friday favourite – my walking partner

My friend Lisa and I have been walking every Saturday morning for 16 years. We take silly pictures of ourselves and post them on instagram with witty hashtags like #lisaheatherwalk or #wehaveprobablytalkedaboutyou.

And then Lisa fell and broke her knee cap. Sounds like something that happens on HBO, not to my walking partner.

She is my friday favourite because she is being such a good sport about this injury. She needed surgery to wire her knee cap back together. Two weeks later she learned that one of the wires had broke and they had to repeat the surgery. She has been out of commission for 7 weeks. She is upbeat and accepting and not whining. She’s amazing and her outfit even matches her cast!

 HAR

friday favourite – fitbit, again.

A few months ago I said I was done with my fitbit. Turns out, I’m not. I missed it. It actually motivated me to take the dog on one more walk to hit my step target. So I bought another one. We were just in Quebec City for a few days. My significant other was attending a conference. I walked. And walked. And walked. I enjoy getting to know a city on foot, and seeing my step totals at the end of the day was fun. Until my feet hurt! Then I stopped and had a glass of wine and read Louise Penny!

71,195 steps or 33.74 miles in three days. Fitbit is my friday favourite, again!

HAR

fitbit revisited

We both received an email from Fitbit last week with our year end summary. Between the two of us we covered 3,476,978 steps or about 1500 miles since July! According to Fitbit, Canadians take more average total steps…what’s up with that?!

 

It’s been six months since we started wearing our Fitbits, so we thought it would be a good time to update you about our thoughts. We first blogged about them in November and have both been very consistent with wearing them. Here’s what we have learned:

If you have a desk job, you will hit about 5000 steps a day but not much more if you don’t take a walk. And it is easy to get lazy when it is dark, when the dog walker already tuckered out the canine.

Weekends are easy to hit the target.

You can hit 10,000 steps a day but not really raise your heart rate. Setting aside time for a brisk walk will not only get you steps but also challenge your heart.

The sleep information is pretty interesting. I’ve learned that I actually manage fine on less sleep than I always thought I needed.

HAR & CJR

 

 

 

fitbit friend or foe

It started with the Fitbit I bought our son for his birthday to help motivate him to get up from his desk at work and move during the day.

Next I suggested my husband might benefit from the wrist pedometer telling him how many daily steps he had taken and calculating how much sleep he had each night. I thought the Fitbit could give him cold, hard data about how little sleep he gets and deliver it in a better way than I do!

Before I knew it, just about everyone in our extended family had a Fitbit and we were all fitbit friends, meaning we could see how many steps everyone had taken and have a friendly competition.

The goal is 10,000 steps per day and some days that is easier to achieve than others. In my first week wearing the Fitbit, I looked at my wrist one evening and realized I was only at 9,000 steps so I became super-helpful-wife and offered to run around getting things for my husband to increase my steps. When he figured out what I was doing, he became super-helpful-husband and we practically tripped over each other trying to get more steps!

Eventually we settled into walking the dog together at the end of the day. That way we both get the steps, the dog gets exercise and we can catch up about our day. One night we were holding hands while walking until we realized that if we weren’t moving our wrists – the Fitbit wouldn’t track our steps! That was the end of hand holding.

I’ve been wearing the Fitbit for several months now and I like the awareness it provides me. It helps give me that extra push to walk the dog a second time or to run up stairs because I want the activity.

I am definitely a fitbit fan…

and so is our dog!

HAR