Achievements!

I think I mentioned before that Fitbit gives you badges for different achievements. Previously, my best ones were 50 flights of stairs and 20,000 steps.

So, yesterday I'm out walking. My favorite local parks is hilly and has a ton of trails. The longest trail takes more than 2 hours, but you can stay in there forever, by looping around, or picking up new trails. When I first started out, I got to around 4000 steps, and was like, "This sucks. I don't feel so great. I want to go home!" I think I ate breakfast too late and just felt weak and crappy. I noticed that I had also done the equivalent of 11 flights of stairs. 

I figured if I got to 10k steps, I'd leave. By the time I got to 10k, I felt better, and kept going. When I got closer to 20k, I was ready to cash it in, but then I noticed that I had logged 77 flights of stairs. So of course I had to keep going until 100. When I had 100 flights, I also had 25k steps. Woo hoo! Click below to see my fabulous badges!

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!

For future reference

Dear future self,

Today was full of excuses. It was one of the coldest days it's been so far (33 degrees/22 with the wind chill factor). You had female "stuff" going on and felt kind of meh. There was some bad news, and lots of family is arriving unexpectedly this weekend. You had every reason in the world to stay home, watch some TV and just relax. 

And yet, you didn't. You got dressed in many layers. You put on your sneakers. You ran an errand (stupid post office!) You got a cup of coffee. And you went to the park. And you walked. At first you were like, "Dude, it's cold out here. Just walk a couple miles and cash it in. You can do some more at the gym." But after a while you opened the handwarmers you bought at CVS and just kept walking. Your face was cold and after a while you couldn't feel your butt anymore, but you kept walking. Soon you got to over 7 miles. And you kept walking. Finally at 10 miles, you stopped. After all, you promised yourself you'd go to the gym and work your arms. 

At the gym you worked out hard, lifting more weight than you have so far. You pushed yourself harder than you thought you could. 

And then you came home. You needed to go shopping for something to make for dinner. You strapped on your backpack and you walked some more. First, a mile back to CVS to get more of those handwarmers. That's an awesome way to get rid of the "it's too cold!" excuse. Then a half a mile back to Acme for food. And a half mile back home, carrying 20 pounds of groceries. All told, including miscellaneous walking around the house and stores, you walked 26,976 steps today. Or nearly 13 and a half miles. Plus the gym. 

Then you came home and cooked 8 servings of breakfast and 8 servings of lunch/dinner and scrubbed the bathtub. 

Basically, self, you rocked it the eff out. And you didn't let excuses get in the way. Remember this next time it's too cold/hot/rainy, or you're too tired/sore/depressed/stressed out. 

Love, 

Yourself

PS, since you did such an excellent job of everything else, we'll try to forgive the fact that the Christmas tree is still up and you're still wearing yesterday's clothes. 

Baby steps. 

27,976 of them.