I've got friends in high places

I think I mentioned in the post about walking, pedometers and 10,000 steps that 12,500 is considered "very active," according to some "they" out there (I linked to a medical journal article, so that's who "they" are. I'm just too lazy to look).

So, with the fitbit, there's a whole "community" section, with message boards and people making "friends." You can compete with them on your personal page; it displays a leaderboard to show you how you're stacking up with the people you've "friended." So after having the thing for a month, I decided to give it a go. I added a few people who were new and seeking friends. No matter how many people I added, though, I still was #1 on my leaderboard.

I decided I needed a little competition, so I made a special request in the forums for "very active" people. People who get at least 10k steps a day. And the friend requests started to trickle in. At first it was still people who weren't beating me on the leaderboards, and then the heavy hitters started to show up. Some of these people AVERAGE 20k a day (10 miles!!!) Two of them AVERAGE 25-30k per day. Ummmm......

Wow. And what's more, some of these people are older than me. By more than just a little. So last night that got me on the trampoline--oh! I forgot to mention I got a mini trampoline and it's awesome. I can now jump around like a rabid hyena for hours while watching trashy television and not feel too guilty! Okay, where was I? Yes, that got me on the trampoline and putting in more than just my usual 12.5k steps. Last night I cleared 20k, and tonight, I cranked out a total of 25k for the day. Which is beyond awesome.

So, I'd like to thank all the awesomely fit strangers who are now my friends and competitors on fitbit. I'd also like to acknowledge that the fitbit has tapped into some kind of OCD, and made it so I'm constantly thinking about how I can fit (hehe) more walking (or leaping majestically, like a unicorn on my trampoline!) into my life.

Hooray for OCD! Hooray for psychotically athletic old people!

Being less sedentary

Fitbit gives you lovely pie charts (mmmm, pie!) that describe how much of your day was spent being sedentary and how much was spent being active. I think this is one of the more useful metrics that fitbit provides. Someone on one of the message boards said they like to keep their chart at less than half sedentary. I think this is an awesome goal. I don't think it's so unrealistic to say that for half of my waking hours, I should be doing something other than sitting.

I do have my days (last Thursday and Friday!) where I am sedentary for more than half of my waking hours. But most of my weekdays look like this:

And I try to have my weekend days look a little more like this: 

To be fair, if you count up the hours on the weekend one, you'll see that I was only awake for like 12 hours. That's because I slept a ton! But when I was awake, I was mostly doing stuff. Hooray for doing stuff! Yesterday (which is where that chart's from) had a lot of walking in it and a trip to the gym for an upper body workout. Today had hiking and later will have bowling. Tomorrow will have the gym, walking and a trip to the driving range. So hopefully that will go a long way toward keeping the gray out of that pie!