Category: Me, only better

Did you hear that bellow of “GOOOOOOAAAAAALLLLLLL” on Sunday morning? No, that wasn’t an overenthusiastic fan at the FIFA Women’s world cup – that was me, reaching my weight goal after more than a year of (admittedly on-and-off) trying. Yay me!

Even better than meeting my weight goal, though, has been that I’m meeting my movement goals. Even though I’ve had my FitBit for more than two years now, it’s only since this spring that I’ve been consistently meeting my goal of 10.000 steps each day. A goal of 10K steps per day is sort of arbitrary, I’ll admit, but I’ve read a lot of studies that say it’s an ideal point to maintain fitness and lower your risk of things like heart disease and diabetes. And the best part? It’s a genuinely achievable goal, even for a sedentary girl like me.

So, from lazy me to you, here’s 10 things you can do to step up and meet that 10,000 steps per day goal.

1. Wear comfortable shoes. I picked up a second pair of running shoes and keep them in my office. It’s surprising what a difference this makes!

2. Step-load the early part of the day. This may work for me because I’m also naturally a morning person, but I try to get in as many steps as I can as early in the day as I can. When you’re at the end of the day, you’re much more likely to make an effort to take a quick walk around the block to overcome a 1,200 step deficit than plan a hike to make up 4,000 steps.

3. Set a task reminder to move. I must have seen this tip recommended a hundred times, but have only taken it to heart recently. I have a task reminder set up at work to go off every 90 minutes, and when it goes off I have to stop what I’m doing, walk down the four flights of stairs to the main floor, walk the length of the building, and walk back up again. It’s the best part of 1,000 steps, and it’s really quite amazing how much it clears your head.

4. Leave your car in a central area and walk your errands. With a parking lot in front of each big-box store, it’s tempting to move your car from lot to lot as you go from store to store. Resist the urge, or park a bit further away if you’re just going to one spot.

5. Think of walking as a me-time indulgence rather than an obligation. This was a huge one for me. Once I stopped thinking of getting my steps in as a drudge and started thinking of the time as an indulgence, I found myself working harder to make time for it. And walking is a gift to yourself – mentally and physically. You deserve it!

6. Find a buddy. Tristan comes with me when I walk the dog every night, and he sets a brisk pace that’s natural for his coltish teenage legs but a challenge for me to keep up. It’s also a wonderful quiet interlude to suss out things that may be weighing on his mind, or for us to catch up on our busy days. At the office, my friend Annie and I have taken invigorating lunch-time walks that breezed by in the depths of conversations. I find that keeping up with my FitBit friends online also serves as a motivator when I feel like slacking. I am the opposite of competitive in most things, but I hate to fall out of the leaderboard on FitBit!

7. Make it part of your routine. After a while, finding small ways to pad your day with extra steps becomes second nature. I’ve started circling my office building to use a different entrance each time I come or go, adding a couple of hundred steps each time. I also figured out that I had just enough time to park my car in the driveway after work and hop on my bike to get to the boys’ school in time to walk them back home again. I am really missing the extra kilometer of steps from the after-school routine this week!

8. Make it fun! Listen to a podcast, or your favourite music while you walk. If you’re particularly dexterous and can’t stand the idea of missing the latest activity on your social networks, walk while surfing your smartphone. Or, choose a beautiful place to explore on your walk – drive to a neighbourhood you don’t often visit, or find a trail to walk.

9. Bring or borrow a pet. Sometimes, the idea that the dog is counting on me is the only thing that motivates me to get out in poor weather, or after a particularly long day. She doesn’t mind walking in the rain or snow, and inspires me not to mind so much either. We haven’t melted yet!

10. Be kind to yourself – each day is a clean slate. While I now make my step goal six or seven days each week (as opposed to making it two or three days each week this time last year), I don’t beat myself up if I don’t make it every single day. I have consistently made my weekly goal of 70,000 steps each week since Easter, though. Turns out when you aim for 10K steps a day, you often land somewhere closer to 12,000 or 14,000 steps a day!

And now, a bonus tip for FitBit Zip users!

