Do you know how many steps you take in a day? Is it enough to be deemed healthy? I started paying attention to my activity levels for a week and used a step counter to see if I was being active enough.
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Let’s be honest here, we all want to be fit and healthy but sometimes putting the effort in is too much, especially if you are just starting off. If you do a bit of poking about on Google, you will find plenty of sites that say 5k steps a considered is the minimum amount of steps that you should be doing in a day. I have been taking a break from my usual hard-core fitness routine since the London Marathon but I still want to be healthy and slightly active without killing myself in order to build myself back up again. Let’s face it, that marathon was a tough one for me.
How did I track my steps?
I have a little step counter that I picked up on Amazon. It’s cheap and cheerful, perfect if you are starting off on your fitness journey. This will track your step count, heart rate, and sleep. There is an app you download on to your phone that shows you all of the details that it records during the day. This is nothing fancy, it will track your steps but it doesn’t have GPS to track your run, so no fancy maps showing your speed. But that’s ok, we don’t need that for what we are doing. Using the app and the step tracker, I set it up so that it alerted me when I hit 5k steps. There is a huge variety of step counters to choose from, so it can be overwhelming to pick one. Check out https://mobilemob.com.au/blogs/news for an in-depth look at the different trackers available.
- Race report || Finsbury Parkrun
- Lon-Done || 26.2 things I learned about myself and the world while doing the London Marathon
- Race report || Sea Bangor Cup 2017 Rowing race
How did it go?
I’m actually surprised with how well this went. Even though I’m not at the gym and feel like I spend most of my time on my butt, I’m at the lower end of the activity scale. I did leave my watch off from time to time, that is why Saturdays steps appear rubbish. But I know I was up and about all day doing housework, baking and chasing after the kids. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to track those steps. If I had check my watch on, I probably would have hit my target every day. On Friday, I take my kids to their clubs and I have a walk around the local shopping centre to kill some time while I wait. But on school days I can easily hit my target because I don’t park close to the school and there is a wee walk.
Will I stick with it?
Absolutely! I know this is not in the same league as running a marathon but it is a start, and everyone needs to start somewhere. I was able to hit the target (most days) because I parked the car a bit further away from the school and on the far side of the car park when I was out. In a way, there was very little effort required. I didn’t need to stick the trainers on and find an hour or two for running. Simply parking the car and walking about made it easy for me to get up to 5k steps. And when I was in the house at the weekend, I just made sure I wasn’t sitting on my bum all day.
If you liked this then you should definitely check out the post that started it all, why the saying “you have the same hours in the day as Beyonce” is a load of rubbish. Plus there are my experiments from previous weeks too.
- 3 simple things you can do to be more productive
- I stopped watching TV for a week to see what would happen
- I put my phone down for a week to see what would happen
- My steamy hour || I tried an experiment with the ironing and it did not go well