Fitness and Food

Fun times on the teevee with the fitness bands

Last week, the new(ish) Wisconsin Tonight show on WTMJ4 had me come on to talk about fitness tracker bands – Nike + FuelBand, FitBit, Jawbone UP and Body Media. Too. Much. Fun. The anchors, Mike Jacobs and Carole Meekins, were incredibly nice, and the few times I’ve been in the newsroom, I always really love it.

I’ve done a (butt)load of research on these fitness trackers at this point, and have talked to a bunch of people who use them. There was only so much we could talk about in this 3-minute segment; so, for anyone considering which one to buy, there’s also a quick take below the pros/cons/position of each as I see it.


Fitness Bands segment on Wisconsin Tonight from Sue Spaight on Vimeo.

Many thanks to producer extraordinaire – and wonderful friend – Rachael Glaszcz for making this segment happen. -xo

Pros, Cons, Position of Each …

BodyMedia
As I said in the show, BodyMedia is the one to get if you are SERIOUS about truly, accurately analyzing what’s going on in your body and dropping a ton of weight. The armband has a bluetooth sync option and unlike some of the others, it has both iPhone and Android apps. Downsides? The armband thing, and a monthly software subscription fee. Probably worth it, though, IMHO.

Nike + FuelBand
FuelBand is basically the opposite end of the spectrum, and it’s what I ended up choosing. It’s a great pick if you want something super simple and just want to track your movement and get a cool little visual display/reminder throughout the day to get off your butt. It syncs very easily to the iPhone app. Downsides? Limited functionality/data (wasn’t an issue for me); no Android app and no plans to have one (also not an issue for me); older, more battery-sucking Bluetooth technology (definitely an issue). And, as I recently discovered, a bug that, if you leave it plugged in at midnight, will totally bork your data for the next day; according to their website, Nike is working on a fix for that. 

FitBit
I think of FitBit as the “friendly” one. For example, it has a little flower that grows as you move throughout the day. (Hey, whatever lights a fire under your arse.) It’s got the full range of functionality, beyond movement tracking and into nutrition tracking (or syncing with MyFitnessPal) and sleep tracking, etc. It syncs wirelessly, including Android. In addition to the current version that fits in your pocket or on your pants, FitBit is launching the Flex band this Spring which is already getting stellar reviews like this one from David Pogue in the New York Times. 

Downsides? I have talked to a number of people who have had issues with the current model, the One, getting too sweaty and shutting down; FitBit even has a warning on their website to not wear it next to your skin. As a runner, that would be a real issue for me; I wouldn’t want to worry about it and would wait for the Flex.

Jawbone UP
UP is the one many techies talk most about. The design is cool, and it gives you all the bells and whistles/all kinds of data to wallow in. Evidently it has about a 10-day battery life, which (as someone who is really sick of charging the FuelBand every damn day) is pretty sweet. Downsides? There’s no visual display, so if you want to see your progress during the day you need to plug the UP into your iPhone to sync it, and then check the app for your data. In a word: Meh. For some people, that’s fine. For me, I want to be able to see it at a quick glance while I’m out doing my run, lunchtime mall walk or whatever.

I hope that helps! Let me know what you think, or if you have any questions as you ponder which one to try.

Spaight

Fat kids, teaching nutrition, mmm cake and slim fit pants

“Childhood obesity,” aka fat kids. 

In the 70s, they didn’t call it childhood obesity; they called me a fat kid. Little did I know, I was a trailblazer for generations of fat kids to come. According to the CDC, 17% of U.S. kids 2-19 are obese, almost triple the rate of 1980. Even my obsession Biggest Loser NBC is tacking the subject this season, with three kids on the show. Some have questioned whether that is taking it too far; personally, I’m thrilled that they are taking it on. Clearly, a lot of kids need more help than they are getting currently, to learn better habits.

See this kid, on a mission for cake? That would be me, circa maybe 1975 or 1976, In my sweet *custom made* – because nothing in the store fit – shirt. Nice chins!

