New Year's Resolution- get fit, lose weight

Day 20
12,951 steps 


Walking is my new habit. The Top Ten most common resolutions-- always include:

1. Get Fit
2. Lose Weight

For me it was getting a pedometer-- something left behind at my house by my mother. I walked a few feet around my block and saw the pedometer was counting my steps correctly. I was hooked. Then you should self-celebrate. Give yourself credit. The pedometer helps you celebrate-- just by showing you the numbers.  And then you can say to yourself... "I did it. I'm awesome." But most important is to make sure you have actually created a full-fledged new habit. "The number one mistake people make is not going tiny enough."  (B.J. Fogg, Stanford University) Got to make the new habit extremely easy, a goal achieved with almost no effort. How to succeed in walking, or any new habit, is make the change very small-- a Tiny Habit. 

Day 18-- Staying Motivated

Day 18
10,706 steps

I have been obsessed with walking since starting this blog. It has become a fixed idea. Every morning I look at my schedule and wonder if I can add an hour of walking. Today I completed 75 minutes of aerobic walking (8,545 steps), the equivalent of over 4 miles of brisk walking. I am not able to do that every day. I have made an hour of aerobic walking my baseline, my daily goal. That's an obsession, but a healthy one. I get slightly disappointed if my day does not allow for walking--. The pedometer does wonders as a motivational tool. I guess we human beings like statistical feedback as a way to organize our behavior. The knowledge of how far I walk and how long it took--helps me continue with my walking obsession.

Shape Your Walk

Day 16
11,353 steps

Along with the good health benefits of walking, you've got to enjoy your walk. So what's the best way to shape your walk? Jeff Speck, urban designer and author of Walkable City, says we humans are programmed to prefer a "sense of enclosure." We are concerned for safety, from our days as primitive man. We need to see out predators and but also be "protected from attack." I'm not talking about muggers but on some level we still operate from a need for safety. We like to see ahead but we we also want a sense of protection, a kind of outdoor living room. We want the grassland and the edge of the forest. We want the a boundary. Speck calls it the "forest edge."

Ideally you want buildings or houses on your walk and some open space too. I drive to a nearby neighborhood that has more open space than my street. There are actually deer grazing in the fancy residential neighborhood where I walk! But there are also homes forming the boundary line-- a physical enclosure.

I had a bit of mystery today-- the foot of a deer was laying on the ground. Did it get hit by a car? Maybe a hunter left part of a deer in the road? Deer hunting season is a big deal in Texas. That deer foot reminded me of a scene from "Twin Peaks" by filmmaker David Lynch. Spooky!

What causes obesity?

My belief is that the 10,000 steps per day can be a key factor in reversing the obesity epidemic. What causes obesity? This is an important question, of course. I found a good lecture by a medical school professor, Dr. Henry Sanchez from the University of California, San Francisco. He explains the factors leading to overweight and obesity. Dr. Sanchez did this lecture for University of California Television (UCTV). Here is the YouTube link:

Metabolism and Nutrition: The Inside Story of Obesity

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSBBx6ZAciU

Just recently I discovered the importance of working at a brisk pace. My goals now are to take 10,000 steps per day, including one hour of aerobic walking. Today I walked at an aerobic pace for 66 minutes and covered about 4 miles (8,000 steps).  Errands and daily activity easily add several more miles throughout the day. I am able to reach 5 miles (10,000) steps as my baseline for good health, including a good amount of aerobic activity-- and hopefully some weight loss.

Here are my stats for the last four days of pedometer work.

date        steps         distance         aerobic steps   aerobic time     steps per min.
Dec. 3      4,449        2.10 mile        4,152               38 minutes        109.3
Dec. 4      9,898        4.68 mile        8,453               82                      103.1
Dec. 7      9,836        4.61 mile        7,312               64                      114.3
Dec. 8    10,147        5.12 mile        7,910               66                      120    

As you can see, I did pick up the pace!

Pick up the Pace!

Day 14
9898 steps

Glanced at the New York Times a minute ago and check this out-- the front page of the web edition of the paper has a Health article entitled "Why A Brisk Walk is Better." The article reviews a research project done with the National Health Walkers Association.  We walkers are becoming newsworthy.

You can read the Times article here:
<http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/04/why-a-brisk-walk-is-better/?_r=0>

and the actual research paper can be found at this link:
<http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0081098>

I have to admit the article scared me a bit. I did 9898 steps today. However, my walking speed turns out not to be so good. The time I spend on aerobic walking was 82 minutes. I completed 8,453 steps. I divided my steps by the time (8453/82). I walk 103 steps per minute, about six miles per hour. I averaged 20 minutes per mile. The research shows a 20 minute mile ain't very fast. And women walk faster than men. And thinner people walk faster too.

The study recommends a brisker pace. How important is that? The people who walked slower kicked off earlier in life than their fast-walking colleagues! Are you motivated now...?  Okay. Didn't want to depress or alarm anybody, especially myself. We are on the right track. Just need to move around the track a bit faster. Pick up the pace.  With repetition and consistency, everything moves better, your get a better rhythm, stamina improves and you feel stronger.

Day 11... More Than Before

Day 11
9757 steps

Manpo-kei is the Japanese health slogan meaning "10,000 steps meter." Dr. Yoshiro Hatano, the Japanese researcher, recognized 10,000 steps as a good goal for a healthy lifestyle back in the 1960s. This coincided with the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and a greater interest in fitness and the invention of the pedometer. The concept of 10,000 steps has made its way to the West and is now recommended by Dr. Oz and others for increased fitness!

Very excited about my new Omron HJ-112 pedometer: it counts all kinds of things... calories burned, steps taken, and distance traveled in miles. The coolest thing is it tells you the number of steps you have taken at a brisk pace, called aerobic steps. Those are achieved by:

• Walking more than 60 steps per minute
• Continuously walking for more than 10 minutes

The brisk walking portion of my day came to 7764 steps and took me 75 minutes-- so I burned some calories, 497 to be exact. Hey, I'm becoming a pedometer nerd!

Catrine Tudor-Locke, author of Manpo-Kei: The Art and Science of Step Counting, uses the term More Than Before for achieving your goals.  You set a Baseline Level and try to go beyond by reaching your Step Goal. I'm calling 6,000 steps my Baseline Level, about 3 miles per day. I achieved a good goal today with almost 10,000 steps, close to 5 miles. I did More Than Before... for sure.

On my walk I saw a guy getting ready to launch his own personal Drone-- a quadcopter. He had a camera attached and said the drone can do aerial photography. He's had the device for several months. It took off and in a few seconds was a couple of hundred feet in the air. Prepare yourself, consumer drones are here and your neighbors may already be snooping around your backyard.