Like many others, I may have overindulged a tad over the Christmas holiday, spending swaths of the holiday in a food-induced stupor. So maybe it was midway through my second box of chocolates when my brother came back to the house, armed with a set of FitBits for my husband, father, mother and me.
“We can all keep track of one another and see who does the most steps,” he said. But of course, he noted, since his fitness program mostly consisted of lifting weights, he wasn’t sure a FitBit would do much for him. His 29-inch waist wasn’t exactly crying out for the extra cardio either, blast him.
We’re a pretty competitive family, especially my mother and me. I believe my mother started trash talking me in games when I was still in grade school and I picked it up and perfected it to an art. I became good at the talk, if not the walk, anyway, and to this day, every epic loss I’ve had still rankles my heart like an open wound.
So basically, this move of my brother to give us both Fitbits was like tossing a rabbit into a cage of starving lions and walking away.
I could see that glint in her eyes, that ‘I want to win’ look that I’ve seen over the last 33 years. She’s been putting the rest of the family to shame with her regiment of walking flights of stairs and nightly yoga and Pilates, so I just knew I was going to be hard-pressed to keep up with her and hit what my brother said was the goal of making 10,000 steps daily.
Wearing a Fitbit helped me realize, in short order, just how little I moved during the day. While my mom walked across downtown and up the stairs to her work, and my husband logged more than five kilometres just walking around his school, I basically would log 10 steps, to get a cup of tea, before sitting down again at a computer. At least there’s little chance of me spraining anything.
So instead of collapsing on the couch after dinner, I began doing extra things to add to my steps, like dragging the kids off the couch and making them all flail their arms around to a Bollywood Just Dance number like discombobulated, ungraceful elephants. I was getting to 10,000 steps and my reward was a little buzz on my wrist to tell me I’d hit the mark. The mouse got its piece of cheese at the end of the maze, and it was hungry for more. Once, one beautiful time, my Fitbit even woke me up in the morning to tell me, “You rock!” Life never felt so good.
The other night, I finished on the treadmill and came upstairs, only to realize I was 100 steps away from 10,000. I started doing jumping jacks in the dark, startling my husband out of his sleep. He was just a few seconds from grabbing the bat he keeps by the bed to attack potential intruders before he realized it was just his crazy wife.
“Are you just trying to get 10,000 steps on that damn Fitbit? Yes? Well go on and finish then!”
It might be gimmicky. It might not be 100 per cent accurate, as Fitbit faces court challenges on the accuracy of its heart rate monitoring. It might have had recalls as a small percentage of users have, in the past, reported experiencing rashes. Funnily enough, I don’t care about any of that. All that matters is that I am number one in our family circle. I’m going to enjoy that status while it lasts.
