walk 10,000 steps a day

...was 11303. This party is gonna be the death of me. I’m over 5000 already today, and it’s Sunday. My Sunday totals are usually around 3500.

10:34 pm Update—9498 on the counter and I still have a pie in the oven. Will almost certainly go over 10000 before I get to go to bed.

The best comment on how hard I’ve been working on this crazy house? The husband and I decided to go out to dinner tonight to avoid expending any non-party-related energy cooking and cleaning. While waiting for our meal, he asked for my “brain” (my PDA, a Tungsten E named Dory after the forgetful fish in Finding Nemo) to play Bejeweled. The battery was dead. Totally dead. So dead that I had to tell it what year it is and reload all of my add-on progams. Good thing I don’t have any virtual pets!

for our Fourth of July party, and so have had quite respectable totals for the last few days:

yesterday—8534

Thursday—7798

Wednesday—10529

Tuesday—8907

Monday—11569

I’m at 7503 so far today, and it is not quite 5pm.

I remembered to put it back in its spot last night. It is clipped to my jeans and ready to go.

For the past few days, I’ve been forgetting to even put my pedometer on in the morning. I didn’t put it in its usual spot one night, and haven’t retrieved it.

For the several days before that, I was hitting between 4500 and 5000. Not nearly the number I was getting while making an extreme effort to increase steps, but not nearly as low as earlier in the summer when I was sitting at the computer most of the day.

Memo to me—before bed tonight, put the pedometer back in its spot!

Total for the day—7076

Was well on track until late afternoon. Then the evening was spent at a fairly physically inactive social event with an hour’s drive there and back.

This morning after posting yesterday’s total, I wondered if there might be a fairly easy way of pacing myself through the day, checking my steps periodically and getting some sense of whether I’m on track for the day or not.

I counted up and found that on an average day I’m awake for about 15 hours. Ten thousand steps a day divided by fifteen hours of waking time is about 667 steps an hour. From there I created a time chart and stuck it in my PDA holder.

Now I can look at my pedometer at 2:18 pm (or whenever), look at my list, compare, and see if I need to step up the activity or not.

So far for the day, I’m well on track with 5430 steps. I balanced the two hours waiting for the brakes with an hour walking around the local megastore while pictures were being developed.

My evening will be spent in class though, so my total for the day may not go a lot higher.

Update: As I head for bed at 10:47, I’m at 7716. Getting there! May try maintaining at around 7500 a day for a while to give my poor sedentary body time to adjust.

I ended the day yesterday at 6477, a much more respectable number. I did a couple of errands (nothing terribly significant), but most of that increase came from being aware that I hadn’t been moving enough here in the house. I tend to have a movie on in the background all day, so did a mini exercise session whenever there was a scene with peppy music.

I have to spend part of the morning this morning waiting for my husband’s vehicle to get new brakes. I’ll have to figure out how to make up for that block of inactive time later in the day.

I’m writing this on the 8th, but it is actually for yesterday. We had a storm here last night, and I had to shut the computer down before I reported in on this goal.

I did a little bit better on the step count than on the 6th, thanks mostly to a trip to the grocery store. I ended the day at 4082, still low compared to my usual. I can see that I’m going to have to put some “official” exercise into my schedule this summer if I’m going to avoid regaining the 15 pounds that I lost this past school year. I’m teaching some night classes this summer, but the activity level just isn’t the same as being at work all day every day.

Ok, so I’ve been a TOTAL slug today. It is nearly bedtime, and I’m only at 3171 steps. Most days I’m at around 5000—halfway to the goal.