On the very first day of class, we each received a goodie bag filled with nifty stuff to help keep us on track. All of it, I am happy to say, has thus far been put to good use. Not the least of which is the digital pedometer that is almost permanently attached to my hip.
Now let me confess up front that I am one of those people who never caught the pedometer wave. The last (and only) pedometer I ever had was a freebie I’m pretty sure I got from McDonald's, back when they were making an effort to convince the public that it made sense to walk off your hamburgers and fries. It was a mechanical thing that made an irritating clicking noise with every step, and didn’t work all that well. I’m pretty sure I walked it about as far as the trash.
Still, I haven’t been oblivious to the growing pedometer frenzy. Every time I turn around it seems like someone else is touting their benefits. And don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I thought pedometers were a bad idea. They’re beneficial for some people – you know – the sort of people who don’t walk very much. Inactive people. Middle-aged secretaries who slip on their sneakers during lunch and power walk around the block. A pedometer is something my mother would wear, not me!
Fortunately, this little digital model was cooler than my old McDonald's clicker, and I slipped it on my hip without a thought. 10,000 steps a day. That’s what they recommend. “How much can that be?” I wondered silently, having no idea the relationship between distance and number of steps. “I walk around a lot, this will be no problem.”
By the end of our first class, I had already racked up around 4000 steps, and I was cockier than ever. I started sneaking glances at it several times an hour. And I started counting steps. 25 steps from my desk to Eric Wellman’s. 50 to the bathroom. About 200 if I took the stairs in the parking garage instead of the elevator. 400 to Starbucks and back. I figured I’d hit ten thousand in nothing flat.
But once I got back to the office and sat down to my desk for several hours, I realized how much I actually walk during the course of a normal day. Or more accurately, how much I DON’T walk. When I am actively writing or editing audio, I easily spend several hours in a row glued to a chair not moving at all – and the more I thought about it, the more I became aware that my sedentary work habits were the rule, not the exception. By the time I got home I realized that if I was going to meet that 10-thousand step goal, I was going to have to work at it.
It has been a week now, and I have met or exceeded that goal 5 out of the last 7 days. But make no mistake, it has been painful. Every night I get on the treadmill for an hour. Not 15 or 20 minutes – a full hour. After 2 days, my hamstrings were tight and sore. After 4 my shins and hips were aching. I started keeping a bottle of Aleve in my purse. As I sit here now, it’s 5 minutes to 5, and my pedometer reads 5833. I have at least two miles to walk tonight if I am going to make it, and there is nothing I want more than to go directly home, take a bath, and sit in front of the television with my dinner like a good American.
For me, the pedometer is an anti-delusionary device. I cannot cheat myself into thinking that I am more active than I am, and it has illuminated a big part of the problem: I don’t even move the minimum amount I need to in the course of a day. Setting aside time for exercise every single day has to be a priority, not an occasional bonus if and when I feel like it.
It’s also made me think a lot harder about my food choices. A Big Mac value meal, contains 1170 calories. That’s three hours or about 24 thousand steps, and there isn’t a hamburger in the world I’m going to walk that far for.