One Month Down … 11 to go..

I should really say 313,614 steps down 5,686,386 steps to go!!

So as you can see from the picture I have a lot of things to be proud of this month, and a few to work on. Yes, I didn’t achieve my planned 11,000 step average but coming in at 10,000 steps is still a great achievement. Consider this, my 4 rest days where I didn’t do anything were about 3,500 steps average. If you take this as a better gauge of my average steps without doing workouts this means that I would have only had about 108,000 steps normally and it would have taken me until near the end of March to walk the number of steps that I completed this month.

Moving forward this month I am planning to try and average about 12,000 plus steps a day. This is my stage wise approach to trying to get my average step count in the 18,000 to 20,000 step range for summer to make up for these first few months. Note: 6 million steps is an average of 16,000+ a day for the year. One rule that I am going to make for myself for this month is to only take one “rest day” a week and all rest days need to be at least 6,000 steps.

As always I welcome people’s comments and encouragement. Thank you to my new WordPress Followers, and thank you to all my Facebook / Twitter people that come to read my posts. I ask of people to please take time to share / re-tweet my blog to your friends and ask them to do the same to help me build a bigger following and eventually help others in their own life journeys.

Thanks Rob

Change…

2016 is certainly becoming a year of change. First this challenge to myself and all the steps I am taking and now also changing jobs.

Before I get into some thought though I want to acknowledge my first official followers on WordPress. So Thank you to Tony and Joelle for following me. I ask people that read my posts from Facebook or Twitter to also check out some of their great posts.

http://www.tonyscoastalwalk.co.uk www.walkwithjoelle.com

I think this quote that is in the first picture is probably the way that I felt when I initially decided to do this challenge. 6 weeks ago I was at the point in my life where my depressive demons were certainly pushing me. Also the depression over what I had gone through with surgery and now not loosing weight was very heavy on my mind. I might not be seeing the weight loss but I am certainly seeing the change in my overall activity level. If you told me 4 months ago that I would be walking nearly 4 miles every day as exercise I might have told you that you were crazy and thinking of the wrong man.

I might have also thought you were crazy if you said that I would be leaving a job that I have been at for 13 + years. But I am….After 13 + years 33 % of my entire life to date I have worked for the same mental health agency in West Seneca NY. Now I only have 5 days left before starting over fresh in another area of Occupational Therapy. This area I have not been involved in since my first professional job as an Occupational Therapist back in 2000-2001. Needless to say the butterflies and thoughts race through my head daily. But as they say change is inevitable……

Weekly update / Followers..

Well looking back over the last couple of weeks I would say I am doing about 50% with my challenge. Some of you whom are reading might say that is very low considering all the steps I have taken. But part of what I set out to do with this challenge and blog was to… “blog and gain some followers and possibly help other people”. So far I am failing on the regular blogging and getting followers. My posts have been erratic and some might say lack quality.

So coming up on the final week of January, I have three goals this week. #1 is to end the month strong to ensure I get my average step count up closer to 11,000 per day. (I am only at 9,700 average) #2 is to try and spend more time trying to gain followers. #3 is to do at least 3 quality posts during the week.

So for those whom like numbers here are my step counts..

Total Steps to date – 233,552 Average steps 9,731 3.89% of Challenge complete

1/1/2016	9,821
1/2/2016	12,875
1/3/2016	9,201
1/4/2016	12,574
1/5/2016	10,354
1/6/2016	8,898
1/7/2016	12,029
1/8/2016	7,650
1/9/2016	8,862
1/10/2016	2,704
1/11/2016	6,067
1/12/2016	13,934
1/13/2016	12,574
1/14/2016	13,046
1/15/2016	11,245
1/16/2016	11,290
1/17/2016	3,962
1/18/2016	3,151
1/19/2016	12,601
1/20/2016	11,405
1/21/2016	10,277
1/22/2016	11,338
1/23/2016	7,694
1/24/2016	10,000+… day not over yet..

As always thanks for reading… Rob

Determination..