I got my first Zip back in January of 2013, and upgraded to a Flex about a year ago. I still use my Zip as a backup when the flex is charging, though. I used to hate the idea of “losing” the steps between first waking up in the morning and when I’d get dressed for the day and tuck my Zip into my pocket or clip it to my bra, so I’d carry it around in my PJ pocket – and then inevitably forget to move it when I got dressed. All that to say, I wish I’d had the brainstorm two years ago that I had last month when I discovered the Best! FitBit Zip! Accessory! Ever!! Are you ready for it?

A hairband! Seriously, why did I not think of this before? So when I want to record my steps before I get dressed (or, ahem, after I put on my jammies!) I just do this:

I’ve also been known to actually attach the Zip to my ponytail in the pool or while doing yoga.

You know that old expression, “Look after the pennies and the dollars will look after themselves”? It’s like that with steps, too. Find a dozen times to add 100 steps to your day, and you’re there!

What do you think of the goal to walk 10,000 steps a day? Do you do it? Any other tips to share?

You may have noticed that I have a bit of an obsessive personality. *snort* Not for me “I should write a blog” but “I should write a blog for ten years and turn it into a career” and not just “I should take a few pictures” but “I should take a picture every day for years and become a photographer.” Why dip your toe in the puddle when you can fling yourself in the ocean?

I decided back in early April that it was time to get my overweight arse back on the health bandwagon, but this time my focus was less on what I was eating and more on what I was doing with my body. I kept reading articles about how a sedentary lifestyle was a huge health risk, and so I decided that while I would start counting calories again, my real focus would be getting my body moving more often.

On Easter weekend, I fished my FitBit back out of the drawer (we were on a break, but we’ve since made up) and I made my goal of 10,000 steps per day every day for EIGHTEEN DAYS IN A ROW. I’ve been using a FitBit since January 2013 and the longest stretch I’ve previously gone was only four or five days, so the streak was a huge accomplishment for me. That’s almost 8 km of walking every day, through the spring sunshine and the rain and that raw wind that just won’t quit.

For the best part of a month, I lived a wonderfully active life. I set up a reminder to move on my computer at work, and every 60 or 90 minutes I’d get up, walk the four flights of steps to the main floor, across the length of our building and back up again. I’d walk five blocks out of the way to get my coffee or park at the parking lot down the road from where I was heading to get in a few extra steps. I spent an hour-long conference call from home pacing the 16 steps from my bedside table through the ensuite bathroom and back again and logged over a thousand steps for it (not to mention a serious case of vertigo.) For one solid week I drove home as quickly as I could so I could have time to park the car at home and walk over to the boys’ school so we could walk home together – good for me AND good for them, win-win!

Look at me! I’m active! I’m in control. I’m happy!

Well, not so much. It’s hella work and time consuming to do all that walking, and I was so busy trying to get my steps in that other things started falling by the wayside. Blog posts? Can’t. Walking. Errands at lunch? Only those that include lots of steps. And god forbid the day started to wind down and I was nowhere near my step goal – the stress started to get to me. I can’t tell you how much of a relief it was to finally break the streak when I didn’t make my step goal this Friday.

I had been making myself crazy to get that line on the chart to turn green each day, going to ridiculous lengths to make sure my FitBit gave it’s little victory buzz to let me know I’ve reached 10K steps for the day. (Aside – after almost a year of wearing the FitBit Flex, you’d think I’d begin to be less startled when the thing goes off to mark 10K steps, but no. I have variously jumped, yelped, flinched, flung a wooden spoon into a pot I was stirring and nearly wet my pants when it buzzed unexpectedly. I think the worst is when I’m anticipating it – somehow it manages to wait for the split second my attention is diverted before it goes off and I’m always the most harshly startled on those days. More than once I’ve thought I had an angry bee in my sleeve – rather unlikely in the deep dark heart of January, but still.)

So there’s a finite amount of time here and I’m going to have to figure out a way to be productive (when everything I produce involves me sitting in front of a monitor) AND be active AND do all the other tasks required to be the chief operating officer of our busy household. And don’t even bother recommending one of those treadmill-desk things. I did consider it, for about eleven seconds, but I have a hard enough time overcoming gravity and my own clumsiness when I’m focused on what my body is doing – I’d cause myself grievous bodily harm on one of those contraptions.

