High mileage
Bernard Jacks
August 1, 2008
What's not to love about exercise?
Medical experts say that people should exercise for the sake of physical fitness and to help prevent ‘Diseases of Affluence,' like heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and obesity. (Note that the initials of this group of diseases, DoA, also work for Dead on Arrival.) A certain level of fitness also ensures that I will be in shape to stay on the dance floor at cousin Ruthie's wedding next month for at least 10 minutes of intense "Hava Negila".
To establish a satisfactory level of fitness, the exercise establishment says a person needs to work out three times a week at medium intensity for 20 minutes. No problem here -- I already go to a gym three days a week and work out for an hour. But am I working at "medium" intensity?
Some experts maintain that I can get the same benefit from 30 minutes of light exercise five times a week. Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control says I need the same five rounds of 30 minutes, but of moderate exercise. What's a fitness-seeker to do? How do I define light, medium, and moderate? How best to avoid those "Diseases of Affluence"?
My answer came in the form of a more recent prescription for healthy living: walk 10,000 steps every day!
Now, I don't get to count to think about the number 10,000 very often, especially involving trips to the bank, but I was relieved to have an unambiguous prescription for fitness. No nonsense here. No light, no moderate, no medium; no three times or five times. Just 10,000 steps. How hard could that be? I figured I did that already just going about a typical day's business.
The next morning, as a test, I counted the steps from bedside to bathroom. Seven. Then I tried counting from the bedroom closet -- to get my bathrobe -- down the stairs, then outside to fetch the paper from the bottom of the driveway, and back to the kitchen (cutting through the dining room). Ninety-five steps, if I didn't double-count when I lost my place at 50-something because I was interrupted with a request for blueberry pancakes. Should I include the stairs? Clearly, I needed an impartial and focused measurement tool: a reliable pedometer.
Searching on the Internet, I found one that not only counts steps, but also distance walked and calories expended. Perfect. Before it could be put into action, however, some simple calibration was required to tell it the length of my normal stride so it can calculate the distance I walk. After a few repetitions of 10-pace marches through the house, Craftsman tape measure in hand, I determined my stride to be 2.3 feet. Coincidentally, this works out to about 2,300 steps to the mile, or, should it ever come up in conversation, seven million steps from my front door in
First thing the next morning, I clipped the pedometer to my belt and stepped out on my daily rounds. After wearing it just two days, here is what I learned:
Ten thousand steps is a lot of steps!
I averaged only about 2,500 a day. My salvation would be my three-times-a-week visit to the gym. That includes 30 minutes of strength training, currently concentrating on being able to help hoist the chair with Ruthie the bride on it, then her husband, oy. My step-counting hope was that my usual 30 minutes on the treadmill would do the trick. Surely, loping along on a moving belt at three miles an hour for 30 minutes should put me over the top of 10,000 steps.
You'd think.
Actually, it only added about 3,000 steps to my normal daily achievement. A total, including the gym, of only 5,500, less than two-and-a-half miles during all my waking and walking hours. In order to reach 10,000 steps, and hopefully avoid those DoA's, I would have to walk an additional two miles on gym days or over three miles on non-gym days just hiking around the neighborhood in the hot sun.
That's not likely to happen. But -- don't tell the fitness experts -- I have a plan. To get to 10,000, I could cover the same ground I do now, but take really tiny steps.
Bernard Jacks lives in Marlboro.