Luckily, my son has somehow, thus far, defied the genetic odds, and has an abdominal six pack at the age of 7. I think we create a pretty decent environment for him, and thankfully he loves to exercise. There’s a girl in his class, though, who reminds me terribly of the long-ago me in this photo. At the school Christmas party, she quickly polished off a couple of fruit kebobs, a couple of cookies, three mini sweet rolls and came back for more. I told her flat out, “I think you’ve had enough.” It made me wonder if she hears that at home, or if her parents are in denial. I suspect the latter.

Parents are in hard core denial. 

At least one study has found that many parents are in hard core denial on the subject; 76% of parents with an overweight or obese child said their child was either normal weight or underweight. Say what? That, to me, is a frightening statistic. Wake. Up. People.

Were my parents in that denial? I can find no other explanation short of sheer negligence, so I’m choosing to go with denial. As kids, my brothers and I had unfettered access to a giant cupboard full of “food” – and I use the term loosely. Boxes of Lucky Charms and every other crappy cereal on the planet. Bags of Doritos and Cheetos and all the other “-itos”. Candy bars with a side of Ding-Dongs. While some of our dinners were *marginally* healthy, it also wasn’t unusual for dinner to be a bucket of KFC (mmmmmmmm chicken skin *vomits*) or hotdogs stuffed with cheese and wrapped in bacon (OK, that still sounds kind of good, sometimes). Yet somehow it was periodically mandatory that we stayed at the table until we choked down our cooked carrots…as if that was going to do any good. My mother, God rest her soul, was a lot of wonderful things, but a nutritionist was *clearly* not among them.

Teaching kids nutrition, step one: “Step away from the cake, honey.” 

Is it really that hard to teach kids about decent nutrition? Really? Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think it is. I think it’s irresponsible to not do everything you can to try to teach them good eating habits. Yes, I know there are sometimes extenuating circumstances, that it can be much harder for parents in low-income households where maybe both parents or a single parent are working multiple jobs and not around as much as they’d like to be, or they live in a “food desert” and don’t have convenient transportation. I get that. I do. But for most people, I suspect they just get complacent and forget how extremely important this is.

Snap out of it, parents! Stop. Letting. Your. Kids. Eat. Too. Much. CRAP. Just STOP. Look at it this way…

We are teaching our children to form eating habits that they will literally spend a life time either suffering from, recovering from, or living healthy from. 

I’m probably preaching mostly to the choir here. If so, good for you. So how do YOU teach your kids about nutrition? I’m curious to know.

For me, a lot of it is “by example.” Step one: get the crap food out of your house. End of story. Cheetos are NOT food. Neither are Oreos. Teach your kids to eat food not products (h/t Rachel Wilberding on that one, I think). My son doesn’t eat a lot of crap, but much to my chagrin, he also doesn’t eat a lot of plants. Thus far, me regaling him with how delightful the blueberries, orange, salad, green beans, cabbage and mushrooms I ate today were is *not* having the desired impact. Handfuls of meat are really more his style. Sometimes, I guess example just isn’t enough. I need to step up my game, however I can.

Lately we’ve been having a healthy dialogue about balance between carbs/protein/fat (as I work on it myself) and he’s soaking that up like a sponge. I think we need to drill more into the actual *vitamin* content of food next.

I’ve been looking online for great resources to use and to share with you on this topic and, frankly, I’m not finding a whole lot of greatness. Here’s one good tool that might be helpful, probably for younger kids. Dr. Joanna Dolgoff, nutritionist on my obsession Biggest Loser NBC, created a program called Red Light, Green Light, Eat Right, a child and adolescent nutrition program that has helped thousands of kids lose (or maintain) their weight and learn healthy eating habits. It’s based on the principles of the traffic light. Green Light foods are lowest in calories (Go!); Yellow Light foods are moderate in calories (Slow!); Red Light foods are highest in calories (Uh-oh!). Yay! for gamification of kids’ nutrition.

