I suppose I would rather not walk 10,000 steps a day over carving out an extra half hour to take a walk around the neighborhood I feel sorry for your little lives with your little walks, when I have children to breathe meaning into every chore I do. Watching them destroy my possessions in real time is far more profound and meaningful than your walking.
FTFY
My experience when we did some obnoxious pedometer competition associated with work. I could sort of get close to 10,000 on a very active chore day which included mowing the whole (pretty big) lawn. Otherwise not even close unless I engaged in exercise or purposeful walking.
When I walk Zardoz to daycare/walk to work I get to right around 10,000 by the end of the day.
1: If you don't have an app that measures it, your suffering is meaningless.
1: I like to think I struck a nerve.
My comment was a tribute to your original comment.
Folk walking is the alternative to purposeful walking.
I wonder how much walking I do. I spend between 15-30 minutes walking to actively get somewhere each day (which can't be too many steps) but on many days at work I only sit down for my half-hour lunch, so that's eight hours on my feet without a lot of just standing (because that's boring). I need to find someone with a pedometer I can borrow!
I can get close to 10K only if I spend lots of time wandering around a mall, the supermarket, and then work the elliptical in the evening. It's really a great deal of walking.
10: I just have an app; there are apps you could use, if you have a phone with apps.
12: This did not occur to me. I do have a phone with apps! Excellent, and thank you.
The app I use is called "Moves" but there are others.
I walked home, which was three miles. I tried counting steps but lost my place in the two hundreds.
I am a long strider limper, and therefore persecuted by contests such as this one. Antisemites, all of you.
I mean, 3 or 4 of my paces is probably the equivalent of 3,000 or 4,000 of heebie's.
I am a long strider limper
VW goes three or four times as far as heebs, but in a big circle.
I bought a fancy new pedometer recently, and I'm finding 10,000 a day very useful as a target. It's not a huge target but it's high enough to make sure I'm doing enough to counter the worst effects of a sedentary desk job.
In a day when I drive to work I'd hit 5000 without deliberately walking, if I'm going in by train, 8000 or so. Days I'm doing childcare I usually hit 15,000 steps or more. So making 10K a day usually only involves a shortish lunchtime walk, or choosing to walk to lunch rather than eat in the office canteen.
2000 steps is roughly a mile, so yeah, 10000 is a decent amount each day.
I'm trying to average 10,000 steps a day. When I'm not active it's easy for pregnancy lethargy to take over and then I feel really bad. I think I barely cleared 2,000 steps yesterday because I was programming all day and I was despondent.
I get 3,000 steps for 30 minutes on the elliptical in the morning; otherwise I never make the 10,000 steps. 16 more days before I take my final and I can walk every day!!!
I've had two days this week under 3000 and all the rest nearer 14-15K just from wheeling the baby to daycare, or trying to trundle the wee bugger to sleep. Days when I've done 16K+ I've felt it later, though.
My record since I installed this app is 21,000-ish, but after that week, where I walked 90,000 all told, my foot started randomly hurting. A chunk of that was in not-so-good-for-my-feet boots, though.
Fwiw, I've found apps much less accurate than a dedicated device. Although I gather the new iPhone has a much more accurate accelerometer than previous ones.
Inaccurate both overestimating, but more often undercounting steps.
This one integrates gps information and... is good enough for me, basically. It's always on and I never have to think about it.
My foot started stochastically hurting.
I've never tried a pedometer. Running for an hour at my turtle pace puts me at right around 10000 steps, so you could do that, too, heebie.
5 miles a day seems like a lot of walking. I mean I'm sure it's good for you.
I've got the new iPhone but really, really spotty coverage where I work so it'll be interesting to see if the apps work. I'm really just curious; because of the nature of my job I'm not really currently worried about my activity level in terms of not sitting down (though I really should do cardio beyond running up and down the four flights of stairs at random intervals when called upon by a customer).
