Stuff to Think About:
Remember the post I wrote about walking? I’d like to expound on it a bit.
So, it’s been established that walking is awesome, but just how much of it are you doing? Enter the pedometer–one of the best pieces of “fitness” equipment you can invest in. Knowing how many steps you take a day is obviously quite revealing of just how active your lifestyle is.
According to this site:
1) Under 5000 steps/day may be used as a “sedentary lifestyle index”
2) 5,000-7,499 steps/day is typical of daily activity excluding sports/exercise and might be considered “low active.”
3) 7,500-9,999 likely includes some exercise or walking (and/or a job that requires more walking) and might be considered “somewhat active.”
4) 10,000 steps/day indicates the point that should be used to classify individuals as “active”.
5) Individuals who take more than 12,500 steps/day are likely to be classified as “highly active”.
If you work a desk job and don’t engage in any other kind of activity besides walking to and from the car, your house, the kitchen, the bathroom etc., it’s very reasonable to assume that you’re only taking about 2000 steps a day. That’s about how many steps I hit when I don’t walk or go to the gym on a workday.
i.e., me yesterday at 8:32 p.m.
I was not having it, especially since I didn’t go to the gym. Instead I went for a walk with my marm and got back at 9:14 p.m.
Not great, but not too bad either. This just goes to show you how much a little walking can make a difference! It was nice to bond with my momma, too.
I’m not advocate of obsessively tracking how many steps you take every day, but I think it’s a good idea to wear a pedometer for a few weeks so you can gauge how active you are. Then use that as a guide for the future.
If you’re just trying to maintain your weight and be generally healthy, you’ll still want to get in a good amount of walking, and you may be pleasantly surprised to find that you’re actually walking 7000+ steps a day. Those who are on a weight loss quest can also benefit from a pedometer, especially if they are at a plateau. When you are losing weight you are in a caloric deficit, and after a while our bodies tend to compensate for that by moving less. You may not even realize that it’s happening, and that’s when the pedometer comes in handy. It’ll help you to maximize your fat loss efforts by ensuring that you’re moving enough every day.
I use an Ironman Triathlon Timex that also has different timers and other features I have not figured out how to use, haha.
Personal:
I’m staying at my parents’ house because my house currently looks like this:
I’m getting a new floor installed on the second floor and everything is pretty much upside down.
Other than that, I’m feeling kind of under the weather. Normally I pride myself in having the immune system of low-grade superhero. I say low-grade because I do have pretty bad allergies. But other than that, I hardly ever get sick. My stomach rarely gets upset. I only remember having a fever twice in my life–at 5 when I had the chicken pox and close to a year ago when I caught a stomach bug.
It wasn’t always like that though. In high school I used to catch colds constantly. When I was 18 and 19 I could not stop getting tonsillitis. I used to have a ton of cavities. When I started working out (but not eating healthy yet), I stopped getting sick so often. Eventually increasing the amount of veggies I ate and reducing the processed food turned illness into even more of a rare occurrence.
But alas, I’m sick! Mildly sick, but still. It’s annoying -_-
Oh yeah, and I woke up at 5 a.m. today to go to the gym. That resulted in me having to take a nap during my lunch break. Sheesh!
