Week #34: Your Unhealthiest Habit

In the last several years I have considered myself an active person. I go to the gym, I run outside, I have workout classes that I enjoy. Like probably a lot of you reading this, I have a desk job. Most of my day at work consists of sitting at my computer and working on spreadsheets. Despite this fact, I still considered myself an active person.

The above is my ActiveLink report from yesterday. Wednesdays are my "rest" days. I start the morning (at a time when on other days of the week I'd be working out) at Weight Watchers. Right after I finish the meeting, I go to my full-time job. After work I do yoga. By the time I get home, it's 7pm and I've been away from the house since 5:45am. It's then time for dinner and chores around the house.

I barely met my baseline yesterday, much less my ActiveLink goal! Even the yoga didn't help much, which initially when I started using ActiveLink was concerning. But then I thought about it - the kind of yoga that I'm doing on Wednesdays is very focused on flexibility, focus, and holding poses. It is not what you'd consider "power" yoga. I burn very few calories during a session, and I don't frankly move much - I get into a position and hold it. At any rate, does that daily graph look like an active person to you? Hmm, maybe I need to re-evaluate what I think I am....

And now here's a Sunday from a week or two ago. I started the morning at the gym cycling, then from about 11am-1pm I worked a Weight Watchers meeting. I'm not sure what I did the rest of that day, but while the green bars aren't crazy high, I can tell I wasn't loafing around the rest of the afternoon either. Still, it's clear to me that my primary source of movement in life is through my exercise.

So I've been leafing through this week's Weight Watchers Weekly and picking your brains at the meetings this week to try and figure out how I can move more at work. Since I already do some of the usual things (park farther away in the lot wherever I go, for example) I am working on becoming more "inefficient" in my movements. If a letter needs to get dropped in the mail room, instead of combining it with a trip to the restroom, it now gets its own trip.

It still doesn't add up to much, but I guess the fewer minutes I spend sitting on my duff, the better!