Those of you who are longtime readers of this blog have followed my getting on the steps bandwagon three years ago. Over the course of seventy years I\u2019ve encountered any number of health bandwagons. <\/p>\n
Let\u2019s see. First there was margarine. My mother was raised on a farm. She first switched from butter to margarine during World War II when rationing was enforced. After the war, she stuck with Oleo Margarine as a matter of economics. Margarine was cheaper than butter. By the way margarine had been invented during World War II as a butter substitute. (By the way, that\u2019s World War TWO not World War Eleven or worse, World War Pause!) <\/p>\n
But then, sometime later, butter became public health enemy number one. Eventually bacon and eggs\u2014especially egg yolks\u2014landed on the verboten list. Thus it happened that some people\u2014generally hair-shirt wearing individuals\u2014changed their preferred breakfast menu to scrambled egg whites with a side of tomatoes and unbuttered toast. Unbuttered toast? Are you kidding? Count me out. I can think of few things closer to food for the gods than Dave\u2019s Killer Bread toasted and slathered with a pat of butter and a dollop of Lingonberry Jam. <\/p>\n
Generally speaking, people don\u2019t go around making fun of those unbuttered toast folks. Well, admittedly, I just DID make fun of them, but I didn\u2019t go so far as to say do you really think that eating egg whites and unbuttered toast will add a day to your longevity? There are probably plenty of egg white only and unbuttered toast studies out there \u2014if the scientists involved can convince enough people to live that way for the time necessary to actually have a well-funded study, one you and I most likely paid for, by the way. The point is, no such study comes readily to hand as I sit here typing.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve all lived through the red wine bad\/red wine good arguments. That was followed by coffee good\/coffee bad\/coffee good ad infinitum. I believe the last I heard coffee was good again because it reduced the likelihood of developing Alzheimers. Bear in mind, however, that one person\u2019s study cancels out another person\u2019s study. So here\u2019s what I\u2019m doing. I drink coffee. I drink red wine. I\u2019m all right so far.<\/p>\n
And then there was the Low-Fat \u201cgospel\u201d which caused a whole generation of people to buy nothing but low fat milk\u2014which, it turns out, has very little nutritional value. Not to mention the low carb gospel which suggested that every carb in the universe was bad news. Those people haven\u2019t eaten Dave\u2019s Killer Bread, either. And wait, I just heard that there\u2019s no scientific evidence that Probiotics are good for your internal organs. But hey, if you love your Active, have at it. So I drink whole milk. I never got on the Active bandwagon, so I\u2019m good there.<\/p>\n
Some of you, suspecting that a rant may be in the offing, are waiting for the other shoe to fall, and here it is. This week I came across the following snarky headline from the NY Post: <\/p>\n
Sorry, fitness fanatics: Your 10,000-step goal is bogus<\/p>\n
The article in question explained that it was based on a study of 16,741 \u201colder women\u201d ages 62 to 101. A total of 504 of them died during the course of the four year study which was conducted by a Harvard researcher named I-Min Lee. I suspect Ms. Lee or maybe Dr. Lee is in a somewhat younger age bracket and regards anyone over 60 as elderly. I also envision her of being all of five foot nothing and clocking in a ninety-three pounds soaking wet. In her youthful wisdom she concluded that less than half of those 10,000 steps are actually necessary. She claimed that the people who did 4400 steps daily had the best longevity outcomes, and that notching more than 7,500 might actually be detrimental to your health. Well, let\u2019s see, if you do 6400 more steps a day, I suppose that gives you that many more chances of tripping and falling, and you don\u2019t need to read an expensive Harvard-based study to understand that falls are bad for \u201celderly\u201d women!<\/p>\n
The study was evidently inspired by the researcher\u2019s realization that the \u201cconventional wisdom\u201d as to the value of those 10,000 steps goal grew out of an ad campaign related to the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Well folks, I already knew about that factoid long before today\u2019s \u201cBogus\u201d headline! In fact, the real reason that ad campaign limited participants to 10,000 steps is this: The pedometer the Japanese invented for people to use while counting their steps only went up to 10,000. Beyond 10,000 it rolled right back to zero which is, if you\u2019ll pardon my saying so, a bit discouraging and maybe even counter-productive..<\/p>\n
So however that 10,000 number came into being\u2014lucky or not; bogus or not\u2014it\u2019s gospel for me because it has worked for me. When I moved my game up from 1500 steps a day to 10,000, I weighed 265 pounds and was wearing size 26 pants. I\u2019m at 199.2 as pf this morning. My pants are size sixteen. I had to get my size sixteen rear in gear last night to put in those last 500 steps before the clock struck midnight and my counter rolled back overtook zero.<\/p>\n
That 10,000 step number may not be magic, but it translates to a daily walk of 4.8 miles. Before my 71st birthday I never imagined myself as waking close to five miles every single day. But that\u2019s my goal now \u2014making my ten. I don\u2019t CARE where that number came from. I don\u2019t know if walking this way will make me live one day longer or one day less. I DON\u2019T CARE! It makes me feel better while I\u2019m doing it. I makes me feel as though I\u2019m accomplishing something\u2014as though I\u2019ve established a goal and I\u2019\u2019m MEETING THAT GOAL.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m sure you\u2019ve heard the expression \u201cdamning with faint praise.\u201d It\u2019s something I encounter often\u2014most notably at book signings from people who consider their literary choices to be far more high-brow that mere humdrum mysteries. It generally goes like this: I don\u2019t read murder mysteries, but I\u2019m sure yours are FINE.\u201d Well, yes, as a matter of fact, they are!<\/p>\n
At that\u2019s Ms. Lee, for you\u2014damning with faint praise. At the end of the article, this researcher who is most likely right in line with those dry toast adherents, allows as how if you want to disregard her advice and notch those extra steps, \u201cmore power to you,\u201d she said. The article didn\u2019t quote her as capping that sentence with the words, \u201cGo ahead and make my day,\u201d, but I\u2019m pretty sure I heard them all the same. <\/p>\n
And you know what? I don\u2019t care about that, either!<\/p>\n
Now I\u2019m going to go walk.<\/p>\n
See you when I hit my ten.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Those of you who are longtime readers of this blog have followed my getting on the steps bandwagon three years ago. Over the course of seventy years I\u2019ve encountered any number of health bandwagons. Let\u2019s see. First there was margarine. My mother was raised on a farm. She first switched from butter to margarine during […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3nsBA-uf","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1875"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1875\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1876,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1875\/revisions\/1876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}