On The Move

     In my day, women weren’t much into exercise.  We didn’t run or jog or go to jazz dance classes.  (And I have to say that most of us were not overweight, either.)  But now that I am in the elder generation and have many women friends who are of the Baby Boomer era and much younger, I get a lot of encouragement to be ‘more active.’  “Walk,” they say.  So does my doctor – but then she, too, is a Boomer.
     I, of course, resist with all sorts of excuses.  But, for my 75^th, my friend Linda gave me a pedometer!  She knows me well.  I’m not one bit interested in the walking part, but I love seeing how far it is from place-to-place and how many steps I travel in the course of a “normal” day.  I know she is thinking, “Well…it’s a start.”  And maybe it is.
     From the computer in my office where I spend a good portion of each day, it is 51 steps to the kitchen stove where I heat the kettle and make myself a cup of tea or decaf coffee numbers of times a day.  Round trip:  102 steps.  We have a big house.  From the kitchen door to the chicken coop, it is 100 steps.  Round trip:  200 steps.  We also have a big yard.
     So five or six decaf refills and two or three trips out to deal with ‘the girls’ add up.  Then there are the usual household reasons for walking – make the bed, vacuum the carpets, hunt for my cell phone.  Step.  Step.  Step.  Yesterday, I read the instructions for the pedometer, inserted a battery, and hooked it onto my belt at 4:15 in the afternoon.  By 9:30 (bedtime!) I had 3,417 steps!
     According to the diabetes people, you should walk 10,000 steps a day.  According to the heart people, it should be 11,000 steps a day.  Today will be my first full pedometer day, so we will see.  Rounding off by my ‘old math’ method tells me that the steps I measured yesterday afternoon and evening worked out to about 700 per hour.  I think my waking (make that walking) day is usually 16 hours long. So that would be 11,200 steps!
     As I say… we will see!