Thursday, April 25, 2013

I Can Walk for Miles And Miles And Miles

I'm not surprised that best way to get diners to cut down on calorie consumption is to express menu calories in the number of miles it would take to "walk it off". Without using a pedometer, it's very hard to gauge how much you walk in a day.

I had a Fitbit for a few months until I inevitably lost it, which is enough time to get a good sense for what constitutes a halfway "active" lifestyle by fitbit standards. Fitbit's default goal is to get you to walk 10,000 steps in a day, which is roughly five miles. When I started I thought it would take an serious long-distance run to hit that target. But just a walk from the office to the gym plus 20 minutes of cardio was enough to get to 10,000 step goal. Alternatively, an hour's worth of lighter exercise--something like swing dancing--combined with plus the steps you take walking around a grocery store and the 4000 or so you take in day-to-day-life will get you close to the five mile mark.

Now, it's true that if you drive everywhere and do nothing but watch TV all day, you'll end up with 2500-4000 steps in a day, which is pretty sedentary. But it's very easy to introduce modest levels of activity into your life.

1 comment:

Max Kingsbury said...

I think the easiest way to achieve regular exercise is to stop accepting your own excuses. Don't skip a workout because you are tired, don't feel like it, or because the weather is bad. Don't skip a workout because you don't have the right socks, left your MP3 player at home, or somebody invited you out for drinks.

The only reason I skip workouts is that I'm worried about injuring myself. Once you stop accepting your own excuses, it becomes very easy to workout regularly.