The other thing I noticed is that I did not feel any mentally better while I was on my 10k/day streak. In fact, I felt emotionally ragged and raw for a good portion of that time. It’s entirely possible that it was a coincidence, but the day I broke the streak of green “I did it” lines was the most contented I’ve felt in weeks. Hmmm.

So, the moral of today’s story is don’t exercise I need to find a way to integrate moving my body into my daily routine that is sustainable without being slave to the green line of achievement. And maybe I need to learn to do some things without quite so much, um, enthusiasm. 😉

Alright, I give up. I charged my FitBit and I started tracking calories again. I guess I’m back on the wagon.

It was just shy of a year ago that I capitulated to counting calories with My Fitness Pal, and it did work for me. From a high of 183 lbs, I worked my way up and down to a late summer low around 175 lbs, but I never really made it below that. (I was aiming for 170, which is ironically the weight I was in 2005 when I joined weight watchers for the last time. My 15 year low is 163, where I ended up after six months on Dr Bishop’s weight loss plan, after topping out after Lucas was born at a way-too-heavy for me 192. I’m saying the numbers out loud so I stop feeling shamed by them. I hope it works.) After a sedentary winter with too many chips and Beloved learning to bake, I’ve been trying to get back on track with increased exercise alone, but my weight isn’t really budging. So. Calorie counting it is. It sucks, but it works.

I don’t really hate it as much as I thought I did. I like to have projects, and it’s the quiet season for photography, so I will obsess about my own health and fitness for a while. I am my current project. And like almost all of my projects, in two or three quick skips I’ve gone from mildly interested to engaged to obsessive.

The first significant phase of my project was yoga. My friend Yvonne mentioned hot power yoga at Mountaingoat Yoga in passing one day, and my interest was piqued. I’d been thinking I’d like a pilates class for strength, and though I am terribly intimidated by fitness classes (I’ve had a GoodLife membership for 10 years and never once attended a class), I started in late February and haven’t missed a weekly class yet. Hell, I even bought a yoga top, 75% off on the clearance rack at Gap.

Despite my best intentions and what felt like an increased attention to making good choices, the scale refused to reward my good behaviour. Not only that, but one day I happened to position myself in yoga class in full view of the mirror, and comparing what I thought I looked like to what I actually looked like (especially compared to everyone else) was a harsh reality check. I am not on the large side of healthy, I am overweight.

So. This week I have attended two yoga classes and gone to the gym twice for cardio workouts on the elliptical machine and the rower. I took an hour walk with the boys on Sunday, started tracking my steps and calories, and walked a kilometer to the boys’ school to pick them up and walk the kilometer back home. I’ve resisted Easter chocolates and made good food choices. I practically skipped to the gym this morning, so keen was I to reap the rewards of my sustained and extended efforts. You know what I got?

Nothing.

Sigh.

That’s where the reference to Sisyphus comes in. I feel like this is how it is, all the time:

Oh I know, you don’t have to say it. The scale only shows my relationship to gravity, right? And I’m probably building muscle tone and losing fat. And it takes time to make progress. Blah blah blah. I know, I know. I’m just so frustrated that I feel like Sisyphus up there, always ALWAYS pushing against that rock. I know that if I keep tracking steps and calories that I’ll make progress, just like I did last year. And I know that eventually I’ll get tired of it or something shiny will come along and distract me, and I’ll lose focus and the weight will creep back up again.

Bah. I’m just tired of struggling against being tired, yanno? I sleep 8 – 9 hours a day and I’m still tired – and sitting on the couch feels sooooooo good. I really think that it’s not food I’m battling here – my food choices are really not bad even when I’m not tracking calories. Not great, but not excessive. It’s my sedentary life that’s the rock I have to keep pushing up that hill.

I was already thinking about writing a blog post about Yoni Freedhoff’s book The Diet Fix when I happened to catch him speaking to Jian Ghomeshi this morning on CBC Radio Q. I’ve been aware of Dr Freedhoff, an Ottawa doctor who specializes in treating overweight people, for many years. I’ve been following him on Twitter for a lot of that time, and have occasionally read his Weighty Matters blog. While I have always found his opinions interesting, I have to admit that I have previously found him a little too strident in his views (and how he espouses them) for my tastes.

