10,000 Steps

You know those really strange people who are incredibly unfit but want to look the exact opposite? I’m one of those people. My Apple Watch is my all time favorite product. Tracking steps, forgetting to charge it, avoiding conversation in the douchey-est manner possible are just a few of the things that I love to do with it. 

It’s supposedly a pretty commonly known statistic that people should walk at least 10,000 steps a day to remain healthy. My own 80-year old grandmother walks more than that every day and uses her trusty Fitbit (oh, the shame) to track it. Tracking health statistics like steps has a profound impact on the brain. I do, however, draw the line at an app telling me what decibel I snore at. 

There was a time when I would squeeze myself into super tight jeans and wear the most uncomfortable heeled shoes to go to work. (Dress for the job you want, right? I apparently want to be a stiff-legged idiot who enjoys saying hello to office floors in her free time). If there is one thing that this pandemic has provided me with, it’s a “Get Out of Jail free” card to wear my once-white-now-grey tattered Abercrombie joggers that do not flatter my backside in the slightest. Showering is part of my morning routine, a bit of shock therapy to get myself into the groove, and then it’s straight into the joggs. After that, the chance of me voluntarily sweating a droplet is extremely low. Imagine the actual horror of having to shower twice a day?! 

This all said, the Health app on my phone says that I’ve averaged 3,186 steps daily this month. Good god. I did the math and it’s horrifying. It’s exactly 24 steps from my bed to the fridge. That means that I’m making the round trip about 65 times a day. It’s a complete miracle that the elastic on my Abercrombie joggers hasn’t snapped from the 65 Snickers Ice Cream bars I’ve consumed.

So, I’ve been thinking about the possibility of convincing myself to try something new! I’ve started picking up podcasts to listen to while walking. My family started watching Jeopardy! as our “after-dinner” activity and that’s the one time a day I find myself speechless. I picked up “Stuff You Should Know” on Apple Podcasts. It was all of one time, but I managed to wake up at some ungodly hour, curse the world for my shitty metabolic rate and then haul out the front door.