If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
On Wednesday, I wrote about what motivates me to get out of the house and head for the gym. It seems that J.D. and I have done enough trash talking via email and IM to sufficiently motivate both of us for a while–at least in terms of exercising.
I recently read this article about pedometers–you know those things you clip to your belt that count your steps? J.D. has been an advocate for them for a while. When we opened our business checking account, the local branch of the bank gave us each one. I promptly left mine at J.D.’s house, but according to the article, maybe I shouldn’t have. Here’s why:
Pedometer users increased their physical activity by 26.9 percent,” noted lead researcher Dr. Dena Bravata and colleagues at California’s Stanford University in the study…Our results suggest that the use of these small, relatively inexpensive devices is associated with significant increases in physical activity and improvements in some key health outcomes, at least in the short term.
Some highlights from the article include:
- People who use a pedometer average 2190 more steps/day than people who don’t–for most people, that’s about an extra mile of walking per day.
- Using a pedometer increases your physical activity and decreases your BMI.
- Pedometer users decreases their baseline systolic blood pressure by 4 mmHg–a reduction of 2 mm Hg is associated with a 10% reduction in stroke deaths and a 7% reduction in the occurrence of death from vascular diseases in middle aged people.
By now, we all know that J.D. is my “pedometer.” What’s yours?
J.D.
11 responses so far ↓
1 Amber // Apr 25, 2008 at 7:38 am
My “pedometer” is my clothes. I recently bought 2 new suits that fit perfectly and that were expensive. If I gain weight, I will have wasted a lot of money. Also, I just love the way exercise feels!
On a side note, how do they know that people who wear pedometers take an average of 2190 more steps than those who don’t, when the second group isn’t wearing a pedometer?!
I mean, I know that having a little gizmo like that motivates people (my heart rate monitor often does the same kind of thing for me during a workout), but I often wonder how some studies come up with numbers like that.
2 Lee // Apr 25, 2008 at 7:41 am
Once I’m on the couch, pretty much nothing. But in general I find that committing to exercise/workout times during my day keeps me motivated. I use to skip going to the gym all the time until I actually booked my gym time on my calendar, so nobody could book a meeting or assume that I’m free for that hour.
Also I’ve found somebody to go to the gym with, so if either of us says we aren’t going or can’t go, we give each other a really hard time about it. On that idea of accountability, I found that tracking all of my progress on a spreadsheet so that I could see hard results over time was also really motivating. I track my weight, body fat %, how much weight I’m lifting at the gym, etc. And of course I add nice colorful charts in there - who doesn’t like charts?
On the flip side, I still have difficulty with my morning cardio workouts. My elliptical trainer is in the next bedroom over yet half the time I can’t pull myself out of bed to hop on it. One trick I’ve tried with varying success is to use my regular alarm clock as my first alarm, then set my alarm on my BlackBerry and leave it on the dresser so I have to get up to turn it off. I wish I was a morning person!
I did wear a pedometer for a week just out of curiosity to see how much I was moving around, but I didn’t find that it made me walk around more, but that is a really interesting psychological side-affect!
3 monica // Apr 25, 2008 at 8:23 am
To keep me going, I set my sights on something in the future like a 5k race or a cycling holiday. I haven’t been cycling much these days, but I’m thinking of signing up for a triathlon to get me motivated. Trouble is I’m also really scared by the prospect. Not sure if I’m ready for a triathlon just yet!
4 Red // Apr 25, 2008 at 8:48 am
A beer gets me off the couch.
Besides that, it’s been my dog recently. I have to walk her, which has been great motivation to actually get off my ass.
5 Jill // Apr 25, 2008 at 8:52 am
Watching The Biggest Loser and individual sports events (track & field, swimming, cycling, etc.) motivates me. When I’m on the treadmill, I find it feels easier if I’m watching a sporting event, even if it’s a team sport like hockey. Just working on the “self talk” and telling myself it’s not getting any better by sitting around not doing anything and coming up with excuses to not get out the door. If I just stop *thinking* about it and just do it, it’s much easier.
6 J.D. // Apr 25, 2008 at 9:35 am
I’ve never figured out what gets me moving.
In 1997, it was seeing “200″ on the scales for the first time. I didn’t stop until I saw “158″. But then I stopped. (Almost as mysterious as what gets us moving is what stops us again. It’s all mental inertia.)
