BEAUTY OP-ED | The long and winding road... to 10,000 steps a day, part II

SO HOW hard can it be to get those 10,000 steps if people in other countries do it simply going about their day? (Ahem, well done, Australia (9,695 avg steps/day and Switzerland with 9,650/day).

I slipped a pedometer into my pocket and, for a month, have clocked every single step I've taken during which time I had the chance to be in Europe and the US. (For a bit of background on my personality (since I thought this test would be easy peasy), I am an active person. Some people choose the path of least resistance. I generally chose the one that makes me sweat.)

It was a slap in the face then when my month-long trial to reach 10,000 steps a day started with a fizzle rather than, say, long walks. Starting in Chicago, I came in at paltry amounts totalling between 2,000 and 6,000 for the first few days. I went at it with resolve the following days and started to hit 9,000... just. I'm starting to think the shock with which the researchers greeted the findings that Americans are sedentary was sarcastic.

If I tried really hard – and did a few last sad laps around my floor in the building when I came home at night -- I'd hit 10,000. But it was always followed with the severe dread of having to go for a walk down yet another road that was straight as an arrow for as far as the eye could see the following day. Those are the only kind of streets in Chicago.

Until October 12^th, I hadn't consistently hit 10,000 for an entire week. Over the following weekend in New Haven, CT for a wedding my husband and I stayed on the edge of campus instead of in the middle with everyone else. And boy was I happy we did. Every day we clocked 13,000 plus steps. Brilliant. At least now I know that those extra pounds in college could have been avoided had I walked a bit more (and stayed away from the kegs).

And from there it was a cake walk, albeit a long one.

Particularly when I got to London and realized just why so many Europeans seem fitter. They get – in the cities at least – incredible amounts of invisible exercise (they also eat less. Much less, although you'll never catch a European eating something as pointless as fat-free cheese. They'll eat the full-fat variety but simply don't eat the entire block of it in one go). The kind you don't know you're doing but adds up to one serious calorie burn at the end of the day.

Running late!? Sprint up an escalator of, seemingly, hundreds of steps. In Chicago I don't even get the option to walk up steps or escalators (there is no standing on the right. people block the entire thing) except the 20 at the gym to reach the locker room. 

Next bit of invisible exercise?

I decide to walk to my appointments instead of cabbing it because I'll get there faster on foot than sitting in traffic. It all adds up, every little segment of exercise I can snatch throughout a packed day.

In London, there were days when, simply going around the public transit system and walking from meeting to meeting, I clocked up 18,000 steps. Other days it was approximately 13,000. Sometimes 15,000. But never did I dip below 10,000.

Not even close.

On the contrary, no matter what I did, I was well above it, and that's without setting foot in a gym, a place I am required to visit daily in Chicago if I want to stay healthy and keep my saddle bags in check. In London and Cambridge both, I was constantly walking, going up and down stairs. It was easy to be on the move. A few minutes of walking or moving every couple of hours tallied an impressive amount of exercise (and weight-bearing at that) completed unwittingly.

I was doing double what I have to actively and labouriously attempt to complete in a US city. When I was living in London full time I was ten pounds lighter than my lightest weight in Chicago, even with the gym sessions.

With horror, I realize that my first day back in Chicago I barely scraped the underbelly of 6,000 steps. In fact, my first three days back I collectively walked the same amount of steps I walked on my last day in London. PA-THE-TIC.

But, you know what? That's the last time. At least I hope it is. 

It might be near impossible to clock 18,000 steps (or roughly 6 miles) a day in Chicago but I'll damn well get as close to 10,000 as I can and pair it with 30 minutes to an hour in the gym on a regular basis.

When in Rome and all that, right? Although, you'll never find me scootering up to the all-you-can-eat buffet for seconds and thirds because I'm too big to walk. I have to draw the line somewhere when adopting to local customs.

How much do you walk a day? Think you could do the recommended 10,000? Any tips on getting there for those who don't?

