Dear LPG,

I wrote this letter for you just before the pandemic broke and forgot to send it but now I have found it again

I have been the user of a smart mobile phone for some time now and became an octogenarian this year.  As you might imagine, there was a party and presents.  One of the presents was a fit-bit which my granddaughter thought would be a good idea.  I read your article which featured a few years ago now (►►►), I thought that I would find it interesting to be able to see exactly how much sleep I was getting and how many calories I was using.  Despite all that I must admit to opening it and instantly trying to hide a look of horror, because I understand that you should walk about 10,000 steps a day to keep healthy and, while before getting it, I have never really thought much about how many steps a day I walk, I was sure it was not that many.

It looks good and can be a good way to provoke a conversation when you are out and about, (as long as you don’t mention the statistics it collects too often), so I do charge and wear the thing but, up until three weeks ago, I seldom checked the readings if ever.  This was more of a deliberately not looking habit rather than just me forgetting to look.

For some reason I decided to do a little Google research on the subject and realised that I am not doing too badly when I manage to rack up 3,000 or so steps in my average day.   The secret is not to worry about how few steps you take but to focus on taking a few more each day.  It is all about how much improvement you make.  At the ripe old age of 80 I know quite a few people who can no longer walk without pain and a few who can no longer walk at all, so I count myself lucky to still be able to get out and about. 

Another thing I found is that, if you wear the thing on your wrist,  you need to take the readings with a reasonably large pinch of salt because if you walk around a supermarket pushing one of their trolleys, or you push your grandchild around your local park for the day the pedometer on your wrist often does not register your steps, because the trolley or pram is absorbing the impact which makes the pedometer work, but the other day I did manage to achieve my 10000 steps without even leaving the house.  I spent most of the day cleaning the windows; something I do with my left hand, the hand on the end of the wrist that I wear the pedometer on.  So I have decided that it is wrist action that counts as much as any walking you do. 

There is one thing that I do agree with though, now that I have one and I am not frightened to check the details, I walk just a few more steps each day which cannot be a bad thing. 

BJ, Lewisham

LPG found some information…

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