Personally, I'm not specifically doing the 10,000 plus steps a day for cardio. It depends how fast you walk. I usually get in 30 - 45 minutes a day of genuinely fast walking [not by design, but rushing to the nursery/train], which the pedometer and app registers as 'active' exercise, as opposed to just walking. But the main benefit for me is posture, and joint/back pain. If I walk a lot, my posture is better, and I get much less pain in my knees and back, and I'm able to train harder when I do my sport because I'm not permanently slightly debilitated by sitting all day.
I didn't bother to wear the pedometer during my workout, or during my morning routine. I didn't put it on until I got to my desk in the morning.
At a conference recently I was chatting with the woman seated next to me and having a nice conversation when she announced, "I'm going to go stand in the back of the room for a while. You know they say sitting is the new smoking."
I had not, in fact, known this. But since then I have talked to several public health people who seemed to be quite familiar with the phrase.
34: Pretty soon you won't be allowed to sit in restaurants.
Too protect people from second-hand ass.
That's why restaurants have sitting and no sitting sections.
Googling throws up a fair number of articles using the phrase:
http://www.runnersworld.com/health/sitting-is-the-new-smoking-even-for-runners
I'd never heard it before.
33: a surprising percentage of my walking comes just wandering around at the lab or in my house.
re: 42
Yeah, ditto. That's how I end up with 5000 steps on a day when I've driven to work.
When we had a baby, I was up and down the stairs so many times a day. Now, I just send the kid to get stuff.
Sitting is the new smoking. Leaning is the new chewing tobacco, provided you spit occasionally while you lean.
I sit just so I'll have something to do with my hands.
Sitting is the new black. If you want to be super chic, you sit instead of smoking and instead of wearing black.
Purposeful walking is the new little black dress.
I walk on my hands so I'll have something to do with them.
Anyway, everyone in my family who has died owned chairs. So, I'm pretty sure this research is solid.
We build this city on broken chairs. Don't you remember?
In Hawaii's ballet class, they're preparing a tap dance to Crazy Little Thing Called Love for the spring recital. (Michael Buble version, obvs.)
When she sings it, she says:
There goes my baby.
She knows how to do rock-n-roll
I think I want to insert extra "do"s all over the place. I know how to do internet. And to do pedometer. It's the opposite of verbing words. Let's do noun everything.
It's been previously remarked that the only sports at which the British shine are those which can be done while sitting down: sailing, dressage, showjumping, cycling, polo and rowing.
I saw a dead fox this morning. My first thought was that I hoped the boy didn't see it. We've just been through The Fantastic Mr. Fox. My second thought was why can't the huntsmen clean up after they're done.
Big Furniture is muddying the scientific waters with front groups like the Society for Sedentary Research. They are also appropriating potent symbols from American history like Rosa Parks, the lunch counter sit-ins and Sitting Bull. A common logo is the Lincoln Memorial.
Romper Room knew how to do do bee.
Anyway, I don't think I've ever seen a dead fox except for the fur part.
Maybe it was an unusually small, reddish coyote.
Anyway, I don't think I've ever seen a dead fox except for the fur part.
See quite a lot as roadkill round here. Maybe American foxes are better in traffic.
Maybe he was just doing sedentary to himself to death.
I don't know that we have many foxes around here. I haven't seen a living one in Pittsburgh. I think I heard one, but I don't really know for sure.
I'd guess I probably see dead foxes or badgers more or less on a daily basis. As roadkill, at the side of the A40, usually.
People always (I mean always) say our dog looks like a fox, which is funny, because he looks much, much more like a coyote (and is almost exactly coyote-size, which is, what, 50% bigger than a fox?). But he's reddish, and people in Pittsburgh obviously don't really know what foxes look like.
Back when I worked in an office, a UPS guy came in once and was petting my former dog (who looked pretty much like this one, a bit less red), and then asked the receptionist, "Is this a fox?" Yes, Mr. UPS, we keep a fox in the office. The wombats are in the basement.