For anyone out there looking to walk more, I highly suggest a pedometer. It's common sense that seeing the figure will make you pay more attention to it and thus act. I know it has for me.

Some articles on the fact that Americans don't use their legs:

http://www.ygoy.com/index.php/americans-walk-less-says-study/

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/19/the-pedometer-test-americans-take-fewer-steps/



BEAUTY OP-ED | The long and winding road... to 10,000 steps a day, part I

IN SUPERSIZE ME, Morgan Spurlock followed an average American diet and exercise regime for an entire month, during which time he nearly succeeded in pickling his liver and put on an impressive 30 pounds. What is the average number of steps walked a day by an adult American? According to Spurlock, it's approximately 5,000. However, that number is seriously bouyed by places like New York. The national average would, I bet, plummt to something more like 2,500 if you factor out such cities. In fact, I remember one scene where he tallies daily just 1,500 steps quite regularly while in Texas. Not that it really matters since 5,000 is still considered sedentary.

Ouch.

So how many steps, approximately, do need to take a day? Studies say... 10,000. How do other countries fair compared to our paltry figures?

As expected, better. Much better. Miles better.

To understand why it's hard for Americans to fit those steps in, just look at our urban planning. Most people must drive to retail parks outside of town for their groceries, homegoods or to do basic social activities like eat a meal out or see a movie. That can be the case too, with some semi-urban developments in the UK, but rest assured that the complete demise of the high street hasn't hit there yet. In the US, it did quite a long time ago.

American cities were built around the car – some don't even have pavements (sidewalks). Chicago is scored with highways, as is LA, Detroit and many other cities. New York is an exception to the car-bound rule, where it's public transit is still top notch (San Fran is a bit similar).

And, sadly, quite often police officers are suspect of lone men and women walking around. Tales from my foreign friends talking walks in LA, for example, always end with the officer pulling over, rolling down the window and asking the perfectly innocent – and unharmed – foreigner if they need help. Why? Because they were, god forbid, walking.

So, you see, Americans live in landscapes designed to keep people in the house, the store or the car. There's no getting lost in the winding cobble-stoned streets of the Marais on the way to the Saturday market or a leisurely post dinner stroll down the promenade. Instead, you walk 25 steps from buffet to the car, then, once at home in the garage, another 25 steps to your door... and about 15 to the couch.

Naturally, I've employed some generalizing.

There will always be a contingent who take just public transit (even if there are only a dozen stops, like in LA), or who ride a bike everywhere. But these people are the exception. Not the norm. I've known people to drive TWO BLOCKS (not even the length of two football fields) to work, and that is probably deemed less unusual than walking a mile to get somewhere.

In fact, I know it is.

In Savannah, GA with my husband this past June, my husband and I had a nice breakfast with another couple staying at our same B&B. We discussed our dinner plans to walk to a nearby (1 mile far) restaurant. Our new friends looked at us with a mix of curiosity and horror. They gave us the number to the cab service they'd been using, which we accepted with no intention of using. They both shook their heads as if we were hopeless.

We!

The ones who want to walk to get our food and then digest it on a walk back.



To be continued tomorrow...

FROM THE FRONT | High Fructose Corn Syrup becomes Corn Sugar

WATCHING YOUR weight? You’ll have a new ingredient to look out for on ingredient lists then because High Fructose Corn Syrup is being re-named Corn Sugar.

Studies over the years claimed that HCFS was no worse than regular sugar (I don’t have the data on who funded those studies), but a recent (March 2010) Princeton University study linked consumption of HCFS to considerably higher weight gain than diets where the same amount of calories are consumed, but the subjects ate regular sugar instead.

Since 1970 there’s been a 1000% increase in the consumption of the stuff and in that same time, obesity has sky rocketed in the US. Causation or correlation? Not my place to say.

Continue reading >

Image credit: http://consumerist.com/2008/08/are-you-fighting-the-war-on-high-fructose-corn-syrup.html