Exercise Steps vs Steps

lml124

I've been using my Fitbit charge since I got it for Christmas and on weekends or days I exercise I can usually hit my 10,000 goal, but I'm still all over the place. For example, I barely hit 5k friday, but hit 15k on saturday since I ran and was active. I have a toddler and a desk job in a small office.
My question is, should my daily goal include my exercise steps? I almost feel like I'm cheating when I use the elliptical or go for a run because it practically doubles my steps for the day. On the other hand, it makes me do it because I want to reach the goal I've set.
I know I'm generally being more active than I was...I am just curious how others set goals and how you feel about exercise steps vs your step goal.

editorgrrl

Your step goal is just a motivator—set it to whatever makes you happiest.

heybales

There are indeed some using Fitbit's that do NOT want it to be including specific exercise, but everything outside exercise. So they remove it to get none of those steps, and then manually log all their workouts for calories to be correct, using 0 steps for walking or running.

Because they want to have motivation for increased daily activity.

Others, well, they try to figure out how to get anything counted as a step in order to reach their step goals and be at top of competitions. Several will even admit they will pass up doing a better workout merely to do something with more accurate step logging.
Others cheat, outright, to get more steps.

View it as a daily thing then, on your less exercise days, you want this many steps, on exercise days, who cares you are covered anyway.

lml124

Thanks for the input. I get what you're saying. I was overthinking it. At this point, my Fitbit is an awesome motivator. I'll work on at least hitting my goal as many days a week as I can. It's definitely gotten me moving more, so what if that means I go for a walk around my condo building or hop on the elliptical at the end of the day to "catch up". Baby steps!