Jumping, I mean, Walking On The Band Wagon

Back in the spring, I had to jump into the Fit Bit craze.  I'd seen friends at church and work wear them, faithfully counting their daily steps, so I wanted to be a part of the craze, too.  I ordered my Fit Bit, and it only took me two days to realize that the steps that it records doesn't exactly represent the actual steps you take.  You wear the activity counter on your wrist, so not only does it count when you walk (it detects the motion of your arms that you move when you walk), every time you move your arm it counts as a step.  With people that work on a computer or use their hands a lot, that means they are really racking up the step count.  

Last week, I got out my digital pedometer, put in a new battery and set up my stride length, and I'm off and running.  This gives me a true walking distance count, along with the number of actual steps I've taken.  Old school is sometimes better than new school.

Tonight I decided I was going to measure the distance that my Sweet Mother has been walking almost every day for the past ten years - around the full perimeter of The Compound.  I made one round in the cold, and came in and as I was pulling the pedometer off of my pants waistband, I squeezed a bit too hard and set it back to zero.  I put my coat back on and made another round, only to have the same thing happen.  I blamed it on my sweat pants - they are too long, and I had rolled the waist band over a few times to shorten the legs on the pants, and I think that the extra thick waistband on my pants is what made the pedometer go to zero.  So tomorrow as soon as I get home from work, I'm going to make another trip around The Compound and find out the distance. 

Anyhoo, the moral of this story is that I am doing my daily walking again and I love it.  I'm glad that with my job, I am able to do a lot of walking during the work day - mainly, by walking out to the factory to talk face-to-face with supervisors instead of calling them on the phone.  That's my goal for this week.

As always, I'll keep you posted.