He was clearly hoping you had one of those domesticated silver foxes from Russia and was disappointed that you didn't know what he was talking about.
I don't think I've seen a coyote around here either.
I'd guess I probably see dead foxes or badgers more or less on a daily basis. As roadkill, at the side of the A40, usually.
Here's it's skunks. Tons and tons of dead skunks on my daily commute. Plus dogs and cats.
Figurative tons, not metric tons.
I don't see many dead animals, probably because I don't do much highway driving.
I haven't seen a living one in Pittsburgh. I think I heard one, but I don't really know for sure.
You mean you might have heard a dead one? What did it sound like, "splat"?
69: Not so much with the armadillos?
66: People used to ask what Dogbreath was, implying "Not a dog." The best comment ever was "That's some hyena-looking shit," despite coming from someone who clearly didn't know what a hyena was.
I never understood why, though. She was a bit wolfy-looking, but that's not implausible for a dog, and honestly, she was walking on a city street on a leash. Isn't dog, at that point, your highest probability guess to the point that you'd expect people to misidentify a wolf as a dog rather than the other way around?
In Manhattan, no one knows that you're a dog.
The dogs we had growing up were half-terrier, half-whippet, so they looked like a gray, matted version of Splinter the TMNT Rat.
They sucked so bad, as I've described on many occasions. So smelly, so dumb, such a brief period of adult house-brokenness before a ten years of senility with accidents.
74.2: everybody in manhattan is too jaded to pay attention to something as banal as somebody walking a dog. They noticed the animal you were walking. QED, that animal must not be a dog.
74: They were referring to her distended genitalia.
A friend of mine ran into some kids who decided her Pomeranian was a fox, and refused to believe otherwise.
68: My buddy who lives out in Robinson (about a mile from the mall with Ikea) took a very blurry picture of a coyote in his yard, which adjoins a ravine that was left alone when the neighborhood was built. I'm 75% sure there are coyotes in (some of?) the big parks in town as well.
People do sometimes say, "He looks like a coyote", and I want to give them a little sticker for canine identification.
Oh, and to the OP: from what I've read and heard from public health people, the 10,000 steps thing is much better attested than the 8 cups of water thing. It's very rule of thumby, but it's actually been studied and shown to align with superior health, whereas the water thing was just made up by somebody once and repeated endlessly.
Today I'm already at 500 steps, and it's already almost lunch time!
On the other hand, eight cups of water is much easier. Even if you count the extra time peeing.
Unless you're Batman or something. It's got to be an ordeal to go to the bathroom in that kind of suit.
one of those domesticated silver foxes from Russia
I so want to hang out with those little dudes. They seem so happy and charming.
Surely that suit includes a catheter.
Unless he wears the catheter all the time, he's getting into costume way too quickly for that.
OT: don't start any long books, Halford. http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/mar/04/animal-protein-diets-smoking-meat-eggs-dairy
"A diet rich in meat, eggs, milk and cheese could be as harmful to health as smoking, according to a major study into the impact of protein consumption on longevity.
"High levels of dietary animal protein in people under 65 years of age was linked to a staggering fourfold increase in their risk of death from cancer or diabetes, and almost double the risk of dying from any cause over an 18-year period, researchers found..."
And I just drove across campus and back, to pick up lunches for students, because when I inquired about borrowing a cart from the cafeteria, they looked at me like I was crazy. Maybe I can stay under 1000 steps all day long!
I assume people steal their carts. Also, send the students to get the lunches.
Drum had something up on the eight cups of water thing, noting that the sentence was something like "people need eight cups of water daily, most of which is consumed through food and another beverages" and this got turned into advice that basically neglected the second half of the sentence.
There is a lot of Fitbitting in my Facebook feed.
92: Oh yeah, that rings a bell. Bicycling magazine dana little piece last summer suggesting rehydrating foods as part of one's workout. There is something pleasing about a cold cucumber after a hot, sweaty ride.
