Saturday 20 September 2014

#277: Be more active

Like a lot of people, as I've gotten older I've become less active than I was in my 20s. Having an office/desk job doesn't help, especially since I can't stand going to the gym.  I long ago realised that I'd be better off using dollar bills as kindling for a fireplace than to use them to pay for a gym membership. No matter what great intentions I had, I've learned that I just wont go regularly enough.

So it was me quite a challenge for me to find a way to tick this one off the list. I realised that the best way for me to start being a little bit more active was to understand how inactive I actually was. The experts recommend that people should take around 10,000 steps each day, so I needed to find out how far off that I was in my normal life.
So I got a fitbit, which is basically a pedometer that I wear on my wrist. I quickly realised that in an average day, if I didn't make any effort, I clocked up around 4500 steps a day -- or around half as many as I should. With this new found knowledge I then started looking at ways I could get more steps in: Getting off the tube a few stops early, walking the long way to meet a friend, parking in the most distant parking spot available, etc. I found that could get me to around 7-8k, but not to the desired 10,000 mark so I for the last 2 months I've been walking the 4.5 miles to or from work a couple of times a week, weather depending. At first it seemed like a really long way, but I've come to enjoy the time it takes me to cover the distance and I feel much better for having done it.



Photo credit: Christian Mueller / Shutterstock

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