Following on from yesterday, I've also ordered a pedometer.
The idea with these little machines is that they count the number of steps you take. This is important because apparently, if you want to maintain an active lifestyle, you need to do about 10,000 steps a day.
This apparently works out to be about 5 miles a day, but it does include all the steps you take. So things like walking to the bathroom or walking out to the car are also included in those steps - it's not just steps of "deliberate" exercise.
Anyway, the point is that I'm pretty sure I must do less than a thousand steps. I'd be amazed if I'm walking a mile just bimbling around like I normally do. I've therefore ordered the pedometer to see just how far I'm actually walking.
I've heard that some of them aren't very accurate, but I guess even if it isn't accurate it'll be consistently inaccurate, if that makes sense. In other words, if it's always 10% off then it will still allow me to track increases, I just won't know the exact amount of the increase.
The reason I'm focused on walking is that it's apparently one of the best exercises you can do. It's relatively low impact, both in the sense that you're not subjecting your body to lots of physical impacts and also you're not making your heart work too hard. It's still a fairly reasonable cardiovascular workout though and is apparently very good for lowering things like pulse rate and blood pressure.
Also, apparently, your leg and bum muscles are some of the biggest in the body, which means that it's a good way to burn calories, rather than simply increase muscle mass like some exercises are intended to. By this measure, that apparently means cycling and running are also very good - probably cycling is the best given that it can be high activity without the thumping impact of running, but then I'd need a bike and I don't have one, plus cycling on the roads is something that pretty much fills me with abject terror.
However, with walking I also quite like the idea that it doesn't look like I'm exercising. Having a profundity of very wobbly bits, one of the things that I find off-putting about most exercise is that people will stare at me.
If I'm simply going for a walk I'm doing an every day thing and am just going somewhere, so people won't stare too much. Well, they always stare when you're as fat as I am, but they won't stare more, if you see what I mean.
Was that all convincing?
I'm hoping that by reminding myself of this sort of stuff regularly it'll stop me from giving up like I usually do.
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