Ten years ago, on April 5, 2015, at our annual physicals, our then physician asked me, as he usually did, about my exercise routine. I told him, \u201cMy major form of exercise is jumping to conclusions.\u201d I thought that was hilarious. The doctor was not amused in the least. When it was Bill\u2019s turn, the doctor shook his finger in my husband\u2019s face and said, \u201cIf you don\u2019t use it, you\u2019re going to lose it.\u201d<\/p>\n
So the next day\u2014the very next day, on April 6th \u2014we started walking, gradually crawling our way up to that magic number of 10,000 steps, using our Fitbits to keep track. Although we didn\u2019t realize it at the time, it turns out our phones were keeping track, too. The Fitbits eventually went away and were replaced by Apple Watches, but we kept right on walking, and the phones kept right on counting. Magically I dropped 65 pounds and went from a size 26 to a size 16. Suddenly clothing that had been hiding in the back corners of my closets for years were wearable again. In fact, I\u2019m still wearing some of those original size sixteens. <\/p>\n
Eventually Bill\u2019s health situation changed, necessitating his using a walker and putting me behind the wheel of our family car. After decades of riding shotgun, I was suddenly back in the driver\u2019s seat. That came as a shock to both our systems, but we managed.<\/p>\n
Over time, dental crowns installed years ago tend to come to grief and need replacing. That\u2019s happened to both of us in the past couple of years. Our dentist\u2019s office (Thank you, Dr. Wendy Spektor) is only five minutes from our house. Crown appointments generally take two hours, so when I drove Bill to a two-hour appointment, did I drive there and drop him off? Nope, once he was ensconced in the chair, I went out and got my steps, walking laps around the parking lot\u2014three hundred or five hundred steps per lap, depending on which route I chose.<\/p>\n
Why am I telling you this? Because last week we went in for cleanings. As I was paying the bill, the office manager asked me where my step count was, so I showed her\u2014on my phone. Turns out, they\u2019d all noticed those times when I was outside marching around the parking lot, and now the dental practices\u2019s employees are encouraged to go outside and walk during their breaks. In other words, why pay to go to a gym when you can use a parking lot for free?<\/p>\n
What\u2019s more, because of me, other people are walking, too. I\u2019m not as fast as I used to be, but I\u2019m walking nonetheless. And here\u2019s my ten-year cumulative score: As of Tuesday of this week, my streak of walking a minimum of 10,000 steps adds up to 1,255 days. The total number of steps? 40,010,219. And the total number of miles? 19,007. <\/p>\n
My hope is to make it all the way around the world\u2014a total of 24,901 miles. The only way to do that is for me to keep walking.<\/p>\n
Stay tuned. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ten years ago, on April 5, 2015, at our annual physicals, our then physician asked me, as he usually did, about my exercise routine. I told him, \u201cMy major form of exercise is jumping to conclusions.\u201d I thought that was hilarious. The doctor was not amused in the least. When it was Bill\u2019s turn, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_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}},"categories":[133],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3nsBA-QM","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3272","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=3272"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3272\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3273,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3272\/revisions\/3273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}