Ten Thousand Steps

For years we have heard that taking ten thousand steps every day will make you healthier. And you don't need special clothing, footwear, or equipment. You can do your walking barefoot or in three-inch heels, in shorts or bespoke suits, up a mountain or in your kitchen. The principle has a pleasing Japanese-style simplicity about it, like those exquisite, barely-there flower arrangements. If I bring up Japan, it's because that is where the 10,000-step movement began.

It's a part of my "shadow self" that I can't seem to shake, the tendency to glom onto goals, regardless of their worth. Ten thousand steps--is there a number more absolute, majestic and compelling than that slender digit trailing four plump zeroes? Who could resist it? Not I.

But for a long time I couldn't find a pedometer (did I mention that you need a pedometer?) that counted steps accurately. Then recently I heard about a new generation of battery-powered gizmos that were supposed to do the job. I bought one, measured my stride as instructed, told it my height and weight, and clipped it to my waistband. Then I took Bisou for a walk.

I had no idea what I would find when I checked the count at bedtime. Would the day's harvest yield five hundred or five thousand steps? As it turned out, it was the latter. Not bad, for a baseline, but I was only halfway to my goal.

For the next couple of days I took Bisou for longer walks. In the evening, while watching TV, I set a kitchen timer for twenty-five minute periods, and each time it rang I got up and walked three times around the room. Every night the number on my pedometer grew. On Friday, it showed eight thousand steps.  On Saturday, I did it again.

On Sunday, I couldn't get out of bed.

On Monday, I was hobbling stiff-kneed around the kitchen when I heard a story on NPR that was sent to me personally by the universe. It turns out that the goal of 10,000 steps is not based on any kind of scientific evidence. It was promulgated in Japan decades ago by a pedometer manufacturer who wanted to sell more pedometers.

Now, a study of 17,000 women of a certain age shows that walking a mere 4,400 steps a day had a beneficial effect on the women's longevity. Some ambitious participants walked more, but after 7,500 steps there were no additional effects on longevity (possibly because their painful knees drove them to suicide).

Since hearing that story, I have abandoned my obsession with the 10,000 steps. I am not abandoning my pedometer, however, even though the numbers 4,400 or even 7,500 don’t have the same appeal. I have settled for a measly five thousand steps a day. My knees are already thanking me.

And when the next fitness craze hits, whether it be daily push-ups, jumping jacks, or handstands, I will strive to keep in mind the common sense views of my mother, who lived into her nineties without the aid of canes, walkers, joint replacements, or NSAIDs. She walked every day, making circuits inside the house when the weather was bad, but only for as long as she enjoyed it. 

She would have laughed at my pedometer. "Why do you need a little machine," I can hear her saying, "to tell you when you've had enough?"

Every Step Counts

The pared-down new look of My Green Vermont comes from artist/graphic designer/herbalist/gardener/wise woman and friend, Dona Mara.  Check out her website:  http://www.artistseyestudio.com/donapage.html  When the makeover is complete and I have figured out the logistics, I will celebrate by giving away an original drawing for one of  the blog illustrations.  Stay tuned.

Now, for today's post:

I believe in the power of walking.  All I have to do is look at the women in my family, starting with my father's tiny mother who, dressed in black and in high heels, toddled all over the streets of Barcelona until she died in her nineties. Today my four aunts, now into their late 80s and 90s, are still striding down those same streets, on their daily rounds to the baker, the supermarket, and the concert hall.  My disabled 95-year-old mother, who nevertheless endures with perfect vitals, in her  mobile years clocked hundreds of miles inside her air-conditioned house in the sweltering American South.

Alas, where I live, the nearest market, cafe, bookstore and movie theater are all miles away.  It is theoretically possible for me to get along with no walking at all, so I have to make a point of integrating this most basic of human activities into my day.  

Ever since the Japanese propounded "ten thousand steps a day" as the key to immortality, I have loved pedometers.  Unfortunately, pedometers are designed to clip onto a belt, and right away if you are a woman there is a problem, because you don't always wear a belt. You can clip the pedometer to the waistband of your pants but, depending on the fit, it will count either too many or, more often, way too few steps.

When you wear a dress, you can clip the pedometer to a regular leather belt, worn under the dress and next to the skin, and grit your teeth at the discomfort.  Even worse, if you bend in certain ways the pedometer can slip off and fall to the floor, and never live to count another step.

Last week I decided to give my pedometer another chance.  But first I went online and bought a pedometer belt.  It is an elastic, adjustable belt with a flat snap buckle, and much more comfortable than the leather version.

Nevertheless, it is still accident-prone.  As I was sitting down to dinner at someone's house the other night the pedometer popped off the belt and landed on my lap.  There was nowhere to hide it, so I spread the napkin over my thighs, discreetly hiked up my tunic, and clipped it back on. I have since invented a simple thread loop which keeps the pedometer attached to the belt.

Now, I count every step.  I racked up 2,000 during a single phone conversation.  My yoga class, disappointingly, yielded only 100 steps--the pedometer was not impressed by all those down dogs and sleeping pigeons. I wear my pedometer every minute of the day, walking up and down as I brush my teeth before going to bed, when I check the count one last time.  In the morning, I snap the belt around my waist before even putting my feet on the floor.

It's been raining all day, and so far I'm just over 2,000 steps.  A picture flashes in my mind of monks reading their breviary while walking around the cloister.  I have a Trollope novel on my Kindle.  Maybe I can get used to reading it while walking around the house.

The New Gym Ladies

“Don't you just love this aqua-cise?” the lady in the locker room says to her friend. “I've gotten so addicted I come in every day, even when there isn't a class, and swim by myself.”

I'm impressed. A sidelong glance reveals her to be no naiad: she's almost as wide as she is tall, and in her none-too-well-preserved seventies. “Let me tell you,“ she goes on, groaning as she bends over to tie her shoe, “walking yesterday was no fun. None of the sidewalks had been cleared, so I had to walk on the road ...”

I repress a gasp. I almost killed myself just crossing the parking lot to the gym just now, and she was out walking yesterday? On the icy, slushy roads of Granville, NY? What kind of woman is this?

She is one of the New Gym Ladies. I see them on my way to the locker room. They're standing in the shallow end of the pool in their flowery suits, their breasts bobbing just above the water line, lifting their heavy arms over their heads. Over their gray, curly, sparsely-haired heads.

I see them in the exercise room, large of thigh and heavy of breast, spending surprisingly long times on the treadmill, earphones on, watching the soaps. As they make their way from one weight machine to another, they walk with the swaying gait of those whose hips hurt badly. But they flex their biceps, and work their triceps, and squeeze and lift and crunch. And they carefully wipe down each machine after they've used it.

New Gym Ladies, wait for me! I'm not that far behind you. I was in high school when you were in college, maybe, in college when you entered the motherhood cloister and disappeared from view. But here you are now, doing something no woman your age has ever done before: working out, lifting weights, growing muscles. You're not in this for looks—a trivial thing--but for survival.

I'm amazed and touched and frightened by you. Because you are my future and you're showing me that it's both appalling, and not so bad.