Friday 18 April 2014

In which I went to eat a burger and ended up buying a pedometer

Eating burgers and buying pedometers don't sit comfortably together, but last week the former ended up leading to the latter. I met a couple of ex-colleagues from back in the old days somewhere near Waterloo. I ended up consuming somewhere in the region of 8,000 calories in the form of a truly excellent burger, and then Linda showed me her Fitbit. Not a euphemism, but a kind of fancy pedometer that connects to an android phone. Whilst she too ate (most of) a burger, her little dongle (not a euphemism either) showed she had walked 7,500 steps, climbed 50 sets of stairs, and burned a trillion calories. She doesn't look like me. 

Whilst in reality it is little more than a pedometer, it is pretty nifty to be able to have it go straight to your phone and see how far you have traveled. For an ardent patch-worker like myself, ahem, it could being quite motivating. To cut a long story short, there is one of these things now attached to my belt, and since I unpackaged it about two hours ago, I've walked 341 steps and burned 232 calories. I've also eaten nearly an entire large packet of crisps and a large sandwich, so I'm probably still behind, but let's just see how many steps I can take over this easter weekend.

I went on the patch this morning despite all my moaning, but sadly before this little gizmo arrived. So I'm actually pretty keen to get out there again and see how far I travel. It was pretty dead, but a Common Whitethroat kept me occupied for a little while. How many calories does chasing a Whitethroat around carrying a large camera burn I wonder? I looked it up, but the internet is unfortunately none the wiser. Loads I expect, as it is a fast little bugger and the ground is pretty uneven, so at times I actually leaped, gazelle-like, over tussocks that were at least 15cm high. Naturally I feel a lot better for it, which is why I ate the crisps.




4 comments:

  1. Might need calibrating Jono:

    341 steps definitely isn't anywhere near 200 calories.

    Walking a mile burns 95 or so but takes 2000 walking steps

    Running 10 minute miles burns around 130 calories for the average person.

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    Replies
    1. Yes I thought that too, but there is a "background" calorie burn of about 90 per hour even if no steps taken - presumably just breathing and staying alive.

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  2. Interesting - could u put a link this gizmo J? I suppose 'background' is what you would call metabolism....

    Laurie -

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  3. yes, metabolism, that's what I was struggling for!
    https://www.fitbit.com/

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