A lot of hydration advice is screwy, imo. Most of the time "drink if you're thirsty" works.
Coyotes common in the Chicago area. I used to watch them on my lunch hour when I had a salaried job near a forest preserve.
The "Eastern" Coyote, or Ontario Wolf--my dad called them "Brush Wolves," and described a pack of them pulling down a deer they had forced onto the frozen Ottawa River outside his lab window at Chalk River--is much bigger than the western version, and has a lot of Timber Wolf in it. ~65 lbs.
"In 2002, a professor at Dartmouth Medical School published a comprehensive study of the "eight glasses a day" advice. Professor Heinz Valtin successfully traced back the origins of the statement that people "should drink eight glasses, eight ounces each" of water every day to a 1945 pamphlet from the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Research Council. Without citing any supporting research, the pamphlet said, "a suitable allowance of water for adults is 2.5 liters daily." Furthermore, the very next sentence says "most of this quantity is contained in prepared foods." . . . Dr. Valtin carefully refutes each and every argument made for why people need to drink an arbitrary amount of water each day. He draws extensively on both his own research and the research of others to show how well the body regulates its own fluid balance. The idea that "by the time you're thirsty, it's too late" also seems to be false. Careful studies show that most people get thirsty well before changes in their body chemistry indicate "dehydration.""
[That's from Panic-Free Pregnancy by Michael S. Broder. The paper is "'Drink at least eight glasses of water a day?' Really? Is there any scientific evidence of '8x8'?" in the American Journal of Physiology: Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology ]
In my bit of the UK, there are fewer animals dead on the side of the road than in my bit of the US, but here no one seems to pick it up so you just keep seeing the same dead animal. (Also, a lot more litter than I'm used to. Perhaps the chain gangs keep it down in California.)
94: Seriously low hanging. I tried to make it more explicit to make a joke, but couldn't think of anything.
I didn't realize "silver fox" meant any kind of animal. I thought it was something people on the internet said when they're drooling over Anderson Cooper.
2 My experience when we did some obnoxious pedometer competition associated with work.
My mom did one of those and I think for about an entire year every conversation I had with her was about how many steps she took and where. God, that was awful.
Well, it is that, too! Do we think Anderson Cooper is a domesticated silver fox or the other kind?
97: My experience of pregnancy was that I was thirsty all the time. I probably took in about 100 ounces of water a day. I can't imagine having needed to remind myself to "drink for the baby." (Good book? I like the title.)
Someone should really work on domesticating red pandas.
Someone should really work on domesticating red pandas.
Let's all get tenure and then switch to this.
If nobody in China has figured it out yet, it's probably pretty difficult.
I have a million things to do this afternoon and here I am Google Image Searching red pandas.
105: Maybe Von Wafer can do that instead of moving to central PA, then.
Said it before and I'll say it again:top 5 overrated animal. Why not call a squirrel a grey panda.
Perhaps the lawyers could help in changing state laws to allow semi-domesticated red pandas to be sold as pets so your research can be self-supporting.
109: I like that you actually had a ranked list of the top 5, but I think you're wrong.
Yeah, boy. I said it at the time, too, but the giant panda is the crappy panda.
One is a black and white bamboo munching badass who could totally claw swat those who fuck with it, the other is a squirrel with a fancy name.
Maybe there's just a fundamental divide between people who like animals because they're cute and people who like animals because they're badass.
Oh my god, the giant panda is not a badass. It is an incompetent waste of resources.
Halford is just burning through that goodwill he just earned.
103: great book! Although it was suggested that I "only like it because it says you can do whatever you want." Untrue! It insists you stop smoking and blowing rails!
Untrue! It insists you stop smoking and blowing rails!
Yes! I loved and appreciated that.
Best to be cute and badass, like a polar bear.
Or a Siberian Tiger. Or a proud mountain lion.
