Walking to a Healthier Life

At the end of the day when I get home from work, with my feet tired and aching, I always wonder how much time I spend walking everyday. In high heels.

I used to count the steps I take from my apartment to our office building, but it gets interrupted by the flight of ideas in my head. And sometimes while walking, I like to hum Ode to Joy under my breath to match my pace with its tempo - which again competes with my counting. It’s not so easy to keep track of all the walking I do. Thanks to D who sent me a pedometer (to motivate me in becoming as thin as Gwyneth), keeping track has now become easier.

With the gadget clipped to my waist, I found out how many steps I’ve accumulated throughout the day, how far and how long I have walked, and most importantly, how many calories I have burned because of all that walking. Here’s the day’s pedometer reading:

Number of Steps: 6,036 steps

Distance Covered: 3.907507 kilometers

Length of Time Spent Walking: one hour, 12 minutes

Number of Calories Burned: 168 calories

The numbers may look remarkable (even I could not believe I’ve accumulated as much) but fitness experts say that to get us walking to a healthier life, we should walk 10,000 steps a day (or 12,000-20,000 if we want to lose weight!). So I’m 3,964 steps short of that goal. Hmmm, so what should I do to achieve 10,000 steps a day and even better, lose weight? Maybe I should include climbing the stairs all the way to the 29^th floor as part of my daily routine.