Yesterday, I Completed Half A Million Aerobic Steps On My Pedometer

Time for another mini-celebration as I walked and ran past half a million aerobic steps on my pedometer yesterday. I posted earlier about going past half a million total steps on my pedometer. My pedometer also counts aerobic steps (if you walk at more than 60 steps per minute for at least 10 minutes, the steps count as aerobic steps), so I was eagerly waiting for my aerobic steps to hit this milestone.

It has taken me about 45 days to get to this milestone. After my previous post, I did go ahead and make changes to my goals. I left my goal for steps at 15,000 per day, but I changed my goal for aerobic steps per day to 10,000 and raised my aerobic walking time to 90 minutes per day. I also ratcheted up my calories goal to 450 per day and left the fat burn goal at 25 grams per day.

As you can see in the figure to the left, Since that previous post, I have gone past 25,000 steps on a couple of days. On both those days, the number of aerobic steps exceeded 20,000 also. Well, 25,000 aerobic steps is what I should shoot for next, I guess!

Many people at work have wondered how I manage to get so many steps in every day. Even on most bad days, I put in over 15,000 steps. And my best days have had over 25,000 steps in them. The answer, though, is that I do mostly nothing special.

I am an active person most of the time and don't like to spend too much time sitting in a place. But, after I have gotten the pedometer, I have become more conscious of not sitting down for long stretches of time (unless it is necessary). So, I walk around quite frequently. I walk at about 100 steps per minute when I walk at my normal speed of about 3 miles per hour, so every minute that I spend on my feet instead of on my butt translates to 100 extra steps on my pedometer.

And the steps add up fast. Usually I show up at meetings on time, but many other participants at these meetings show up 5 or 10 minutes late. Rather than sitting in the meeting room, I will pace the corridor in front of the meeting room or walk around the meeting room itself. That is 500 to 1000 steps for every meeting I am booked in!

I also take a walk after lunch every day, walking around my office campus at a leisurely pace for about 30 to 45 minutes. That is another 3000 to 4500 steps. I also set aside some time during the work day just to walk around (usually at least one 30-minute block either in the morning or afternoon) for another 3000 or so steps.

At home, I run on the treadmill on alternate days, giving me about 5000 steps on those days. On the other days, I walk on the treadmill if time permits. I used to read in bed before, but nowadays, I read while walking on my treadmill. Each hour spent reading and walking is worth 6000 steps on the pedometer.

The only task I do, that I am forced to do sitting down, is working on my computer. If I can rig it up so that I can work on my laptop while walking on the treadmill, that will probably be worth a few thousand more steps on my pedometer since I can read emails and watch movies while walking. I could probably even write blog posts while walking instead of sitting in my seat like I am doing right now!

Taking ten or fifteen thousand steps per day sounds daunting at first. But once you realize how easy it is to convert sedentary time to walking or running time, you can easily get to 20,000 or more steps on a daily basis too. I am going to keep my goal at 15,000 steps per day for now, but my walking has been trending up ever since I got the pedometer. I can see that goal being 20,000 steps in the future, and if I am conscientious about not wasting opportunities to walk during the day, it should not be difficult to meet or exceed that goal on most days.