Maybe he’s become more moderate in his views, or maybe I’ve become more rigid in mine. Maybe I just never gave him enough of my attention to make a fair judgement. Regardless, between reading The Diet Fix and listening to him on Q this morning, I’m well on my way to becoming a fangirl.

If you’re struggling with health and weight and nutrition, I really recommend you give Dr Freedhoff’s book a try. He preaches embracing a lifestyle of moderation, giving you straightforward advice about how to re-think the idea of dieting and allowing you the flexibility to enjoy real food, including those occasional indulgences of chips, chocolate and ice cream – as long as it’s in thoughtful quantities that are the minimum amount that will make you happy. It’s exactly what I’ve already been doing, but it’s also given me some good insight into where I might have been deceiving myself and subverting my own efforts.

I know myself well enough to know that deprivation of any sort simply will not work for me. While I have great admiration for those of you who have succeeded on low carb or low fat diets, or who have eliminated sugar from their diets, I always knew that I would never be able to maintain that sort of diet. And if I did manage it, I’d be miserable. I’m a creature of comfort – I don’t like to be miserable. I do, however, believe in moderation, and that’s the thread that runs through The Diet Fix.

I keep thinking about one quote in the book: “You can’t outrun your fork.” Dr Freedhoff isn’t a fan of Biggest Loser style guerrilla exercise campaigns where you burn off excess calories with hours at the gym. I’ve been a little self-critical about the fact that I haven’t been making the time to work out more, so this spoke to me. He cautions that treadmills and elliptical often give a false and inflated sense of calories burned, and your body’s hunger response to all those burned calories is to crave – more calories. Instead, he asks “Is this a level of exercise you are comfortable committing to for the foreseeable future?” And he approaches calories in the same way: the amount of calories you should be consuming needs to be at a level you’ll be comfortable consuming not just until you achieve your best weight, but beyond that, too.

The nice thing for me is that I’m pretty much doing exactly that. I’m just over 1/3 of the way to my goal of 14 lbs weight loss about five and a half weeks in, which is not stellar progress but it is progress. I was going to crop this chart to take the actual weight out – but I’m going to take a deep breath and leave the numbers there. As some clever person said in an earlier comment, the absolute numbers really only offer true insight into my relationship with gravity. Ten years (and one baby and one miscarriage) ago, I was at 170 lbs and considering joining weight watchers because I thought I was too heavy. Now that’s my goal weight and I’m pretty happy with how I look just a few pounds over that. But it’s still tough to share those numbers. I’m pleased enough with the downward meandering curve to take a deep breath and post them, though I am cringing just a bit.

I remember when I had my big weight loss success in 2008-2009 having the idea in my mind “I don’t eat that.” At the time, “that” comprised doughnuts, nachos, chips and a handful of other things. For six months, I didn’t eat those things, and I remember feeling vaguely naughty eating chips and salsa at a New Years party that year, but giving myself “permission” because I’d reached my weight goal. It took five years, but I gained back about 80% of that weight in the intervening time. I’m hoping this time I’m able to find a balance, as the book preaches, that lets me continue happily eating this way for good – mostly on track, but with no forbidden foods and constant mindfulness.

I’ve capitulated to the fact that I must count and measure portions and calories, at least for now. I’m lazy about it, and I guesstimate a lot. I think if I were more diligent, I’d lose the weight a little quicker, but I really do appreciate the concept of embracing a relationship with food and eating that you will be comfortable maintaining for the long term. So I will happily trade slower progress for less stress in the getting there. To me, it’s as much about awareness and informed choices as anything.

I have to say, though, the chapter that most deeply affected me was called “Parent” – as in, how to parent a child who is overweight. This is a new challenge for us right now, and I really don’t want to say too much about it except to say that it is consuming a lot of my mental energy right now. I’m so grateful to Dr Freedhoff for this chapter, which I just read last night. While I have stratospherically improved in serving healthy meals at home in the last few years, getting the children to actually eat, let alone enjoy, those meals is an ongoing challenge. Dr Freedhoff’s recounting of changing his own taste for coffee from double-double to black over the course of months inspired me. He found it took roughly 1800 sips of coffee to retrain his taste buds to appreciate black coffee – and gave me great hope that maybe some day the boys will love quinoa salad, kale and seafood as much as I do. Only 1500 nibbles to go.

