I've been walking for quite some time now. But up until recently, I didn't know it counted.
OK, smart guy, it's true: Not only have I been walking a while, I've been doing everything a while. Yeah, yeah, laugh it up. But the point is, until recently, I walked just to, you know, get somewhere. Hopefully, quickly and with as little effort as possible.
Now, apparently, I discover I've been doing it all wrong. No, not the walking part. That, I got. However, it seems I've missed a critical step. Or several of them. Because, I haven't been counting them.
It appears I am surrounded by people who are obsessed with recording the number of times they can "left, right, left" during the day. Or, in my case, "left, right, left, left, left (stupid dog), right." Not sure exactly how that counts, but now there are all sorts of devices, from phone apps to "wearable" bands that record forward (and I'm sure backward) progress and could help me find out.
Thanks to my phone, at any point in the day, I can determine exactly how many steps I've walked, total mileage covered, steps by half hour, speed and comparison to previous days. I can also call in a pizza. Let's all guess which function is more important to me.
All of that makes me a little more undercover than the host of folks who may or may not wear their hearts on their sleeves but wear their devotion to heart health on their wrists.
If I were one of those folks, I could proudly wear my monitor, in a rainbow collection of colors, and track all the important aspects of my daily journey toward optimal physical condition. And, since a watch is also involved, how many minutes until Sonic Happy Hour?
Whatever the methodology, the conclusion seems to be the same: By watch, by phone or by the incredibly boring process of actually, physically counting them, we're supposed to get in 10,000 steps a day.
Why the fitness world landed (on the ball of your foot, not the heel, or you'd be "over-pronating") on 10,000 steps was something of a mystery to me until I came across the Fitbit blog (and if you can't trust a blog post about how important it is to record your every step from a company that makes and sells devices to record your every step, well, who can you trust?). According to them (which probably means, according to the intern compelled to write the blog), 10,000 steps equals about five miles of walking.
Now, according to Fitbit/the intern, 10,000 steps a day equals 2,000 to 3,500 calories a week, which equals a pound of weight loss. Which leads me to believe a) cool, and b) there is just way too much math involved in getting fit.
To be honest, the intersection of fitness and arithmetic has always been a part of town I've tried to stay out of. A person who can barely walk and chew gum doesn't really need the added pressure of having to account for his steps, even with a device that will do most of the heavy lifting for me.
Of course, it gets worse, rather than better, as we chase fitness down the math rabbit hole (carefully counting our steps as we go). As a household -- or, as the Lovely Mrs. Smith and I, since no one else appears to be giving up the chocolate chip cookies, dang it! -- we've decided to get in a bit better shape prior to our oldest son's wedding.
This, apparently, has produced an almost Javert-like obsession with rooting out all carbohydrates from our respective diets. Or, specifically one of our diets. As far as the other one of "us" goes, well, I'm pretty sure the hole in the middle of donuts is where the carbs used to be, so, no worries!
Now, going without the snack foods you love is bad enough. But having to scan package labels like you're trying to break the Enigma Code and convert grams to ounces, calories to pounds and convert it all from metric to whatever it is that isn't metric requires a lot more math that I want to put into it.
At some point in the future, I'm sure all this will be worth it. I won't recall the miles I've accumulated walking, literally around and around in circles. The Lovely Mrs. Smith won't remember the carb not taken. And we'll both be so proud as we walk down to our places at the upcoming wedding.
And thanks to our phones, we'll know exactly how many steps it will take.
Commentary on 03/03/2017