As Mississippi Fred McDowell would say
you gotta move.
Get up and walk. If you want to lose weight and aren't a majorly athletic person, at least go for a walk, or so they say. I personally walk a lot due to The Fuzzy Overlord and her 5 miles a day of excursions. But how much do most people walk? And how do I stack up against those people?
At work for the first wellness initiative of the year they gave everyone the option to get at a discount a little watch with an accelerometer in it. It can be synced up to a website which tracks your moves, your steps and your milage. The moves are separate because if it lives on your wrist as intended it will get your arm motions. Steps are apparently tracked separately, and I'm not sure how they calculate miles because the website keeps reporting smaller amounts than the watch. But anyway, I figured I'd sign up because I was really curious to see how much physical activity I get relative to the average coworker. Besides, it was cheap (only $15) and if you went 100 miles in the first four weeks you got reimbursed for that.
Note that 100 miles in four weeks goal. The ideas was that everyone who went 25 miles in a week would be entered for a gift card. In addition, if you reached a 'high but not outlandishly so' step total in a single day you could get a free colored band for the watch gadget instead of the plain black one.
I did not adjust my daily routine in any way, and in the first week I racked up 60 miles. I hit the one-day step total 6 of the 7 days of the week. This easily put me in top 10% of the people taking part (500+), and I know for a fact that several of the people ahead of me are serious runners. Even better, I was actually under-reporting 'moves' because I hate wearing watches and carried it in my pocket instead, depriving me of valuable extra movements. So if I'd followed the directions I would have been even higher.
This second week I'm not doing quite as well because it has been a lot colder. This in of itself wouldn't matter, but it actually dipped down to 'cold enough that Tulip is very unhappy when she goes outside' so that knocked the daily walk mileage down a bit. Still, if you take my first week as representative of my walking behavior in normal Ohio weather conditions (and I don't see why we shouldn't) it's clear that I'm way more active than most people. I'm still going to be well over 75 miles by next Monday, which means I only have to do 25 miles in two weeks to get my $15 back. Piece of cake.
This, of course, means that if I decide I want to lose weight I'm going to have to either invest significant exercise or significant calorie reductions, or more likely, both. Counting steps isn't going to do it. I figured that was the case, but it's nice to have some confirmation.
It also means that if Tulip one day can't handle extended walks I'm going to get fat. May that day be far in the future. Or never. That would be good too.
Click to viewGet up and walk. If you want to lose weight and aren't a majorly athletic person, at least go for a walk, or so they say. I personally walk a lot due to The Fuzzy Overlord and her 5 miles a day of excursions. But how much do most people walk? And how do I stack up against those people?
At work for the first wellness initiative of the year they gave everyone the option to get at a discount a little watch with an accelerometer in it. It can be synced up to a website which tracks your moves, your steps and your milage. The moves are separate because if it lives on your wrist as intended it will get your arm motions. Steps are apparently tracked separately, and I'm not sure how they calculate miles because the website keeps reporting smaller amounts than the watch. But anyway, I figured I'd sign up because I was really curious to see how much physical activity I get relative to the average coworker. Besides, it was cheap (only $15) and if you went 100 miles in the first four weeks you got reimbursed for that.
Note that 100 miles in four weeks goal. The ideas was that everyone who went 25 miles in a week would be entered for a gift card. In addition, if you reached a 'high but not outlandishly so' step total in a single day you could get a free colored band for the watch gadget instead of the plain black one.
I did not adjust my daily routine in any way, and in the first week I racked up 60 miles. I hit the one-day step total 6 of the 7 days of the week. This easily put me in top 10% of the people taking part (500+), and I know for a fact that several of the people ahead of me are serious runners. Even better, I was actually under-reporting 'moves' because I hate wearing watches and carried it in my pocket instead, depriving me of valuable extra movements. So if I'd followed the directions I would have been even higher.
This second week I'm not doing quite as well because it has been a lot colder. This in of itself wouldn't matter, but it actually dipped down to 'cold enough that Tulip is very unhappy when she goes outside' so that knocked the daily walk mileage down a bit. Still, if you take my first week as representative of my walking behavior in normal Ohio weather conditions (and I don't see why we shouldn't) it's clear that I'm way more active than most people. I'm still going to be well over 75 miles by next Monday, which means I only have to do 25 miles in two weeks to get my $15 back. Piece of cake.
This, of course, means that if I decide I want to lose weight I'm going to have to either invest significant exercise or significant calorie reductions, or more likely, both. Counting steps isn't going to do it. I figured that was the case, but it's nice to have some confirmation.
It also means that if Tulip one day can't handle extended walks I'm going to get fat. May that day be far in the future. Or never. That would be good too.