I also loved how that book was like, "Look, I'm not telling you to go out and smoke pot while you're pregnant. Don't get me wrong. But if you are already doing that... meh, whatevs."
123: I loved that. Particularly the bit where he's like, "Just don't tell your family because they will think you are INSANE."
Blowing rails? I suppose I could just check Urban Dictionary, but I'd rather ask.
The idea that "by the time you're thirsty, it's too late" also seems to be false. Careful studies show that most people get thirsty well before changes in their body chemistry indicate "dehydration"
I think is a misapplication, over-generalization of what is actually true--if you're a cyclist on a long ride. There the energy use leads to low blood sugar (bonk) and dehydration very much faster than your normal mechanisms detect it. This is particularly obvious in competition, and many a great race has a competitor suddenly fall off the pace for one of those two reasons.
"Velocio," the cycling publicist who wrote a hundred years ago formulated it: eat before you're hungry, drink before you're thirsty.
But outside these extreme activities--long distance swimming is probably another example--this is not good advice.
126: read the first four letters as a noun.
116 is correct. The Giant Panda is a bear that eats grass. Its only value lies in its cuteness. It is not badass, neither is it delicious (I suspect, can't be sure, but I strongly suspect). Let the damn things die out. They've been slowly slouching down the trail to extinction since before humans were ever a threat.
That was one of my guesses, but I'd never heard it before and was getting stuck on the grammar.
You've probably only heard it as "do blowing rails".
I like to think 130 is anonymous because because he or she has eaten giant panda, but not often enough to form an opinion about the flavor.
128 & 129 didn't help me; I needed the Urban Dictionary.
I like to think 130 is anonymous because because he or she has eaten giant panda
Three guesses, first two don't count.
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Dontcha just love online shopping? Tried to book a city break via Guardian website. Total time spent on line and sorting it out on the phone when that fucked me over: 3 hrs 15 min.
|>
I'm up to 1800 steps today. Could I be any more sedentary?
Think of it as purposeful sitting.
I did some research into this and guess what, losers, your beloved red panda is most closely related to the weasel, not real pandas. And real weasels are just about as cute as your overrated weaselly friend. Your guy is overrated, QED.
140: Aww, look at its little weaselly ears and adorably tilted head!
I kind of want to unplug my phone before I walk to the other side of the lab so I can make sure to capture all my steps so that I can lord my sheer walkiness over heebie (in my head; it would be uncouth for me to post my ever-so-laudable totals here) but then if my phone dies it might not get all my steps on my walk home! A conundrum.
Weasels rank very high both on cuteness and pound-for-pound badassness.
True, but the topic for discussion is not "are weasels underrated" but "are red pandas overrated."
But outside these extreme activities--long distance swimming is probably another example--this is not good advice.
I suspect it spread through the populace largely through the mechanism of "weekend warriors" - now that everyone (of a certain SES) is expected to be sporty, we're all to think of ourselves as athletes, and so we apply advice targeted to serious athletes to our non-badass selves. When I first started to do things like 40 mile bike rides and 5Ks, I thought I needed to cargo load or whatever, because people seemed to do that. It took me years to realize that I almost never do anything so rigorous that it requires any targeted caloric intake at all - and that includes some fairly hard, long rides. Even 25 fast, hilly miles can be done on not much more than a piece of fruit.
We need to look at CARs: Cuteness above replacement species.
So what would you put into their niche, Halford?
I don't know that I favor them being extinct, I just want to take them down a peg. Your average ferret seems just about as cute.
Halford is the George Will of nature appreciation.Probably thinks kills per day is a meaningful stat. No appreciation for defensive stats, ecosystem adjustments, or how to normalize across geologic periods.
In other animal news, did you know that it's apparently impossible to find warthog meat in the United States? I've been trying to do this ever since Togolosh said here that they taste good, and I haven't found any possible way. If any of you know how, let me know, I keep thinking about this.
I mean look how awesome this looks.
