Getting Fit

A few days ago, when I went into the Sprint store for another purpose, I saw a fitness bracelet (I think it's the iFit) at a really good price. I had already figured out that Weight Watchers alone wasn't going to get my weight down enough on its own, or get me where I want to be fitness-wise. So I bought the bracelet. It's not the super-fancy one; it counts steps and syncs with my phone to track calories burned. Of course, as soon as I signed up to sync it, I was encouraged to upgrade for additional features. I don't care about those. I just want to make sure I'm moving enough. I did set the notifications to remind me to get off my ass after an hour. I'm happy to say it buzzed only once today, so maybe I get up more than I had thought.

If not for my son, the bracelet would have sat around for another day or more, but early this morning he asked if I wanted to go for a walk. The weather has been very hot midday with only slightly lower temperatures at night, but the morning air was pleasant enough, so we went for a long walk. I was suprised to see that our walk through the neighborhood ended up being two miles long and over four thousand steps. Throughout the rest of the day I've gotten in only another two or three hundred. If I plan to meet the ten-thousand-step threshhold, I'm going to need to step up my game. For today, though, I was mainly interested in how many steps I take in an ordinary day. Unfortunately, it's not many. (My typical day of late hasn't included a two-mile walk.) Now that I know, I can kick it up.

We -- my son and I -- had a nice time on our walk. I still have a few days to enjoy walking with him, and after that I plan to continue. In fact, if I want to meet the threshhold, and I do, I'll probably take a morning walk and an evening walk. Especially if I'm not teaching -- and I don't have any classes scheduled yet -- I need to work hard to get those steps in. I'm going for it; no point in waiting for the new year.