One step at a time

Today I walked 6,323 steps,  and/or 2.72 miles, and/or 6 floors and/or burned 1,6,29 calories.

Yesterday 9,169 steps, and/or 4.29 miles, and/or 6 floors and/or burned 1,775 calories.

Wednesday 6,808 steps and/or 2.93 miles, 7 floors and/or burned 1,774 calories.

How do I know? I wear a Fitbit every day.  Having received it as a Christmas gift, I am now obsessed with every move I make every day.

At first I couldn't remember to put it on.  Now, I am disappointed if I forget it or take it off and then go back up the stairs.

Minutia.  How can one small device make me OCD regarding the number of steps, number of calories, number of flights of stairs and number of miles per day?

I believe part of it is that it is the same attraction of Angry Birds or a number of other digital games-- instant feedback and rewards.

Rather than just work out every morning for a certain number of minutes, by wearing my FitBit all day I can now gain a much greater understanding of my steps and minutes directly after my workout and then also monitor my activity every day.

Every night I sync it to an app on my ipad mini and each day of the week review my activity level.  It rarely needs charging, fits easily and unobtrusively on my waistband or wrist, and is effortless to use.

The only drawback I have found was figuring out by trial and error how to get it to record my movements on my rower and elliptical.  Wearing it on my waistband doesn't work at all for my rower, and so I use the wristband.  On my elliptical, wearing it on my waistband works the best.  I have not yet tried it on my bike but am guessing the wristband around my ankle will work.

The Fitbit targets 10,000 steps per day and every week issues a weekly progress report by email summarizing the total number of steps,  total distance, total floors climbed, and total calories burned.  In addition, you can earn badges for high points from the week, providing additional positive reinforcement.

If you want, you can even share your daily progress with a "friend" and compete against them.

I love my new Fitbit, and especially am proud when I do actually reach 10,000 or more.  One evening I even took a couple of laps around my downstairs to bump it over to 10,000 at about 9:45 PM when I checked to sync it and found myself just a few steps short.

The great thing about the Fitbit is that you don't even have to even be an athlete to use it.  Just put it on and see how many steps you take each day.  I'll bet it is more than you think, one step at a time.