Anyway, this is not so much a book review as a brain dump. I picked up the book on a whim from the express loan section of the library, and although I have to say that I was more than 75% of the way down this road, I’m grateful for Dr Freedhoff for the ideas and inspiration on how to tweak my progress without depriving myself or setting myself up for future failure or regression. It’s a good book – if you’re interested in a healthier lifestyle that is the opposite of a prescriptive diet, I highly recommend it.

Two weeks ago, I lamented that despite my best efforts, I had utterly failed to lose a pound and in fact, was losing the battle against the 10 lbs I gained in the last year. I whined that I did not want to count calories, that I was doing my best, that I did not know what else to do.

What a difference an app makes.

On the advice of a friend on Twitter, the very day I posted my last lament I downloaded the free My Fitness Pal app for my iPhone. Oh my goodness, how much do I love this app? I swear I am not shilling for them, but I am seriously impressed by this app. For one thing, it synchs automatically with my Fitbit, so while I log all my food and exercise for the day, it tells me how many calories I have burned based on my daily steps. Very motivating! You don’t need the app, as you can actually do most of the activities via the My Fitness Pal website, but I do like the convenience of having the app in my pocket.

And the whole counting of calories and measuring of portions is made much easier by the app, too. It has three functions I simply adore. First, you can scan the UPC code of whatever you are eating and chances are, it’s already in the database. Just enter your serving size and you are done. I haven’t stumped it yet – from Feta cheese to boxed pasta to dates rolled in coconut, every food I have scanned has been in there. The second is the amazing ability to analyze recipes from websites by simply entering the URL. It scans the page and pulls out all the ingredients and proportions. How cool is that? Sometimes you have to help it interpret a few items, but I find it runs about 80% accurate. Very, very cool! Third, you can chunk foods together as regular meals. We have fajitas at least once a week, so I keyed everything in once, saved it as a meal, and it’s just one click to add it every time we eat it. Same for my daily breakfast of cold cereal and 450 oz of coffee.

In addition to all that, it analyzes everything you eat for the day not just for calories, but for nutritional components as well. Apparently I am not as much of a carb junkie as I thought: I am regularly under on my ideal proportion of 50% of my daily calories coming from carbs and instead I regularly go over on fats. I’m thinking that’s my love of nuts, seeds, avocados and coconuts. And no wonder I haven’t had a cold in 18 months – I usually consume about double the daily recommended amount of vitamin C, but even with the vast quantities of very milky coffee I consume every day, I’m still falling short on the recommended amount of calcium.

(I am, ahem, also very glad that the one thing the app doesn’t measure is daily caffeine intake. A girl needs a vice or two, after all.)

Neat, eh? And the very best part is that I lost THREE POUNDS in the last two weeks! Well, actually I lost two, gained one, lost two, but hey, at least it’s progress! 😉

So I am a little more obsessive about the counting and measuring than I would ordinarily be comfortable with, but I have to admit that it is helping me make smarter choices. I figured out, for example, that I can have a small handful of baby carrots with a tablespoon of chip dip and that makes a surprisingly satisfying evening snack at about 80 calories – which I can ‘earn’ with about 20 minutes of walking. And I while I am reluctant to snack on high calorie foods like chips because I have to account for them, I can also choose occasional treats in moderation. Hellllooooo Starbucks macchiato!

What’s kind of funny is that I get so annoyed when I forget to put my fitbit in my pocket for the day, or can’t quite find the perfect representation of what I’ve eaten in the food database, that it’s easy to forget that it’s not what I capture in the app that’s driving my health and weight-loss but the other way around. The app might not see the sweaty hour I put in yesterday turning over a new veggie garden plot in the yard, but based on my muscle soreness this morning, my arse certainly did!