I’d love to see a really smart nutrition game/tracker for older kids, with some meaningful rewards built in. Still looking.

Voila, just a few decades after mmmm cake, we have…”slim fit” pants! 

Miracles do happen, and even a kid raised on Cheetos and chicken skin  and mmmm cake can, eventually, bounce back…with enough reading and enough running and a husband who’s willing to cook enough healthy meals. I’m not completely where I want to be yet…not sure I *ever* will be…but yesterday, for literally the first time in my life, I bought a pair of pants described as “slim fit” and “low rise,” both terms that usually cue me immediately that these are so not the pants I’m looking for. I wanted to weep with joy, right there in the Banana Republic dressing room, with the German-lady-who-accessorizes-much-better-than-I-do.

So..Ta-da. Behold. Slim fit pants!

*Resisting urge to insult my thighs with all my might. They’ve carried me well over 500 miles recently…and deserve kindness from me.* I still have a ways to go to get where I want to be, but I’m pretty happy with my progress so far this year. My nutrition-specific OCD is paying off.

I know some of you know a LOT about nutrition and kids. Please share!

Meet your fitness goals faster with these sites, apps and gadgets

Meeting a fitness goal

Recently, a study reported in Wired Magazine found that tweeting and retweeting may help you lose weight. But, really, what they found is that the *support and accountability* provided by the social networking site made a difference in how much people lost.

Speaking from personal experience, there are a plethora (or two) of great web tools, apps, devices, gadgets, etcetera that can provide ways for you to hold yourself accountable and get support from (and give support to!) friends – or even like-minded strangers. They range from general social media posting to a whole crop of fancy schmancy tracking gadgets.

General Social Media Posting

Some people may just post on their Facebook page or their Twitter feed about their fitness progress (a great workout, a weight loss, a healthy meal), and in doing so, reinforce the behavior, and maybe even get positive feedback from their friends and followers. True, some people find this *annoying* if it’s done excessively; other find it motivational and inspiring. As a general rule, it’s a good idea to balance it out with other types of posts. Ultimately, of course, it’s your choice, and if you’re fine with the fact that some people may choose to unfriend or unfollow you, then go nuts. More often than not, people use one of the other tools discussed below, and then share that entry to their Facebook, Twitter, etcetera; these tools generally make it very easy to do so.

The “Check In”

Foursquare is a ‘geolocation’-based social loyalty platform (app, mainly) on which people check in, earn points, get special offers, and are named “Mayor” of a place if they check in more often than anyone else. I was surprised how many people I talked to about what tools they use for fitness support said that they feel Foursquare check-ins – and sometimes, mayorships – at the gym keep them on track. There’s a strong element of personal accountability and commitment with that, as well as sometimes encouragement in comments on the check ins.

Exercise Tracking Tools

There are numerous websites/apps that enable you track your exercise – what workout you did, miles run/walked/biked, how you felt, even how many doughnuts and cheeseburgers you burned off (Daily Mile)!

Many people use the Nike + app, which works with GPS to track your distance, posts easily to your Facebook or other social networks, and lets you compare your efforts to your friends.

Other sites/apps have developed strong sport-specific communities (not sport-exclusive; they cover multiple activities), such as Daily Mile, Runkeeper and Runtastic with runners and Strava with cyclists.

I absolutely LOVE Daily Mile, as a runner…there is always inspiration to be found in the amazing community there. And I adore seeing the data – it’s so satisfying and encouraging to know that I’ve run 515 miles, burned 19 pounds off (exactly how much I have actually lost) and burned 363 doughnuts. And there’s more to it than that; users give each other encouragement via comments and attached “motivations.” They see how they stack up on the leaderboard, share routes, discuss questions in forums and create specific fitness challenges.

