Steps….and More Steps

It takes steps…and more steps to transition from a mainly sedentary to an active life style. Yes - some cardio workout is required too but if you haven’t increased your overall level of activity yet- focusing on ramping up the number of steps is a better place to start along a path toward improved physical fitness and healthier life style. That’s what this post is about. Think about making the transition by integrating more activity into the way you live every day.

Wearing a pedometer is a good first step. It provides a metric that can be used in setting goals; having a measurable goal that aligns with the ultimate objective (of becoming more active) is a motivator for many people. 7,000 steps a day was my initial goal. Now, my goal is 12,000. You’ll figure out pretty quickly that grocery shopping takes more steps than gardening; vacuuming takes more steps that cleaning a bath tub. Gardening or cleaning a bathtub are still good activities in your plan to integrate more physical activity into your daily routine, they just won’t count as very many steps.

Graduating from a simple pedometer to something like a Fitbit  means the level of activity can be tracked throughout the day. I wanted to reduce the length of sedentary blocks of time and the Fitbit has graphs the show the steps all through the day. Airplane or car travels are about the only time when I have prolonged sedentary times any more. Moving - even for just a few minutes - every 30-60 minutes makes a positive improvement in how well I feel at the end of the day.

Making previously sedentary times into active ones is a good strategy. Almost all my reading and talking on the phone is done while pacing, bouncing on my Swopper , walking on a treadmill or bouncing on an exercise ball. I don’t watch much television but the same activities could be used then too.

Taking the stairs rather that the elevator. If there are multiple flights of stairs this could be the bridge to a cardio regime - but here I’m mainly talking about the one floor at a time. The current Fitbit  measures ‘floors climbed’ to provide a metric. If there are stairs in your house - the initial goal of 10 per day may be quite easy.

Becoming more active happens with steps....and then more steps....and never going back to the sedentary ways of yesterday.

Gleanings of the Week Ending January 21, 2012

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles I read this past week:

Office Workers Spend Too Much Time at Their Desks - A study that provides some numbers to what we intuitively know. This is why I try to get up at least once an hour and have a Black Swopper Chair  chair at my desk!

Fill in the gaps--bird the road less traveled this January - hmmm...there is a county near me that is white (a city…so this would be birding in parks) surrounded my dark gray. Maybe I should plan an outing to look for birds and complete an eBird checklist. They promise maps for February around the 1st of the month so this could be an outing for next month too.

Sewer Mining - reusing wastewater in a decentralized, small scale way; example projects from around the world

The Parrot Trade - Lots of pictures of parrots included chicks/juveniles…and the disturbing wild-caught trade that persists

49 ways to save water - The ongoing drought in many parts of the US and other parts of the world prompts us to take a harder look at how we, as individuals, use water

What is your state good at - Map of the US with graphics associated with each state. Text follows to explain what it means

Photosynthesis Fuel Company Gets a Large Investment - plant being built near Leander, TX. The goal is to produce 20,000 gallons of ethanol per acre per year rather than the 2,000-3,000 gallons per acre achieved with cellulosic fuels such as grass and wood chips.

How Coffee Changed America - an infographic with the history (you’ll have to click on it and enlarge to read the text) followed by a write up on modern issues surrounding coffee

Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week - from the Wild Bird Trust of South Africa…and there should be more in the weeks to come

Video of recent Solar Flare - colorful close up from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory

Making origami paper cubes - This has a video made by two girls to show exactly how it’s done.