10,000 steps

Walking is great exercise.

That 10,000 steps thing came from a company that sells pedometers! There actually is a correlation with improved health outcomes if you get 7,500 steps a day. If you're up to it, getting more steps can for sure burn more calories. If it's fitness you're after rather than weight loss, then working up to "more than last time" is a good approach. If it's weight loss you're after, it's your calorie balance that's important. You do burn more calories the more exercise you do, but it's actually not as much as many people realize. They say, "You can't outrun the fork."

Pay close attention to your body if you are adding mass. It is probably beneficial for building bone mass, and it can also stress your joints especially if you haven't been walking much lately.

Check out the "Fitness and Exercise" discussion group. You might find some good ideas there.

I should have mentioned:

After I had initially lost some weight, I did put on one of my SCUBA weight belts. It was just an eight-pound soft lead belt (pellets instead of bricks) and took a walk. It was the same walk I take routinely. I remember thinking, "Wow - I used to carry far more than this around with me everywhere I went." I also noticed that when my walk was done, I could feel it in my knees and hips. Wow.

I actually loaned that belt to a friend who uses it for walking, but not to increase calories. She is very concerned about losing bone density, and she's tiny. She adds the weight to help put stress on her bones to conserve or build bone mass as she ages.

kbholdings wrote: »

Is anyone else getting back into fitness after a break? Or just starting maybe?

I am starting 10,000 steps per day for the next two weeks to get back into the swing of things. If anyone else is doing anything similar I’d be interested in hearing how you are getting on, tips of just general motivation x

New year - new streak!!!!

And btw, agree with the other poster. If you haven’t been doing 10k or close, you need to build up to it. No point in injuring yourself, or turning it into a nagging chore instead of a joy.

You’ve got a whole lifetime in front of you. Focus on building habits, not aggravation.

kbholdings wrote: »

springlering62 wrote: »

It doesn’t have to be fancy purpose bought weights.

When I was training for my Camino (2020, natch 🤦🏻‍♀️) I simply gathered what I planned to take and weighed it. I think it came to 13 pounds.

I put that amount of weight in the backpack I’d bought for the trip, but in canned goods and water bottles. I thought it would be better getting used to shifty bumpy loads than walking with something softer and uniformly sized.

It worked just fine as weight. I honestly don’t remember if I got a better burn because that wasn’t my focus at the time, but like @mtaratoot i remember being grateful I’d lost many many times that 13 pounds, because even that seemed plenty heavy!

@springlering62 I have a few questions if you don’t mind

Camino de Santiago?

Also when you started walking with the extra weight what did you aim for? Is 10,000 too much to start with do you think?

I have actually only just hit under 9000 the last two days and given myself a blister but I’m enjoying the extra exercise x

I was planning to do the Portuguese Coastal route.

I did five miles in the morning and two or three in the afternoons to prepare.

Thankfully, Travelocity refunded everything, including airfare and hotel.

Maybe I’ll try again next year. They’re predicting record numbers this year and that’s just not my jam.

Blisters?

First of all, get some ComPeed. Greatest blister stuff on the planet. I was introduced to it in France but now it’s available in the USA. It’s some kind of an aqueous bandaid that merges with your skin and heals it much faster and eliminates the pain. Expensive but can be cut to fit, and does not come off since it merges with skin.

Second, go get professionally fit for walking shoes at a running store. Best money I ever spent. My shoes were all wrong. I was bruising and losing toenails, got blisters, feet hurt all the time. They will study your gait and the roll of your feet and make recommendations for shoes that will suit you.

I get a pair there every year and then hit Amazon and buy last season’s colors for huge discounts. I always have four or five pair in rotation, since I gots sweaty feet. 😗

And don’t be cheap (like moi). If they’re worn out they’re worn out. Toss them. Your feet will thank you.

kbholdings wrote: »

springlering62 wrote: »

It doesn’t have to be fancy purpose bought weights.

When I was training for my Camino (2020, natch 🤦🏻‍♀️) I simply gathered what I planned to take and weighed it. I think it came to 13 pounds.

I put that amount of weight in the backpack I’d bought for the trip, but in canned goods and water bottles. I thought it would be better getting used to shifty bumpy loads than walking with something softer and uniformly sized.

It worked just fine as weight. I honestly don’t remember if I got a better burn because that wasn’t my focus at the time, but like @mtaratoot i remember being grateful I’d lost many many times that 13 pounds, because even that seemed plenty heavy!

@springlering62 I have a few questions if you don’t mind

Camino de Santiago?

Also when you started walking with the extra weight what did you aim for? Is 10,000 too much to start with do you think?

I have actually only just hit under 9000 the last two days and given myself a blister but I’m enjoying the extra exercise x

It matters what your starting point is. Phasing in new exercise gradually is generally a better plan, versus a giant jump up from almost nothing to 10k steps daily. Doing too much can become a downer psychologically, and overdoing isn't the best route to either improved fitness or weight loss.

Doing overly tiring exercise - too much for current capabilities - bleeds calorie burn out of daily life, because we'll drag through the rest of the day, resting more and moving less. That's counterproductive for weight loss.

