Wednesday, June 30, 2004
Steps
As everyone, well, on earth is aware, McDonald's has a new item on its menu, the "Go Active! Adult Happy Meal": A salad, a bottle of water, and a step-counter, which they call a stepometer. At the same time, there's been word -- maybe by a PR firm hired by McDonald's, who knows? -- that people who walk more than 10,000 steps per day have healthier hearts & lower body fat (or something nice-sounding like that). Being a little soft around the middle, I have had my little heart set on obtaining one of those step-counters since I found out about the promotion. And, since I walk a lot anyway, I would like to finally receive the credit I am due for the number of steps I walk without even trying.
I do own a pedometer, but I never could set it up right. You have to walk 10 steps, measure that in centimeters, divide by 10 & then enter your average step-length into the machine. It then calculates the distance you have walked by multiplying that average by the number of steps you have taken. Fine. Simple enough, right?
Oh, but, when I tried it, the stakes seemed too high: Am I walking at a normal pace? Are my steps really that long? Should I err on the side of saying my steps are longer than they are so that I know I am always walking a little further than the machine says I am, or is it the other way around?
Plus, my apartment is too small to take 10 steps in a straight line & I found myself curbing my step size so that I would stop just when I got to the end of my living room. I could walk the same distance in 8 steps, but was I forcing? I couldn't tell. Walking fewer steps & dividing by that number is obviously not as accurate & I don't have centimeters on my yard stick, I discovered, anyway.
But, counting. Counting steps. It's simple. It's objective. No need to rely on the law of averages. No need to worry about overall distance; knowing the number of steps is enough. And, a step-counter is available at McDonald's. And, there are at least 35,482 McDonald's (how do you pluralize that?) in Manhattan alone.
Now, let me make an admission: I tried counting my own steps once while walking to 59th & Lex to meet a friend, just to get an idea of how many steps are on a block. I then figured I could roughly calculate my steps based on the number of blocks I walked. It doesn't work.
So, last night, I found myself at the food court of the Queens Mall & there was a McDonald's right there in the corner next to Sarku, where I had already ordered a plate full of what turned out to be the worst Japanese food in the world. I watched the people in line at McDonald's. I saw the promotional posters with bright-colored pictures of the spring water, the premium salad, the stepometer.
I wanted that stepometer, that counter, that simple, beautiful machine that would put my curiosity to rest, that would motivate me to lose 10 pounds and one dress size before my sister's wedding. Could I, I asked the cashier, purchase a stepometer & forgoe the salad & water? For $3.25, it turned out I could.
The McDonald's stepometer is a small, blue plastic device with the arches etched onto the front & the words "Go Active" in red italics on the cover. It comes with a pocket-sized fitness book, "Step With It" by Bob Greene, apparently Oprah's personal trainer, which does indeed promote walking 10,000 steps per day for better health.
The instructions for using the stepometer are simple: You clip it on your belt buckle or waistband, reset the counter to zero & get moving.
A short walk from the garbage can where I threw out the plastic bag which came with the stepometer to the escalator yielded 358 steps. Closing the protective cover of the stepometer after resetting it to zero yielded five. From what I can tell there are little balls inside the stepometer that are propelled forward every time you take a step, causing the counter to advance...by tens or fives or hundreds. I tried wearing it backwards with the same results.
Simply put, the thing is a piece of garbage. But, at least my appetite has been assuaged & my lesson has been learned.
Now, I'm going to check to see if my tape measure measures in centimeters.
--m
|
As everyone, well, on earth is aware, McDonald's has a new item on its menu, the "Go Active! Adult Happy Meal": A salad, a bottle of water, and a step-counter, which they call a stepometer. At the same time, there's been word -- maybe by a PR firm hired by McDonald's, who knows? -- that people who walk more than 10,000 steps per day have healthier hearts & lower body fat (or something nice-sounding like that). Being a little soft around the middle, I have had my little heart set on obtaining one of those step-counters since I found out about the promotion. And, since I walk a lot anyway, I would like to finally receive the credit I am due for the number of steps I walk without even trying.
I do own a pedometer, but I never could set it up right. You have to walk 10 steps, measure that in centimeters, divide by 10 & then enter your average step-length into the machine. It then calculates the distance you have walked by multiplying that average by the number of steps you have taken. Fine. Simple enough, right?
Oh, but, when I tried it, the stakes seemed too high: Am I walking at a normal pace? Are my steps really that long? Should I err on the side of saying my steps are longer than they are so that I know I am always walking a little further than the machine says I am, or is it the other way around?
Plus, my apartment is too small to take 10 steps in a straight line & I found myself curbing my step size so that I would stop just when I got to the end of my living room. I could walk the same distance in 8 steps, but was I forcing? I couldn't tell. Walking fewer steps & dividing by that number is obviously not as accurate & I don't have centimeters on my yard stick, I discovered, anyway.
But, counting. Counting steps. It's simple. It's objective. No need to rely on the law of averages. No need to worry about overall distance; knowing the number of steps is enough. And, a step-counter is available at McDonald's. And, there are at least 35,482 McDonald's (how do you pluralize that?) in Manhattan alone.
Now, let me make an admission: I tried counting my own steps once while walking to 59th & Lex to meet a friend, just to get an idea of how many steps are on a block. I then figured I could roughly calculate my steps based on the number of blocks I walked. It doesn't work.
So, last night, I found myself at the food court of the Queens Mall & there was a McDonald's right there in the corner next to Sarku, where I had already ordered a plate full of what turned out to be the worst Japanese food in the world. I watched the people in line at McDonald's. I saw the promotional posters with bright-colored pictures of the spring water, the premium salad, the stepometer.
I wanted that stepometer, that counter, that simple, beautiful machine that would put my curiosity to rest, that would motivate me to lose 10 pounds and one dress size before my sister's wedding. Could I, I asked the cashier, purchase a stepometer & forgoe the salad & water? For $3.25, it turned out I could.
The McDonald's stepometer is a small, blue plastic device with the arches etched onto the front & the words "Go Active" in red italics on the cover. It comes with a pocket-sized fitness book, "Step With It" by Bob Greene, apparently Oprah's personal trainer, which does indeed promote walking 10,000 steps per day for better health.
The instructions for using the stepometer are simple: You clip it on your belt buckle or waistband, reset the counter to zero & get moving.
A short walk from the garbage can where I threw out the plastic bag which came with the stepometer to the escalator yielded 358 steps. Closing the protective cover of the stepometer after resetting it to zero yielded five. From what I can tell there are little balls inside the stepometer that are propelled forward every time you take a step, causing the counter to advance...by tens or fives or hundreds. I tried wearing it backwards with the same results.
Simply put, the thing is a piece of garbage. But, at least my appetite has been assuaged & my lesson has been learned.
Now, I'm going to check to see if my tape measure measures in centimeters.
--m