So yay for progress! According to yesterday’s update on the app, if every day were like yesterday I would be within two pounds of my weight goal in five weeks, which is conveniently when we are going to PEI. And while I may just “forget” to enter my daily calories when we’re on vacation, I’m pretty sure I can keep up at least the daily accounting without too much effort going forward.

Yay for progress!

I will try very hard not to whine during this blog post, I promise, but I am soooo frustrated that I need some moral support, and maybe some advice.

As you might have noticed, I am really working on healthier living. I cook more than 90 per cent of our meals from scratch and I eat with purpose from whole foods. I’m very cognizant of just about everything I put in my mouth. I try not to eat sugar and I watch carbs in particular, although I have not cut out either one entirely and have no plans to do so. I’m also exercising diligently. I’ve ramped up my gym visits from once a week to twice a week, and for the last few weeks I’ve met my goal of walking 10,000 steps at least four days out of seven. For the last six weeks, I have been trying hard to lose the ten pounds I’ve gained over the last year despite my focus on healthier living overall, and for my daily and near constant efforts, I have lost – nothing. Well, I lost two pounds, gained one, gained two, lost one, lost one, gained two, etc.

I. Am. So. Frustrated.

My feet and knees ache with all the damn walking all the time. I don’t have room in my week for a third workout. I haven’t seen the inside of the elevator at work in a month (I work on the fourth floor) and I’ve switched to a further-away Starbucks. I am trying to eat with moderation instead of deprivation because I know deprivation isn’t sustainable. And if I were making any progress at all, even just a pound every two weeks, I’d at least feel motivated enough to keep working at it. I have to wonder, though, why the hell bother if I’m not getting any results? Pass the chips and dip, please.

You might remember I had great success with losing some weight after Lucas was born. It took me five months, but I went from 192 lbs to 165, and OMFG it was hard. I don’t want to work that hard again, but I also don’t want to lose that much – I’m just aiming for 12 lbs, which I thought was reasonable six weeks ago when I started. At the rate I’m going, I’ll be successful — in a year and a half. :\

I know the equation – consume less calories than you burn. Easy peasy, right? Gah. But when I start counting, I start getting obsessive. And also it’s a boatload of time and effort to measure and count everything, and I start getting anxious about what I’m eating and not eating and deserve to eat and should be eating, and I don’t like that road.

So while I’m not ready to go back to the commitment of Dr Bishop’s clinic and the rigours of his plan (which I still have, somewhere – I remember it was 1200 calories a day) I’m thinking of maybe Weight Watchers Online. No meetings, I have neither the time nor interest in weekly meetings. But I know some of you have had great success with WW. I’d happily fork over the $60 for three months if I knew I’d be free of that damn 12 pounds at the end of the three months.

Any thoughts?

Just about a year ago, I bought my Fitbit Zip. What’s a FitBit? A funky little pedometer with its own app and social component. I like the pedometer part, but it’s the stats and bar graphs that I truly love. (Beancounter much?)

So far I’m as impressed with the fact that I’ve stuck with it for a year as I am with the Fitbit itself. My original intent was to spurn myself into moving more often, one of my perennial goals. I am a slothful person by nature and can easily go hours without moving more than my mouse hand and shifting occasionally in my chair. Although there is a social component, I don’t find myself particularly motivated to move more because of any competitive aspect (two of the people in my circle are high achievers in the step department, one training for a marathon and the other found 10K steps per day too easy so she’s aiming for 15K per day) but because I like to count things and I like the little pat on the head I can give myself when I achieve or even approach my daily goal.

On a day at the office, I put in 5,000 to 6,000 steps in fits and starts, and walking the dog is good for another 1500 to 2K – less lately since I hate how slippery the roads are right now. I’m aiming for 10,000 per day, which I reach about once every 10 days or so. Since our house is relatively small – 10 steps to the kitchen and 30 to the bedroom from the living room – I don’t put in a lot of steps if I’m just puttering around the house. Cutting the lawn is good for about 4K, though, and a walk into town is good for 2K, so I’m trying to do that more on my days off. You can also add other activities like folding the laundry, shovelling the driveway or using the rowing machine so you get credit for extra calories burned and “active minutes”. I’m beginning to focus more on the active minutes each day than the steps themselves – Fitbit monitors the intensity of your movements and sets a baseline goal of 30 active minutes per day which I seem to reach most days, so I’m bumping my goal up to 45 minutes for the new year.

