it's all in the timing

I've recently recommitted myself to whole living -- that is, trying to live my best life by doing things that are positive, like eating better, exercising more, reading more, writing more, etc. But I'm really prone to jumping in with both feet, starting a really rigorous "program" of diet or exercise, or both, and then falling off the wagon just a few days in because it is too much, too fast.

Knowing this about myself (after MUCH trial and error), this time I'm slowing everything waaaaay down. I'm just taking one little tiny baby step each week. First, it was wearing my pedometer.

It's pretty simple; it just counts my steps and tells me how many miles I've walked, but it's really motivating to see how much (or how little) I've walked in a day. It was a real eye-opener to realize, when I first started wearing it, that I was walking sometimes less than a mile in an entire day! Now I'm shooting for a goal of 10,000 steps a day (about 3.5 miles).

(You might have noticed the US map in the column on the left hand side of this page -- it's a web site I found that lets me put in my steps every day, and it tracks my progress as though I were walking across the country! As you can see, I haven't even gotten out of California yet!)

Someone recently asked me how I managed to get all that walking in every day, and to tell the truth, it's really not that hard. Our apartment is in a really great location, so we can easily walk to the mall, the movies, tons of different restaurants, and our pick of two grocery stores and a Target, not to mention lots of other places like our bank, the dry cleaners, our hair salon -- the list goes on and on. The trick is just choosing to walk to do those errands instead of hopping in the car.

Lots of people don't have that advantage, I know, so I thought I'd post this article I saw that lists a lot of ways to increase your activity during the day.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to get up and move my bum.