10,000 Steps Challenge – A Followup

Two months or so ago I invited you to join me in a 10,000 steps a day challenge. As promised, this is my followup post to let you know how I am doing and to find out how YOU are doing. I have had some success for the last 60 days, with an emphasis on the some part. I have also decided I do like keeping track of my daily steps with the free app I downloaded onto my smartphone. 

I am not a person who likes to keep track of stuff. I am not an organizer. At all. I am not a tracker of data either. I don’t care to track all the things I could track with this app. And I know there are many fancy gizmos out there which allow a person to track a gazillion things, fitness-wise, but I just don’t care about doing that.

The only piece of data I want to keep track of is the number of steps I get in on any given day. That’s it.   

And I have discovered that doing this does help keep me a little bit more motivated.

And as we all know, sometimes a little turns out to be a lot.

Whatever works, right?            

So, what were my results?

And yes, I only kept track because I knew I was writing this post, but actually this app did all the tracking for me. All I did was plug in the totals here.

February results:  

Total steps for the month:  252,502 (sounds sort of impressive, right?)

Number of days goal reached:  20 (I thought I did better)

Highest number of steps achieved:  17,204 (yes!)

Lowest number of steps:  1,118 (couch day)

March results:  

Total steps for the month:  185,646 (nothing to brag about)

Number of days I reached my goal:  14 (oops… however, to be fair, I was over 8,000 on some days. Just sayin’).

Highest number of steps achieved:  13,045

Lowest number of steps:  1,031 (not so good)

My conclusions from collecting this data (and then looking at it) were:  

• I didn’t get in as many steps every day as I thought I did. I’ve been kidding myself about my activity level.
• I had a few days where I did very poorly, but this is okay. It’s not about judging; it’s about motivating.
• Some days I actually did better than the numbers show because I didn’t always remember to have my phone in my pocket. (I’m forgetful).
• I found myself wanting to count my steps and check my totals each day. Motivation matters.
• I discovered my favorite sweats do not have a deep enough pocket for my phone! (I might have to notify someone about this ‘cuz I cannot be the only one with this issue).
• I need to be more consistent. (With a lot of things).
• I realized steps can really add up just walking around the house, buying groceries, shoveling snow, or whatever. Of course I knew this, but this was good visual proof.
• I will keep doing my best every day. We all will, right?

Ultimately, this challenge wasn’t about getting in 10,000 steps a day, my phone app or whatever. This post was about motivating you and me to MOVE more because movement matters.

So did I move more during the last 60 days?

Yes!

Did the scale move (in the right direction)?

No.

Darn.

But as we also all know, exercise movement is not just about weight management.

It is about a whole lot more.

So keep on keepin’ on everybody!

Because no matter where you are in your personal cancer maze, movement matters.

So how have YOU been doing?

In a recent email/newsletter I invited subscribers to send me photos of themselves doing their favorite sort of exercise movement. I received one photo (thank you, Terri!), so it appears this was a really dumb idea or else everyone was very shy! Guess you’ll have to put up with a few more pics of me now.

Have you been participating in my challenge, and if so, has the challenge helped you?

Do you like tracking data regarding exercise movement?

What’s your favorite form of movement?

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Keep moving everybody!