Fitocracy (called “Fito” by its users) is another such online support community. User Maddie Grant (author of Humanize, my favorite social media book of all time) tells me that this site was conceived for “geeks who like fitness.” So it relies even more on gamification techniques like giving “props” to other users, or even using the “prop bomb” to like everything they’ve ever done. Unlike Daily Mile, here members get points for workouts and level up when they reach point milestones. There are tons of group-specific (such as swimming) challenges and quests, and the site is constantly figuring out new ways to encourage competition against yourself and others. Maddie says, “Fitocracy has connected me to so many people who don’t even know how much they encourage me, especially on those days when a workout is the last thing you want to do and at those times when the plateau hits. It’s an integral and essential part of my quest to get ripped.” :]

Another great option here is to motivate yourself by running or biking for a cause. Charity Miles lets you easily earn funds for your chosen cause; walkers and runners earn 25¢ a mile, and bikers earn 10¢ a mile, up to the initial $1,000,000 sponsorship pool.

Nutrition Tracking Tools

Since some of us, unfortunately, can’t just eat whatever we want no matter how much we exercise (*heavy sigh*), there are also great tools for tracking your diet, calorie intake and nutrition.

Some people I spoke with swear by the Weight Watchers app; I haven’t used that one in a while but found the content in the nutrition database to be lacking, meaning I often couldn’t easily find the healthy, whole foods I was looking to track.

My favorite app/site in this category is MyFitnessPal. Though the interface is lacking visually (someone, please design a nutrition tracking app that looks fun and friendly!), the food database is extremely complete, including even the most obscure healthy foods. This tool has been absolutely integral to my weight loss progress, and I highly recommend it. I put it in the nutrition tracking category because that’s what it’s best at, though it does also allow you to enter your exercise. It then adds the calories burned in exercise to your budgeted calories for the day. The benefit of this is that it helps focus you on thinking of the food you eat relative to the exercise it will take to burn it off, or vice versa, thinking of what you can eat IF you go for that run, walk or bike ride.

Fancy Shmancy Wearable Tracking Gadgets

This is the hottest category of them all…things you wear on various body parts that track your movement, your calories burned, even your sleep patterns.

Nike kicked off the craze with its launch of FuelBand this time last year. It’s a sexy beast, indeed, using an accelerometer to measure your movement in NikeFuel, a “universal metric of activity” (copywriter speak for “we own this category.”). You wear it on your wrist and can sync it with the FuelBand app to track your progress and connect with your friends.

My friend Shelly Kramer (named one of the 200 most fearless women online, how cool is that?!) is a FuelBand devotee, and eloquently says “I use my FuelBand and work hard to reach my Fuel goal daily; I am often doing jumping jacks at 11pm so I can get to that goal because I’m so competitive (even against myself) that I can’t stand it when I don’t. I also like that Facebook lets you “compete” against other friends you’re connected to. I love seeing my friends who use the running app and it shows me that they just did a 7.1 mile run or something like that, because then if I had slacking in mind I’ll feel like a loser and get off my butt and go for a walk.”

An alternative that’s getting some traction of late is Jawbone’s UP wristband, pulled from shelves in late 2011 due to functionality issues (as in, it didn’t work) and relaunched in 2012. An Engadget review describes it as “downright subtle, compared to the LED-riddled and overpriced Nike + FuelBand” and details issues with the lack of wireless syncing.

FitBit, on the other hand (pun intended) can go on your pants, in your pocket, on your bra, wherever, if you’re not into wearing a band on your wrist, and syncs wirelessly and easily. It even has a WiFi smart scale that syncs with your online profile and wireless gadget to keep you honest. The scale is quite cool and tempting (though not wholly necessary I must admit…it’s not really *that* much work to just enter your weight).

Linda Neff (another fearless friend, and a chapter author of the Women on Fire Book 2 being published this fall) is in love with her new FitBit, and says “It’s like a pedometer, only better…a quirky little friend who cheers on your healthy lifestyle with badges and messages reminiscent of your favorite grade school teacher.”

