How do you get those extra steps in?

[zapleahy]

I live about four miles from my workplace and although I haven't yet walked all four miles to or from work, there are a few games I play during the week to increase my stepcount.

Some days I'll take the hillier, windier, unnecessarily long route to BART (San Francisco's heavy-rail rapid transit system). Almost always, I forgo the escalator for the stairs. Today, that act alone added 5 flights of stairs and over 250 steps to my morning journey.

My other favorite "cheat" is high stepping in place. Sure, I may look a little odd bouncing up and down while typing at my makeshift standing desk, but it feels good to keep the blood flowing and the legs moving! 

What do you do to get your extra steps in?

[Papa-G]

Great idea! I needed 4k more steps yesterday - too cold and nasty to walk outside. Mall closed for night, but WalMart was open. Cruised the aisles like I was trying to find my wife. Got my 4k and out the door! Good time!

[Zee]

Papa-G, that was hilarious. LOL!

[Colinm39]

@Papa-GThats the way to do it. Our big ,malls shut at 9pm on Thursday and Friday evening and I go there about 8-15pm and do the laps, get my 4k. This  includes the travelators for floors, and that time of night I walk a little faster and hope the security cameras think I trying to get to a shop before closing time.

I normally have to circle the travelators and wait so that I can have a clear go. Can't do the escalators because of my lower back issues.

But worth every 4k in steps plus about 20 floors. I live in a flat area and no hills or large buildings.

All good Fitbit fun.

[Zee]

Colin, you guys are cracking me up tonight.

[Colinm39]

@ZeeThey will build these huge Supermarkets (I have posted this elsewhere) and they need to be used !.

I have lived where I an now for over 50 years, and we had this huge corner block of land near us that was never developed. The local shopping strip traders kept voting against it, NOW we have a Woolworths, shuts at midnight (formerly Safeway), and a Masters Hardware, shuts at 9pm, both 7 days/week.

Because these two supermarkets are only 5/8's mile (1km) from my door step, and if I walk and shop at Woolworths for small luggable grocery items (our pantry extension) , I get 2800 steps round trip plus doing the aisles 1,100 steps. If I'm earlier than 9pm why not walk through Masters !, which is part of the same building, another 1,100 steps.

Total for the few items is another 4k steps..... and about 40 minutes.

[Ali]

Had a pal in last night from a much colder part of Canada so to show her how nice it was here went for a very long walk all over downtown. It was "cold" by west coast standards so we were going at quite the clip. All time best yesterday, a total of 35,000 steps. Need more friends to come visit!!

[Zee]

Colin, Thumbs Up! I love it. I am motivated to create a step library, meaning I will compile a list as you have that tells me how many steps I get for places I frequent often. First on my list will be my Publix Supermarket down the street. I've got 2 hours of Zumba today on Wedenesdays I usually average 17K steps. Thanks!

[SunsetRunner]

I really like your idea of withholding coffee until after the first bit of exercise. Think I'll do the same. Thanks for posting this!

[HecateN]

I'm a teacher, so I can get over half of mine just working a normal day--on weekends I have to work for it! 

One thing I do at school--Because I'm on the second floor,  whenever possible, I always go up and down the stairs twice whenever I'm going up and down anyway.  I get steps and floors in this way.  Of course, I don't do this with the kids as a rule, but when Im going up and down for one thing or another.  (copy room, mail room, dining hall, going home etc.) I also do this at home. 

Also, when I go to the supermarket, even if I just have to pick up one or two things, I go up and down every aisle, if I have time and it's not too crowded.

[HecateN]

You burn calories just by breathing, even if you do nothing.  Fitbit builds that into the equation I think.

[Zee]

Hecate, awesome. I like it. Good job. I am doing research on calories burned, I think I am doing something wrong. Keep stepping.

[Zee]

Hecate, you are absolutely correct so I must burn more when doing Zumba at 7K steps than breathing, but my tracker is showing the same calories burned for each event. Trying to find out what I am doing wrong. (Sad face) 😒

[HecateN]

Are you logging in the other activities in the activities tab?  I log in my pilates and weight training workouts--this will add to your exertion and calories expended.  Good luck!

[Zee]

Hecate, I am not logging activities in the activity tab because it decreases my active minutes. I decided to allow the tracker to track what it deems active minutes. I am online now looking at my settings.

[Zee]

Hecate I just disabled the calorie estimation in settings, maybe this will allow the tracker to track calories burned based on the energy I am exerting. I've got 2 hours of Zumba tonight so we'll see. Thanks

[Zee]

Colin, I disabled the calorie estimation on my profile page, shouldn't this allow the tracker to track calories burned based on my activities? Thanks

[Colinm39]

@ZeeThis link explains the Calorie estimation

I have Calorie Estimation off because what I see on the Dashbaord is my Activity including BMR.

[Colinm39]

@ZeeWhen you manually log an activity over the same time period of the activity it "flattens" the graph because Fitbit doesn't know about the variances in the activity and you may lose the few active minutes generated. The same thing happens when Fitbitters log their activities into MPF and sync the data across 

But if the total calories for the manual activity is greater than your minutes of activity multiplied by your VAM calories/minute you will get 100% VAM. The flattening helps.

So you need to know what your minimum calories are to generate 1 minute of VAM. The example below is how I worked that out. I created the 10 minute manual activities and kept changing the calories until the colours changes. Result 7 calories/minute rounded or 34 calories/5 minutes, and I use that number when I'm walking to ensure I'm walking at VAM pace. I have display type, clip on Fitbits.

[Zee]

Colin, Thanks

[Zee]

Wow Thanks Colin, your always so helpful, PaPa is too. Thanks Guys.