Despite having a bad weekend of walking, I have had DETERMINATION. This picture was determination yesterday when I walked 2 miles in lake effect snow. I actually walked in the snow earlier in the day for a mile then this picture later at 8pm.

I have rebounded nicely from the weekend low step counts to put up three 12,000+ step days. Determination is something that at times might waver but true determination will conquer. Although I am only 14 days into this challenge I believe in my determination and believe I can succeed. Determination has also helped me loose 7 lbs in the first 13 days of the year.

What do you need more DETERMINATION to do?? Think about it, I would love to hear your comments..

Rob

Weekly Update…

Well I haven’t posted the last couple of days as I have been very preoccupied with thought. I hope people have been doing well with keeping their new years resolutions. I have been preoccupied because after 14 years at the same place of employment I was offered a job somewhere else. I am seriously thinking of changing jobs as this is an amazing offer. It has been VERY stressful trying to think of all the PROS and CONS to make a decision. This has been coupled with some increased foot pain, worry about my wife whom is having surgery in a little more then a week, and all the other things life throws at us. As such, my step count will has completely sucked the last few days and put me farther behind my goal. Today has been a rest day that has been under 5,000 steps. Now the weather is getting bad this week too… ugh.

So for those of you who like number and wanting to know where I am, here is all the info for the fist 9 days of this challenge.

Jan 1 – 9,821
Jan 2 – 12,875
Jan 3 – 9,201
Jan 4 – 12,574
Jan 5 – 10,354
Jan 6 – 8,898
Jan 7 – 12,029
Jan 8 – 7,650
Jan 9 – 8,862
Total – 92,264 / Average 10,252
% of 6 Million Goal 1.54%

I truly hope that this slowdown of this weekend I can recover from during the week. To all my Munzee friends remember about the special double points next weekend. I hope everyone has a good week!!!

Thanks for reading.

Rob

Happy Thursday…

OOPS.. Forgot to post the other day.Overall have been good. With being back to work and trying to get in steps I have forgot about posting. As you can see from the picture I have been doing OK with getting in steps and trying to get my daily average to about 11,000 steps during the month of January.

One thing that is becoming more and more apparent is that I will have to really work on getting my steps up into the 20,000 step range for the summer so that I can make up the ground I am loosing right now and next fall into winter. Currently it is taking walking during my lunch and at least an hour at night to get to the 9-10,000 step range. This means that by summer I will need to be walking about 2-3 hrs out of my day!!!

Nothing else interesting really to say today… Hope everyone is having a good first week of 2016… 7 days in 359 days to go.

Thanks for reading Rob.

Ready to Start… Sharing

It has been nearly a week since I started to plan for this adventure of “6 Million Steps in 2016”. I now believe I am ready to share this Blog with Facebook, Twitter and the rest of the world. I also think I am set to start actually writing daily, and sharing a little more of my plan and story.

I have scrapped my S-Gear Health fitness tracker and purchased and linked a new Garmin Vivofit activity tracker to my phone. Re-setup my My Fitness Pal account, and linked both to my Achievement.com profile. I am planning on getting some new shoes this week and believe I am all set to start. This week I am off work and plan to try and get 7500 plus steps a day. Hopefully by doing this prep this week, and being able to make a conscious focused effort on sharing this week I will be set to gain momentum starting Friday to start 2016 strong.

Why did I pick “6 Million Steps”? Well based on my previous efforts to track steps with my Fitbit and S-Gear Health I seem to average about 3500 to 5000 steps a day when not doing a workout. According to About.com that is fairly average: “A study published in 2010 of over 1000 Americans found an average of 5117 steps overall, with men only slightly ahead of women at 5340 steps compared with 4912 steps.” This would make the average American walk just under 2 Million steps in a year. My thought was to try and truly push myself to do something “Amazing”. So given that it is 2016 I figured on “6 Million Steps in 2016”.

This breaks down to an average of 16,400 steps per day to achieve my challenge!! 300% of the normal average American!!!