One Way I Support My Health

If you know me, you will know that I LOVE to walk.  Yes, I put that in all caps intentionally.  And I’ve found a fun way to take what I love and use it to improve my health.  I call it “functional walking” which merely means walking somewhere for a reason.  I’ve even been known to dream up reasons, such as walking 4 miles to go to my bank and then walking home, or going out for coffee and a scone when I really could stay home for breakfast, or suggesting to a friend we meet at a place about 1-2 miles from my home, so I can walk there.

Walking is free and it has very little injury rate, so it’s the perfect way to stay fit.  My goal is to walk 20 miles a week and I use my iPhone to help me do that.  The iPhone came out with this new built-in app with the IOS 8 update last fall.  You will notice it as a white square with a little pink heart.  All I did was turn on the walking and running distance within the app.  A week later, I realized it had been tracking all my walking without me realizing it.

What’s neat about it is you don’t have to even turn it on…it’s always tracking your steps if you have your phone with you.  Perhaps this is Apple’s way of getting us more addicted to our phones, but I use it to my advantage.  And it doesn’t drain my battery like other walking or running programs do.  It gives me a daily miles walked and I can view it by day, week, month or year along with my averages.  Since my goal is 20 miles a week, I keep it on the weekly view and just make sure my daily average is near 3.  I can walk 8 miles one day, then less than 1 the next, as long as my totals for the week are near 20.

So my friends are sometimes saying “Are you sure you don’t want a ride?” and I am often responding “No thanks, I really LOVE to walk.”

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How do you use technology to help you meet your goals?  If you have an iPhone, did you realize this feature was there?  Post your answers in the comments below.