Walking doesn't suck. Who knew?

Last week, I bought a Fitbit. It's a pedometer that tracks steps, flights of stairs, your activity level by the minute, and your sleep quality. It's quite the little contraption.

I purchased it because I needed something to challenge myself with and to help me change my old attitude toward walking. I'm not competitive with out people, because I've never been at a fitness level where it was even possible to consider being able to beat someone athletically, but I can be very competitive with myself. With the Fitbit, each day, I try to walk just a little further or go up another flight of steps.

Yesterday, I had an excellent day, exercise/walking-wise.

I didn't get up until noon-ish and sat on my butt until about 4 PM. Then, I drug my fiance to the local park and we walked quite a ways (for us, anyway), looking at the animals. Travis actually wanted to turn and head back to the car before I did. That's never happened before!! Between walking and gawking at the animals, I'd say we were out about an hour.

Then, I headed to Mom's to do laundry--yep, I'm 32 and still do laundry at my moms. :P While her clothes were finishing, before mine went in, we decided to go for a short walk. The walk probably took 20-25 minutes. There was 30 minutes left on the dryer load when we left and it wasn't quite finished when we arrived back at the house.

Keeping in mind that, between the time I woke up and when I left for the park I probably had less than 1,000 steps in, I'd say hitting over 10,000 steps was an excellent achievement! My total distance was 10,582 steps by midnight, which equals 4.01 miles with my stride length. At least 2.5 would have been from walking with Travis and Mom.

That's the most steps I've had in a day since buying my Fitbit. The fact I don't hurt from all the walking shows me how far I've come with getting fit and that I could have gone further. I'm tired, because that's more exercise than I normally get in a day, but it certainly wasn't my limit.

Prior to my weight loss, walking was painful, boring, and hard to do for more than a short while. Unfortunately, I have had a hard time losing that opinion since losing nearly 80 pounds. It's no longer hard or painful. Yeah, if I'm alone, it's still boring, but that's where my iPod comes in, right?

Right now, I'm excited about how far I walked and how easy it was. In a couple days, I may fall back into that old attitude. I felt that way for so long that it creeps back in and erases that enthusiasm easily.

Maybe that should be my self-assigned homework to work on getting rid of the old, hateful attitude toward walking and exercise. Exercise and walk often enough that the enthusiasm doesn't have time to be erased.