For fitness improvement, the best idea is increases that are a challenge to current fitness level, but a manageable amount of challenge. Exactly what level that is will vary with starting fitness level. Obviously, if someone's been in the higher thousands of steps most days, but sub 10k steps, going to 10k steps isn't a big leap. If someone's been full couch potato for a while, it could be a really bad idea to shoot for 10k steps daily from the get-go.

That's quite the story @springlering62. I wonder if he bought five pair when the first pair was no longer repairable.

I have been bitten with old shoes once. I was on a Grand Canyon raft trip. I decided to bring a lighter pair of hiking boots rather than heavy leather ones. I only use them for hiking that time of year. I opted for that pair rather than a new one because they had a GoreTex liner in case of wet weather. I had booties for the river or sandals. I also had a pair of "dry sandals" for on-shore. Better for your feet. I probably also had a pair or Crocs for easily hopping on the boat without putting wet shoes on.

I sat in camp a while as most everyone else went for a hike on a layover day (i.e., we didn't boat that day; we stayed in the same place two nights to enjoy life). Eventually I went for the hike. I got a couple miles from camp, and the sole started to come off the bottom of the boot. Eventually I heard it going "Flop, flop, flop." I made one good decision: I decided to forego the rest of the hike and start back down. Eventually the entire sole came off. I think I remember the other shoe had started to lose it's sole about that time. It was a bit uncomfortable hiking back down that steep, rocky trail in shoes without soles. I went really slow. I had no boots for the rest of the trip. I even knew better, but didn't see it coming. For a Grand Canyon raft trip, you do NOT bring old gear. Gear takes a lot of abuse down there. Even though that means your nice new gear will get beat up, that's what you should take. There's more to this story, but it would get too long.

One good result of my shoe self-destruction was that when I got back to camp, a big thunderstorm was brewing. It started raining hard. I was able to close everyone else's tent so that their sleeping gear and anything else inside didn't get soaked. If my shoes hadn't failed, everyone would have come home to soggy stuff.

stegeem wrote: »

I don't have an answer to your question, as I haven't done much rucking myself yet (just once a week for my job), but I would recommend starting with a lighter weight like 5kg and starting with ten minutes. If you can go for longer the next day, great. Maybe add another 2kg each week until you get to 20% of your body weight, then hold off adding more weight for a while.

I'm sure someone else has better advice?

It's been said that women are better at carrying weight on their upper bodies, possibly because we are built for pregnancy and carrying small children?

This is good advice. Best to start slowly and build up. Since the importance of good shoes has already been addressed, I'd only add that paying close attention to your posture is important if using any kind of weighted vest or whatever. Make sure the weight is even and be careful to avoid back and/or neck strain.

Just like a bicycle, a well-fit backpack makes a huge difference. It sounds like you found a good REI staff member to help. They for sure have some good ones!

I replaced my backpack years ago, and I am sad that I have to admit that I haven't taken it backpacking yet. I was using my vacation to do multi-day river trips. We pack stuff up in drybags and put them on a raft (or for self-support in a kayak or canoe). We do day hikes from camp, but we don't carry all our stuff. Oh the luxury we have. I remember my first multi-day river trip. At the pre-trip meeting we talked about bringing chairs. CHAIRS!!!! We talked about bringing GUITARS. GUITARS!!!! We even had Dutch Ovens. I do miss backpacking though. I have more time now, so maybe I'll get out.

I always used external frame packs. They carry gear well. My new pack is internal. It does have lots of adjustments. I expect I'll get it dialed in. One thing I remember from my old days of routine backpack trips - I could adjust the shoulder straps, the hip belt, and the angles that everything was cinched up. I could adjust where the weight was carried on my body. One thing I found was that no matter how I adjusted it, I always ended up carrying ALL the weight on the bottom of my feet.....

@kbholdings

While you await delivery, you can go into your iPhone and look at the "health" app. You can use your phone as a pedometer to count your steps. It's not as good as a dedicated tracker (I use a Garmin and it's awesome), but it will give you SOME data. For a while I was running both (only syncing Garmin to MFP), and they weren't THAT far apart. They weren't the same. I have some ideas why. Sometimes Garmin gives me steps when I'm not walking. I know why that is too. Not really a big deal - it's a small component of the overall total.

It's definitely wrist/arm movement. It has to be a specific kind, and it has to be repetitive. Like many good digital pedometers, it will ignore what it thinks is a step unless there's at least 20 of them in a relatively short period. Then it cycles up by 20 and keeps counting. I have had my "MOVE" alert cancel itself while cutting vegetables, washing dishes, or doing other tasks. I've even had it happen when driving!

Another metric that my Garmin can get fooled about is stairs. My device has a goal for number of floors climbed a day. I don't have stairs in my life or I'd use them. I think it uses barometric pressure. It wont register climbing stairs if you're driving even though air pressure changes. But if I'm out for a walk and the wind blows a certain way, the device can think I've gone up. Very odd. I think it's one reason why it will sometimes give a different number of feet of ascent and descent if I'm on a loop hike. No. That's different. If I'm on a hike, it uses GPS. The Z axis is the least accurate on GPS, so that's probably it.

Just keep moving!