Biggest Loser NBC (with which I am obsessed, as is my 7 year old) has been using Body Media tracking armbands for years now. The difference here is BodyMedia uses multiple sensors – an accelerometer plus skin temperature, heat flux and galvanic skin response  - which is supposed to make it the most accurate. As tempting as the increased accuracy is, I just can’t quite bring myself to wear an armband on my bicep all day.

I’ve been considering buying one of these gadgets for the past year, and it’s a tough decision as there are elements I like of each. I have a “thing” for Nike, so the FuelBand appeals from a brand standpoint. I want accuracy, so BodyMedia appeals from a geeking-out-on-data standpoint. After doing more research for this story, I think FitBit is a good combination of form and function; it also integrates with MyFitnessPal so I can still track my nutrition in MyFitnessPal and FitBit will use that data…huge bonus. Maybe the best solution is to get one of each. ;]

The Bet

Some folks use these tools just for personal tracking and some use them for a little friendly competition. Now there’s a popular site called DietBet where you can set up that friendly wager. DietBet is a four-week social dieting game, in which you create your game or join one and watch the pot grow as new players join. At the end of the game, everyone who loses 4% of their body weight splits the pot. If you’re the kind of person that needs a lot of external motivation, this might be a good solution for you in the short term…then use some of the other tools to maintain your loss.

Social Music Sharing

Just for fun, you might want to check out a social music sharing app/site like Spotify. This is a great way to keep your workout playlists fresh and motivating. People build and share their playlists for others to check out and use. Here is my current one-hour run playlist.

So, whether you are self-motivated and need something to help you hold yourself accountable or externally motivated and want to share encouragement with your communities and maybe even set up a little healthy competition…there’s a tool or three out there for you.

I’d love to hear from you in the comments on what tools you’ve tried, and how they have (or haven’t) helped you meet your goals!

photo credit: Vethod via photopin cc

Mom runs a marathon – week 4 – Beating the sugar addiction

Looking back at my training journal over the first three weeks quickly shows the extent of my sugar problem. “Too much chocolate today.” “Sweet tooth still out of control.” “Excessive sugar; didn’t meet my calorie goal today.” Then: “Totally overdosed on sugar and feel gross (Twizzlers); threw candy away.”

It’s been six days now that I’ve been “clean.” And now my journal says things like: “Felt SO much better at the end of the day.” “More energy by far.” “Losing weight…down another 1.6 pounds.”

Breaking a sugar addiction cycle is a hard, hard thing to do. So hard that even though we know it’s not good for us and we FEEL better without it, we still keep munching away. If I didn’t have the goal of dragging my ass 26.2 miles in 103 days, I probably wouldn’t be dealing with it. But if you’re brave and taking it on, as many have responded on Twitter that they are, here are a few things that have helped me so far.

1. Get the stuff out of your house and out of your office. This is a no brainer, right? If it’s there, and you’re a junkie, you’re going to eat it. I was sent a sample of these little chocolate covered pomegranate thingies from Brookside as a Klout perk. They were tasty, no doubt about it. I may or may not have thrown them away in my office trash can and then dug them out to finish them, the day before I broke the cycle. THROW THE STUFF AWAY if you’re an addict that can’t moderate your intake very well. If you can eat just a few, more power to you.

2. Protein is your best defense. The first day after I quit, I was ravenous and ready to gnaw my arm off all day. The second day, I had a really high protein breakfast and it made all the difference in the world. Some books I recommend for recipes are the Master Your Metabolism Cookbook by Jillian Michaels (try the Jillian pancakes and one scrambled egg with extra egg whites) and Skinny Rules by Bob Harper (Caprese wrap FTW).

3. Find substitutes. For me, and I suspect for many others, much of the root of the sugar habit is just wanting “a little something” to sweeten up the day. I’d love nothing more than to start every single day with a ginormous chai tea latte or vanilla/hazelnut latte. But over the course of a year, a grande Starbucks chai (I wouldn’t get it there, mostly, but they have the most readily available nutrition information) would add up to 76,650 extra calories or an extra 21.9 POUNDS!! Insanity! So, I’m limiting myself to an occasional tall chai or latte, or getting a nonfat latte without the sugary syrup, much as I love it. If I’m really hard up, I’ll make or get a fruity herbal tea. Rishi cinnamon plum can get me through an afternoon quite nicely. This week, I’m trying Republic of Tea “Get Lost” which claims to help curb sugar cravings…we’ll see. The tea thing really is helping me.

