Steps

Humana health insurance promises good health if we take 10,000 steps each day.  AARP’s most recent magazine recommends 10,000 steps a day and suggests that 5,000 steps means sedentary.  I recently purchased a pedometer, which I have reliably attached to my waist each morning. 

So now I’m going to get fit and healthy.  How?  I walk.  Not that I walk more than I did before I bought the pedometer.  But now I actually know how healthy and fit I’m getting—or how sedentary I really am.  And here’s the frosting on the cake.  Now I obsess about how close I might have come to 5,000 steps or—will I ever get there?—10,000 steps.  The pedometer is the last thing I look at before I take my glasses off at night.  I put it on my bathrobe belt loop before I put my glasses back on in the morning.  I look at it as much as I look at my iPhone, which is—trust me—a lot!  Yesterday, I made 7,009.  The day before 3,698.  It motivated me to riffle through the bathroom cabinet hoping to find an unconsumed and fuzz-free happy pill.  Five days ago, I did my best at 7,480 steps.  Let's see. . .  If I average out the last five days, I have walked 5,605 steps!  

You know what that means?  That means I am officially not sedentary.