THE ART OF TRACKING

Being a lifetime weight watcher’s member I have mastered the art of tracking what I eat and the exercise I do on a daily basis.   At times I have wondered whether this was on the verge of being obsessive.  I may not always track what I eat but I have tracked daily exercise for about 18 years.  This tracking of exercise became more of a process when I started to run in the mid 1990's.  Using the odometer in my vehicle, as GPS was not available, I measured running routes.  I also knew the routes mapped out by other runners so I was well prepared.  I even had official running journals where you could record daily distance ran, time that you ran, outside temperature, how you felt that day etc.   I had a big collection of these journals that I kept over a number of years.  Several years ago I realized that keeping 10 years worth of running journals was probably not needed and put them into the recycling box.   To this day, I still track the time I spend walking the dog and if I know the distance, I also note that.   With the introduction of GPS watches, I now had the opportunity to measure all kinds of walking distances.   This is simply gadget heaven.   I have an old GPS watch with the separate transmitter and I know that I should be upgrading to a single unit.  My fondness for gadgets is likely good material for another blog.

Over the years I have also collected pedometers.  I have several of them and the technology has improved with time.  Well this Christmas I received the latest in technology in pedometers from one of my girlfriends.

This baby measures overall steps, steps and time covered doing a good brisk walk, kcal burned, km covered and the current time of day.  It also retains memory of the last seven days.  I am in tracking heaven.  I generally wear the pedometer all day and my daily goal is to take 10,000 steps or more.  I know the number of steps from my desk at work to the bathroom and I have figured out that if I walk five times a day to the bathroom, I am close to covering ¼ of a mile.   What I like about a pedometer is that you can challenge yourself to do more the following day and if you know that you should be burning more kcal, you can measure it!

Am I obsessive?  I will leave that for you to ponder.