In other week three “news”, I got in my four runs for 15 miles, one weight workout, one kettlebell class and my regular Sunday morning yoga class with Jaimi at Yoga Ward. It was damn icy outside all week so I was on the track at 5:30AM Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, which was EXHAUSTING, frankly. This is a lot lot LOT harder in the winter than it was last summer. Thankfully it was 40 degrees on Saturday so we could get outside…now back in the deep freeze. Wah wah wah. So that’s daunting this week but at least I know I am going into week 4 with my sugar jones under control. Woo-hoo!

How about you? What are your sugar challenges? If you’ve kicked it, what have you found that helped? If you’ve made a new year’s fitness resolution – or better yet, a plan – how’s it going so far?

photo credit: bored-now via photopin cc

The pure joy of running through life…”eyes skimming disembodied through the air”

People run for a lot of different reasons. I started running for a cause. I kept running because I suddenly love it (who knew?)…and because I like to eat.

Yesterday, though, I had what felt like a bit of an a-ha/holy shit moment. And I realized that without even consciously thinking about it, I’ve been planning to run through the rest of my life. Here’s why.

I love few things more in life than seeing the sun rise. Had I not become a runner earlier this year, I could not have quickly gotten to the end of Navy Pier in Chicago yesterday in the limited time that I had before a meeting…for this.

Given a choice, why would I want to miss this?! The simple, practical truth is, not only does running help me control my weight, feel better, have more energy, be more healthy, lower my stress, etcetera, it helps me cover more ground in life. To see more. To do more.

I read this quote recently on Facebook that I really adore because it comes closer to describing the feeling of a *good* run than I’ve been able to:

“We need almost nothing at all to find our happiness. Only a few hours, a stretch of road, perhaps a friend, or even better a competitor. We hide in our spindled chests an unusually large and heaving heart, and in our heads a warbled tune, a song, as we move on down the road.

Do you know the feeling I know? When your legs have disappeared, and there is only your heart, your lungs, and your eyes skimming disembodied through the air? We are Aristotle’s featherless bipeds, we runners. Though we have no wings, we have taught ourselves to fly.

~Jeff Edmonds

I’m beyond grateful that I have discovered this about myself, heading into my 44th year…and that I have the good health required to do it.

If you run, or find joy in another sport, why do you do it? What does it feel like?

Smash down the walls in your head.

Whatever your goals are in life, chances are there are things you aren’t considering because somewhere along the line, you’ve convinced yourself that they are outside of your realm of possibility.

We all put up walls in our brains that define ourselves a certain way. But guess what? Walls can be moved. Smashed, even.

Of course, not ALL walls are mental. Some are physical. But the ones that are just made of stories and labels inside our heads are the ones that need to be broken.

For me, one such wall was “I am not a runner.” When, in May of this year, I sat in a room full of people talking about running the Brewers Mini Marathon for MACC Fund, my mind’s instant response was “Not possible. I’m not a runner.” Then I immediately went online and looked at half-marathon training programs, finding out that they’d require me to quickly build a base of 10 miles a week, 2-3 miles at a time. At first that didn’t seem possible either.

Then, four months later…this happened.

Six months ago, I would never, EVER have believed this possible.

How did this happen? The conversation in my head changed from “I’m not a runner.” to “I can and will do this.” That’s it.

Sometimes, it takes a friend doing what Katie Klein did for me, calling bullshit on you and reminding you that you can do things, to change the negative conversation in your head. So maybe, just maybe, I can do that for you.

What are you thinking about wanting to do right now, and stopping yourself?

What would happen if, instead, you believe it to be POSSIBLE?

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