How was your day today? Mine could have been better I suppose but then again things always happen around here that prevents me from doing one thing or another.
I didn’t get to do my regular walk today but I did manage to squeak in a smaller walk. I have IBD and when it acts up it acts up in a big way. IBD is Irritable Bowel Disease and that affects my intestines. I can not eat many foods and sometimes something that I have eaten a hundred times before could turn on me and cause a flare up of my IBD, which is what happened this time around.
Anyway, I wont go into that in detail, as I am sure you don’t want to know about it. So, lets get back to our fitness area. Did you go and find your fitness area in your neighborhood today? There is a cool tool on line that you can measure how far you have walked in miles or kilometers. The link is http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/ and when you get there, zoom into your area. A setting needs to be adjusted before we begin and it is the Draw Route: change it to manually (straight lines).
Then click on the Start Recording button on the top left hand side and with your cursor hover above your starting point and double click. You wont see anything yet but when you move to the end of the street or to the corner and double click again you will see a red line and if you look over to the left side it will tell you how far it is. Continue doing this until you have finished your walking route and you will be able to track how far you have walked.
I also use a pedometer but I have found those to be inaccurate. The best one I had was from the Kellogg’s Cereal Boxes and it was accurate to my steps and also didn’t count my leg shaking when I am sitting down! (I have a habit of bouncing my leg when I am sitting working!)
You can use a pedometer to help you keep track of your steps and make a challenge for yourself to keep upping the amount of steps you take each day.
I have a journal that I used to keep track of each days steps and I was amazed at how far I would walk in one day just around the home. The reason I stopped keeping track of my steps each day was because I got very sick and was bed ridden for a few weeks. When I did get better I couldn’t walk that far so I put off wearing my pedometer … and you know how that story goes from there! If I could I would go back and start using my pedometer every day even when I was recovering just so that I would have a record of my steps.
Here is another useful web page that shows you the steps and how many miles it is. Check it out here http://apps.adcom.uci.edu/expresso/econtent/Content.do?resource=4473
I have used this page on many occasions to figure out how far I have walked in a day, because really and truly you don’t know that you have walked five miles just in the house.
You can also go to http://classic.mapmywalk.com/ and then you can see exactly how far you have walked. I am just trying this out so it will be a learning experience for all of us. So far, I have found that the site runs a bit slow but that could also be because I have a few other programs running.
I did a test map on this site and it seems to work pretty well. I figure for free why not add another little fun item to our getting fitness for free campaign.
So, now I have given you some links to check out and some reading to do, don’t forget to go out and walk for a little while and check out your neighbors front yard, you never know what they might have changed since you last drove by there.
Stay tuned tomorrow and I will give you some more helpful hints tips and tricks to getting out and about and getting healthy the no fee way.
©2011 7LadyBugs
January 6, 2011
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