Get moving!

Gift offers plenty of insight on personal fitness routine

I’ve always thought of myself as a rather fit person. I ride my bike nearly every day in the warmer months, take regular walks, and I’m a fairly careful eater.

So, when my sister presented me with a Fitbit as a birthday gift, I felt grateful, but also considered it a bit unnecessary. She told me she loved her own Fitbit program, and found it helpful to track her activity levels, calories burned and even time spent sleeping.

While I agreed this might be fun to try, inside I experienced a twinge of superiority. I exercise every day, for goodness sake! I’m not the type of person who needs a watch that tracks my footsteps and prods me to be more active. Right?

Despite having this somewhat elevated view of my personal fitness levels, I decided to set my steps per day goal at only 8,000 — a full 2,000 steps fewer than the recommended 10,000 per day. You know, just in case.

If you’ve never had one of these activity trackers, let me explain how it works. You wrap it around your wrist, connect it to your phone or computer through an app, and fill out certain metrics about your fitness goals.

Almost immediately, it begins nagging you to get active. The thing is like an overly enthusiastic high school gym teacher who scolds you for lazing about on the bleachers or chatting with friends when you should be zipping around the track. If you’ve been sitting too long, it vibrates on your wrist, sending your heart rate soaring with perky digital messages like “It’s step o’clock!” or “Go Go Go!” flashing across the screen.

Okay, I’ve only had my Fitbit for a week, but so far it’s been a journey of selfdiscovery. I’m not as active as I thought I was. If I don’t begin wearing it first thing in the morning so I can track all the rushing around I do getting ready for work, I come nowhere near my sorry little goal of 8,000 steps per day.

What’s worse, it doesn’t seem to assign biking the same value as walking. It recognizes that I’m exercising when I’m on my bike, but it doesn’t really calculate say, 10 miles of biking as equivalent to 10 miles of steps per day — or anywhere near that.

Sure, I can argue that the technology is measuring my movements imperfectly, but I can’t argue with certain facts that are becoming increasingly obvious to me. That is, I spend a lot of time sitting. I am crestfallen to learn that I am not the fit and active person I once believed myself to be

Even more discomfiting is the realization that most of my steps throughout the day are spent in pursuit of food. Walking to the kitchen

to grab a snack, walking around the kitchen to prepare a meal, rushing through the grocery store to pick up food, even going to the garden to pick vegetables.

This shouldn’t really be a revelation to me. I certainly know that I have a desk job that requires me to spend hours on end sitting in front of a computer. I’ve complained about it for years, commiserated with co-workers, and sought out brief lunchtime walks that I felt counteracted the time spent sitting.

Now I know the grim truth: those walks barely amount to 4,000 steps per day.

So, what to do? I’ve decided to institute two important changes in my life that I hope will enable me to develop a more positive attitude toward my rather bossy Fitbit. The first is to take regular short walks throughout the day to increase my daily activity level.

The second is to buy my college age son a Fitbit. He’s home for the summer and spends all his spare time in front of his computer. I’m tired of nagging him myself. Now, I have an ally. And I think it’s even bossier than I am.

Laura Catalano is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in books, magazines and newspapers. She is a frequent contributor to Digital First Media.