is taking itself seriously.

Via: Diet Blog: The 5 Bite Diet

Over the many years, the idea of weight loss has fascinated writers. If you have ever wanted to lose weight quickly, all you need to do is look to fiction for fantastical stories about easy weight loss. The problem is, each of these stories is a morality play, warning you against quick fixes.

• The Truth About Pyecraft by HG Wells: Mr. Pyecraft is named the fattest clubman in London. When Mr. Formalyn comes back from India, he offers him a special dish from that exotic land that is supposed to help you lose weight. Mr. Pyecraft DOES lose weight, but not mass. He finds his baloonish body floating to the ceiling and ends up wearing lead underwear to prevent himself from flying off into the sky.

• The Iron Chancellor by Robert Silverberg: In Robert Silverberg’s classic 1958 story, the family’s robot, the roboservitor, prepares your diet and prevents you from cheating. Unfortunately, the robot keeps you on this limited diet, even if you’re starving to death. It is a typical “robots are bad” story that filled science fiction in the fifties, but it also is a morality play to those who are willing to relinquish control over to others when they can’t control themselves.

• Doctor Who “Partners in Crime” 2008: The new miracle diet pill, Adipose, promises to cause weight loss without exercise or change in diet. Very much like Alli, there is a frightening side effect. Instead of intense gastrointestinal distress, the fat literally pops off your body, creating little sentient fat creatures. Unfortunately, your entire body can be reduced, leaving nothing but your clothes.

• Thinner by Stephen King: Billy is a high powered lawyer who accidentally caused the death of an old gypsy woman. Instead of serving his time for vehicular manslaughter, his skills in the court room got him off with not even a slap on the wrist. The old gypsy man touches him and utters the word, “Thinner.” From that moment onward, Billy drops weight. He eventually becomes a skeleton of a man, eating as much as he can to just stay alive while he searches for the gypsy to reverse the curse, losing everything he loves in the process.

• Tales from the Darkside “Love Hungry”: In a twist of irony, Betsy, a telemarketer, becomes a marketing victim by “Your Weight Is Over” for weight loss, they send her a special ear plug and glasses. When she wears them, all her food looks as if it’s alive and sentient. Every bite becomes murder and eating is a lesson in sadism. Just watching the Mexican Restaurant scene was enough to put me off enchiladas for a long time.

• Star Trek’s Food Replicators: They were created to provide the perfect nutrition for those traveling on Federation starships. No matter how unhealthy the food that you request, the replicator will make it out of healthy nutrients. Of course, there is some disagreement about whether the taste is the same as “real” food. Considering how fulfilling fake food is right now, the Federation has a lot of inventing to do to create replicated food that is healthy AND tastes good. Oh, and the food is created using the waste products from the ship and energy.

In the end, all of these fictional weight loss options are just warnings in disguise. There is no such thing as a free lunch. If you lose weight without diet and exercise, then you have to pay the price. The price may be your life, your sanity or merely your enjoyment of food. There is only one true way to get fit and healthy and that’s to eat less and move more. In the future, they may invent an easier way, but I don’t want to be first in line to try it, do you?

Via: io9 Triviagasm: Fantastical Ways to Lose Weight in the New Year

I’ve talked about treadmill desks before, but here is an awesome video that shows them in action:

There is a blog that talks about treadmill desks here:

• Treadmill Desk Blog

I have some entries about them here:

• Starling Fitness » A Whole Website About Treadputers!

• Starling Fitness » The Walking Desk Blog

• Starling Fitness » The Walkstation from Steelcase

A couple of years ago, I thought that I would encourage myself to be more active by having a standing desk, where I could type at my computer by standing up. The funny thing is, I avoided that desk and started working on my laptop on the couch instead. After months of this, Mike finally said, “Let’s face it, the standing desk is a failure.” He was right and I immediately reorganized my desk space to be more comfortable. Walking all day long might be healthy, but if I have any choice in the matter, I’m pretty sure I’d just avoid doing work at my treadmill desk and take the laptop to the kitchen table if I had to.

Video via: Coming Here Soon :: cowork utah

Treadmill Desk Blog via: The Treadmill Desk Blog

It’s a new year and I’m sure you’re all fired up to be healthy. Last year, I wrote a weekly plan to get you on track for a healthy and active life. You can get started here:

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

If you are ready to get going with your fitness and eating plan, start there and get started RIGHT!

If you just want the short version, here it is:

• DO NOT change your eating regime at all, but write down EVERYTHING you eat.
• You are allowed to ADD a serving or two of vegetables every day, but you are not allowed to restrict anything in your diet.
• Start exercise slowly. SLOW, SHORT and EASY. Whatever you were thinking of doing, cut it in half. Recommended exercise: Walk 0.5 miles five days this week.
• Check with your doctor.

There are a lot of ways to keep track of the food you eat, but one of the simplest ideas is to use Twitter as a food journal. Since you can send a tweet from a computer or your cell phone, Twitter is with you WHEREVER you go. It’s pure genius.

For those of you not familiar with Twitter, it’s a social network site that asks the simple question, “What are you doing?” You have 140 characters to state what you are doing all day long. One of the most simple ways to keep track of your food is to use Twitter.

If you already have a Twitter account, you can follow me at http://twitter.com/lauramoncur/.

For a tutorial on how to set up an account, please read more: (more…)

I’m sure the fashion industry considers this model a “plus” size, but honestly she’s a NORMAL sized woman and she looks freakin’ fantastic!

Hooray for Curvation for this spectacular advertisement. I can’t believe this ad showed up in the November edition of In Style magazine without being put right next to an article about exercise or diet. It was adjacent to Eva Mendes in an ad for The Spirit.

Next time you feel bad because you think you can never look as good as the women in the fashion magazines, remember this curvy beauty and know that you can do it!