Over the past ten years, I’ve talked extensively about this subject with my brother Jeff and my cousin Nick, both of whom have also experienced periods of weight loss and fitness only to return to the world of fat. We all know what we should be doing, but often we just can’t do it. I wonder if some that doesn’t have to do with family baggage.
For example, when Nick briefly quit working at the box factory, he lost a TON of weight, and even began dating again. When he came back to the box factory, he gained that weight.
I left the box factory on March 6th of this year. Since then, I’ve lost eight pounds and exercised nearly every day. Co-incidence? Perhaps. Perhaps not.
I think the fact that I hated the job (despite the fact that I like my family, with which I worked) played a huge role in my poor choices. I think happiness and positive attitude also play a big role.
This is all just a long way of saying, “I don’t know what makes me get off the couch, and I wish I did.”
7 MizFit // Apr 25, 2008 at 9:49 am
mine is simple.
being 39 with a 2 year old.
8 greenman2001 // Apr 25, 2008 at 12:29 pm
You can check with Pam, but I believe the AMA has been sponsoring a project called “10,000 Steps.” It’s an effort to get doctors to encourage their patients to buy and wear pedometers and walk 10,000 steps a day — I think that’s 4 miles. Lots and lots of studies have shown that 1 hour of walking a day is the ideal amount of exercise — you can cover about 4 miles in an hour of brisk walking. What’s shocking is how little walking most people do. Wearing a pedometer is another example — in the getrichslowly vein — of how simply paying attention to your behavior can motivate you to change your habits.
Mac, I don’t know if you’ve started subscribing to Nutrition Action Healthletter, but in the latest (April) issue, they have a fascinating article called “Chair Today, Gone Tomorrow” which comes at the couch issue from a different angle. It examines the work of an endocrinologist named James Levine who teaches medicine at the Mayo Clinic. Levine’s approach is to not demand that people ADD exercise in the gym to their already-full schedules. Instead, he advocates bringing exercise to the very environment which is causing the problem in the first place: the office. He argues in favor of people having treadmills at their desk (and has developed a super-quiet treadmill/workstation for $6,500 called the Walkstation http://www.details-worktools.com) so that people can answer the phone while walking on the treadmill. He advocates having “walking meetings” instead of people sitting around a conference table. You want 10,000 steps? This is an easy way to get them without taking 2 hours out of your day to go to the gym.
I love this approach: it’s about removing obstacles to fitness instead of adding more obligations to one’s life. It takes willpower out of the equation. Don’t want to get up off the couch? No problem. You’re going to get your workout at work — maybe even while blogging.
9 brad // Apr 25, 2008 at 1:04 pm
I’ve seen a news story on that treadmill workstation, and I so want it! But maybe not for $6,500. You walk pretty slowly while using it, but at least you’re moving. I’ve noticed that virtually everything I do involves sitting: my work keeps me sitting at my desk for anywhere from 8-16 hours a day, and my two chosen forms of exercise (biking and rowing) both involve sitting. And I spend a lot of time playing music, also done sitting down. So a treadmill workstation appeals to me.
Getting back to the subject of the post, two things motivate me:
1. routine: I’ve been biking every morning for an hour this week, which is my usual spring-summer-fall routine, and today I didn’t have time and boy did I miss it! It’s amazing how quickly I fall into a routine once I make myself do it for a few days.
2. peer pressure and competition: I joined an online virtual rowing team and enter my times and meters rowed. That helps me set weekly and monthly goals.
10 Toby // Apr 25, 2008 at 7:38 pm
I’ve worn a pedometer for about 5 years now. It helps motivate me to get up for little jobs like putting something away just to “get my steps.” It’s almost my bedtime now, and, let me check, my pedometer shows 16, 482 today. I won’t go to bed with less than 10K and today I hit the jackpot because my son had batting practice so I could walk the track for awhile.
11 greenman2001 // Apr 26, 2008 at 4:59 am
I’d like to revise my earlier post: If the avg stride is 2.5 feet, 10,000 steps is about 5 miles. A brisk walking pace is 3.5 miles per hour, so 10,000 steps requires about 1 1/2 hrs of walking if you were to do it in one shot.
Mac, in an earlier post you asked me how I was calculating the calorie expenditure of your workout at the gym, for which I assumed you were burning about 300 calories. In the course of looking into the 10,000 steps phenomenon, I came across this link:
http://www.lipid.org/clinical/tlc/1000002.php
This indicates that a 154 lb person burns about 107 calories per mile running. So JD can undo the effects of his 2 mile run by drinking a cup and half of sweetened iced tea afterward.
Leave a Comment