Pacing Myself

Last week marked both my birthday and a year since we retired. I set myself a goal of walking 10k paces a day, and at least 1000 miles in that year. Using my Fitbit I've been able to keep a record of my progress. I'm pleased to say that I passed the 1000miles on December 31st. My overall results, birthday to birthday are [ drum roll please 🥁🥁🥁] 

1400 miles in a year, and 11000 paces per day

As you can imagine, I'm very happy about that. 

But I'm looking again at my goals. For my 68th year, I'm aiming for 

12000 paces per day*

The 10k idea was an arbitrary figure dreamed up by a pedometer manufacturer just before the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Recent research seems to suggest that perhaps 12k is a better figure if someone is aiming to improve fitness and lose weight. I'm not sure I shall manage it. But I'm certainly going to try. 

I should say that I work on weekly averages - if I spend half the day travelling by car or train, I know my step count will be down, so I try to walk more on another day that week. 

I left Dorset weighing 163lb, now I am 147lb. That's just over a stone - I lost that between October and Christmas and have kept it off for 3 months. I'm now a UK size 12 in clothes. I'd like to lose a little more, and get back to being a UK 10.

My BMI [according to NHS website calculator] is 29.6 and I'm “over we weight “[at least I'm no longer "obese"] The NHS reckons I should aim for a "healthy" weight of between 92 and 124lbs.

92lbs is 6stone8. When I was 18 I weighed exactly 100lbs, and they would not let me be a blood donor because I was underweight and therefore "unhealthy". Make up your minds, medics... I'll try to eat less, walk more, and see what happens 

*it's over a week since my birthday and I've managed to keep my average step count over the 12K target thus far

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