Tip 20: Watch Your Steps

One of the best ways to have a healthy heart is to be consistently active.  We often think of being active only in terms of dedicated exercise, but consistent activity throughout the day can raise our fitness level and even stimulate weight loss.  One way to gauge your activity is to count the steps you take.  Generally, sedentary people take around 1,000-3,000 steps.  Two thousand steps is the equivalent of a mile. Those folks who take 10,000 per day walk the equivalent of five miles!

To monitor your daily activity, consider wearing a pedometer and keeping track of how many steps you are taking.  Try this idea:   Wear a pedometer for three days and average the number of steps taken each day to establish your baseline.  Then, increase the number of daily steps you take by 500 each week.  So if your baseline is 2000 steps, add 500 steps and shoot for 2,500 steps each day during Week 1.  Add 500 more and shoot for 3,000 steps in Week 2, and so on, working up to 8,000-10,000 steps.  Although our heart muscle still need vigorous exercise, this kind of increase in our daily activity level can have amazing results in fitness and weight loss.  So set your goal, and start stepping.