It’s interesting to me that I am more accountable to the little hunk of plastic and circuitry in my pocket than I am to myself for the sake of better health. If I am wearing the Fitbit, I will take the stairs or take a circuitous route to my destination, but I am more likely to slack off if I know the steps aren’t being counted. I’m pretty good at remembering to put it into my pocket each day and it has survived at least (ahem, ONLY) three trips through the washing machine.

So what are the results? You can see how my activity has gradually increased during the year, for the most part. (The big gap in the middle is where I misplaced it for about six weeks when it got tucked into a hoodie pocket on a cool day in June and rediscovered it on the next cool day in August, and I’ve had the Fitbit die on me a few times, which accounts for the other significant gaps in the spring and recently, but Fitbit has been awesome about replacing the unit free of charge when I had trouble.)

I’m much more conscious of my daily activity level, which is excellent (as long as I am goosing myself to move to achieve my daily goal.) During a two month stretch in the fall when I was particularly active and reaching my 10K steps a couple times each week, I dropped three pounds – but then the weather crapped out and I kind of ate my progress back in shortbread and Beloved’s chocolate chip cookies over the holidays. The coincidence of holiday baking and icy sidewalks has not been kind to my progress.

It’s a new year, though, and my three main goals for myself (I don’t really favour resolutions) are more veggies, more real (as opposed to pre-packaged) foods, and more walking. Here’s hoping you’ll be seeing less of me by spring. Even if I don’t loose that pesky 10 lbs or so, though, I’ll be healthier and happier because I’m taking care of myself.

Lots of people seem to have picked up a Fitbit over the holidays – ping me if you want a buddy who isn’t training for a marathon or a compulsive long-distance walker!

Edited to add: While this is a spontaneous and un-sponsored post, I just noticed that Rebecca from Playground Confidential has a giveaway starting today for a FitBit Flex, which is one version up from my Fitbit Zip. Check it out!

I mentioned last week that I’ve got a new gadget: a fancy little pedometer called a FitBit. I’ve spent the last week walking around with it tucked in my pocket to get an idea of exactly how many steps I take in an average day, and then I’ll try to figure out a reasonable plan to increase that number, which will lead to weight loss, greater health, whiter teeth, healthier self-esteem, better sex and a cleaner house. Right?!

The funny thing is that I don’t really seem to have an “average” day. One day I walked almost 12k steps when I happened to go to my French class in the morning and decided to walk to pick up the boys from school in the afternoon (both round trips of 2 km or so, or about 3K steps.) On Sunday, however, I walked a measly 3,000 steps during the entire day when I drove out to Kanata and sat through the nearly 3 hour long movie (The Hobbit, which was excellent!) with the boys and then spent nearly two hours playing mom’s taxi in the evening.

I didn’t expect to see that I tend to walk more on days I’m in the office than on days I’m at home. I guess that has everything to do with me walking from the parkade to my office and then walking to Starbucks later in the morning and then walking about looking for photos and lunch and coffee at least one more time during the day. On the days I’m home, getting a coffee requires about 20 steps, but the round-trip to Starbucks from my desk takes closer to 1,000.

Lesson 1: to increase number of steps, I only need to increase number of trips to Starbucks!

Here’s what my “baseline” week looks like:

One thing that shocked me was the vast amount of time that I am completely sedentary. Most days, FitBit tells me, more than 90% of my waking hours are completely sedentary. Ouch! When I move, I tend to move a lot (my daily graphs of activity are filled with long flat-lines broken by towering spikes of movement) but clearly one of the ways to increase my daily step count is to break up the many two-hour stretches in my day when nothing but my fingertips and my synapses are firing.

So now I know that (in winter months, at least) I walk about 6,000 steps each day. If I can boost that up to between 8K and 10K every day, I should be able to burn an extra couple hundred calories – about what you’d find in, say, 20 potato chips.

Baby steps, right? 😉

How do you think your weekly activity levels would stack up to mine?