As I start to push back on people's beliefs about obesity, some people get huffy. The best one I've gotten so far was someone saying that maybe I was just not as active as I thought. I had convinced myself (i.e they mean lying) that I was doing more than I believed. And then, along with that, maybe I eat more than I think (I wish my nutritionist was there for that one). So if I really just watched my portion sizes and exercised more, I would not need medicine and all this doctor stuff.
Unfortunately for this person (and the others thinking, but keeping their mouths shut), I do have data to support my claims. In April of 2011, I bought the Fitbit: http://www.fitbit.com/. What I like about these folks is that they do not claim you have to become an iron man to stay fit. They believe if you can average 10,000 steps a day/70,000 steps a week, you can be a healthier person. The device is small and you can wear it on your bra strap. This is great for me because I swore off wrist watches on June 1, 2005.
It can record up to seven days of activity before having to be charged, and it syncs with your computer without having to put it on the charger. You can even wear it at night and it will record your sleep. You can also enter in your food. There is a new scale to measure body weight and mass. But since I don't weight myself (and you really should not either), I don't know too much about that.
So I have data. Boat loads of data. Over a year of data. So take a look:
Life Time Distances starting from April 17, 2011:
April 30, 2011 = Earned a total of 50 miles since purchase
June 17, 2011 = Earned a total of 250 miles since purchase
August 29, 2011 = Earned a total of 500 miles since purchase
October 26, 2011 = Earned a total of 750 miles since purchase
December 20, 2011 = Earned a total of 1,000 miles since purchase
As of this writing post, I have earned 1,540.5 miles since purchase. Another official data point will be recorded when I hit 2,000 miles. I will help you with some of the math:
I earned 1,000 total miles in 247 days. That is an average of 4 miles a day, every day.
Since December 20, I have averaged 3.4 miles a day (remember I am on exercise restriction).
I know my average will start to go down even more because of promising to keep close to under the 10,000/70,000 average, but it goes to show you that I am no lazy oaf. In fact, my numbers are a tad inaccurate because there have been days I have failed to wear the fitbit, it doesn't record biking accurately (though I have done little of that) and it doesn't account for swimming (not water proof). There was a week in May 2011, where my fitbit encountered a crushing accident and it took me that long to replace it. Also, in July 2011, I did not take my fitbit to Hawaii and we did a lot of walking, etc there. I also question the accuracy when I am curling because I slide on my slider a lot and I don't think it counts that correctly. In late October 2011, I suffered my first curling injury and tore a muscle on the front of my right calf. I did a half marathon on a torn muscle.
So again... with this little of data, do you still want to question my activities levels? I am not some lone weirdo medically. I am pretty tenacious and like to be active, but there are lots of people like me. We are shamed into silence because of fat jokes and criticism about fat people just being lazy and eating lots of food. Though we are reassured that is not us because of the acquaintance factor.
Maybe proof is not in the pudding, but in the data because I eat so little pudding! :-)
Capt Mel
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