It's simple pedometer, but it changed my lifestyle

Nowadays various fitness devices are being launched every day in the market. Some of these are really popular, there are also many apps for cell phones which can measure and store your physical activity data. I guess there is a very compelling reason why these things are so popular and I can say this from my own experience. When I got this little device called a 'pedometer' as a gift from our company, I never thought that it was going to change my lifestyle so much. For people who don't know about this device, the pedometer measures the number of steps you take by sensing the motions of your body. It gives you a record of how much you move in a day. I consider myself a physically active person who prefers to walk or use a bicycle rather than using a car or scooter. I was under the impression that walking ten thousand steps per day would be easy for me but when I started using the pedometer, this belief was crushed. When I looked at the readings of my pedometer I realized how little people like me walk in their day-to-day lives. I was just hitting the mark of six thousand steps per day. To achieve my daily target of 10k steps I decided to walk to the office at least one way rather than taking the bus and also made sure that I do some exercise at home to make up the remaining steps. Since I can see my progress in numbers, it made me very conscious and I try to make sure that I walk enough every month or every week to complete whatever target I set. This was never the case before, I used to walk or do some exercise but there was no data for me to check if I was doing enough. With this device, I can quantify my physical activity and it made a lot of difference. Basically, this data pushes me to set new targets and work towards them.

Nowadays we all complain about how modern technology is affecting our lives. Most of the time modern technology is blamed for many bad things happening in our personal lives. Some of our health problems are also blamed on our addiction to many of these gadgets. Our sedentary lifestyle, changing modes of communication, or too much addiction to video games is often highlighted as a reason for some of our problems. However, it is also true that each of these things has contributed something positive to our lives. We can use these things for our own benefit, they assist us in staying informed or being more physically active, the choice is really ours. Lack of enough physical activity is really a problem for many of us. Compared to our previous generation there is a lot of physical comfort in our lives, and different modes of transportation are very easily accessible to our generation. Our children are going to face this problem more severely than we do, this sudden change in lifestyle has created a lot of health issues like obesity, high blood pressure (hypertension), type-2 diabetes, and other lifestyle-related health problems. Apart from an unhealthy diet, lack of enough physical activity is one of the reasons for these problems. We get tired without doing much physical work. Many of us don't find time because of our very busy schedules to go to the gym or to do some simple exercise at home. We all think that we have some genuine reasons for our inability to spare some time for physical exercise. Maybe those reasons are valid but definitely we all should try to incorporate some sort of physical activity in our day-to-day life. Walking is one such thing that most of us can include in our day-to-day life, just try to walk to any place that is at a walkable distance (20-30 minutes per day). No need to walk one hour or 10 miles per day and get really exhausted but instead of taking an elevator take the stairs, if the destination is just a couple of blocks away then walk instead of going by car. These small changes can reduce our need to take out separate time for daily physical activity. I am offering this suggestion as it worked for me, maybe everyone can't walk to the office or take the stairs instead of the elevator, everyone has to come up with their own way of being physically active. My pedometer has helped me a lot in this case, so much that every day I am eager to see that magical 10000 number on it which indicates that the target achieved for the day. It gives me some sort of happiness and a sense of achievement, and the next day I am on my quest to achieve that task all over again. I am sure everyone can find some driving force that can push them to become more active. After all, we have to do it for our own health. Let's try to become more active and more healthy. It is good for our body as well as our mind. Remember that old saying "A healthy mind resides in a healthy body."

Thanks for reading and please share your views on this topic.

[Copyright: Vinay Thakur. Please contact the author for re-posting or publishing]