Tag: pedometers

Back in February, we thought it would be helpful to get an idea of just how much physical activity we were getting on a daily basis at work and at home.  As of this weekend, I completed 6 months of data collection and figure I can stop wearing a pedometer for awhile.

As a reminder, most literature suggests you try to get to 10,000 steps/day, which is approximately 5 mi of walking.  We were able to achieve that on some days, but generally speaking, we were below that on average.  Still, part of the reason to do this in the first place is to know just how much walking you’re doing and whether you’re even close to where you “should” be.

I should note that Brooke wore hers through mid-June and then switched off to an Android app that allows you to keep track of calorie intake.  Between March and mid-June, her average number of steps was 6,388.7 each day.  These charts only reflect data collected on me (my “global” average for the 6 months was 7,078.7 steps/day).

I separated out the data by month to help paint a clear picture of where that “7,078.7” comes from.  You’ll see that my activity level was a little less in the colder months of the year, while activity increased during the warmer months of the year.  I haven’t subdivided it all out, but my activity on weekends varied widely, where some days I’d be lucky to hit 4000 steps (yay, couch and TV days!) and others I’d clear 12,000 steps (mowing, working outside, going to the park, etc).

Case-in-point, my “most active” day was August 24th, with 15,631 steps.  On that day, we were in Minnesota and visited the Mall of America…twice.

Overall, I’m glad the data suggest that I’m “trending upwards” on my walking each month, though I’m sure it will just go down again as it gets colder.  My monthly average is probably accurate for a given year.  While 10,000 steps/day is ideal, I can’t say I’m all that disappointed with 7,000 steps/day as a daily average.

Though, it would have been interesting to wear a pedometer back when I was spending 2 hrs each week mowing the lawn up in Iowa…

Note: We were pretty busy last month with a variety of things, so sorry we haven’t posted anything since, uh, early September!  Got more on the way. 🙂

In an effort to try to monitor our physical fitness (or lack thereof), we opted to get a few pedometers so, at the very least, we know how much walking we’re doing every day.  The goal is 10,000 steps in a day, which is, on average, around 5 mi.  On our first day, you can see we didn’t quite hit that…

Part of the issue I’m having is in placement of the pedometer.  It comes with a ~4 in strap with a clip on the end, so it’s easy to put in different places.  These particular pedometers operate on two axes, so you can’t just leave it in your backpack or purse: you have to have it in a vertical position, not horizontal.  As such, on the first day, I put the pedometer in the small change pocket of my corduroy pants.  The second day, I put it in the change pocket of my slacks, however that pocket is down inside the main pocket, not up higher on the hip.  On that day, I recorded over 10,000 steps, though I don’t think I really doubled my steps over the previous day.  On Friday, I tried clipping it to my belt and having it hang into my left pocket and I was back down to around 5,000 steps again.

My guess is that the constant motion of my legs, due to over a decade of drumming, could affect the pedometer, but I probably won’t know that until further data comes in.  These pedometers save 7 days worth of data, but I’m recording it in a Google Docs file so we get a more “visual” interpretation of our progress.

Today, I’m wearing a dress shirt, so I have the pedometer clipped up on my torso, hanging down underneath my shirt.  This is the last position for a pedometer I can think of, and probably isn’t all that good of one, as your torso tends to stay more “stable” and feel less movement than your legs do.  That’s what a few years of marching percussion leads to, at least…

Anyway, I’ll probably post from time to time on this.  It’s my first time trying to use a pedometer.  Brooke used one after we first got married but stopped using it.  We figure that if both of us are using one, it’s easier to hold each other accountable, at least to some degree.

Still, it’d be nice if there were a GPS and Wifi-enabled one that could upload the data to some remote server once a day.  Sure, I could use my phone for this purpose, but it’s quite a bit bigger than these pedometers, and most people don’t want to clip a phone to their bodies… 😛