Small steps in my health journey.
As I get older, the dietary choices of my younger days are manifesting themselves with a vengeance not seen since the fat guy in ‘Stand by me’ drank the ipecac before the pie eating contest. In my teen years and early twenties, I could eat anything in any amount with, seemingly, no affect to my metabolism, weight or belly size. As time marched on with little change in my diet, the extra calories, sugars and shear volume of food I consumed started to slowly stick around taking up residence packed about my belly. Now, I am in the mode of ‘try to loose the old guy gut’. That is my goal. It’s not ambitious, it’s not glorious or glamorous. It is basic. Loose the old guy gut.
Lose the gut
Part of reaching my fitness and health goal is tracking. I got a Fitbit a while ago, and use it to make sure I get my steps in. Like so many who don the unmistakable Fitbit ‘watch’, my step goal is 10,000 per day. I figure that if I can get those steps in each day, that will help with creating my calorie deficit. Part of my challenge is that most of my day is spent at a desk doing paperwork & administrative work. I have the not so infrequent need to get up and move around, and the freedom to do so as I see fit. On a normal day it is not difficult for me to get my 10,000 steps in. Ironically, however, the weekends are usually more difficult for me to get my steps in. My weekends are spent mostly around my home. Working on the ‘honey-do list’. Working on one of my web projects, like PoserDad.com. Driving tour groups in the wine country (another side job). So, weekends continue to challenge my trackable mobility, motivation and accountability.
Challenges
During the time when my friends and I were most active together with challenges, I was able to not only very regularly hit my 10,000 steps in a day, but frequently blow past that goal and tackle some of the high step challenges within a couple days. Lately, almost all of my friends have gone inactive for various reasons, and my motivation to push that little extra on the days that I am ‘stepping’ short is lacking. The various daily challenges have been great to do with friends. Do you use a Fitbit? If so, I want to challenge you to one of the daily challenges!
Friend Me
Motivation and accountability are two important keys to success. The Fitbit app & website make these easy to accomplish by finding friends to both spur one another on to work harder & do better and to have friendly competitions with. I find the Fitbit app & site helpful because of these features. The days and weeks that I did the best, reached my step goals and kept my caloric intake in line with weight loss were the times that I had a friend (or friends) pacing with me on challenges. If you are using a Fitbit, you are welcome to add my to your friends list – I am listed as PoserDad (no surprise there). I would love to have more friends to pace with and challenge to daily goals. Like I said, the accountability is motivating and is a key to success in all things.