Before anyone comments that fitness should be intrinsically motivated for continued and long-term success and that health should be its own reward, let me ask, when your car battery is dead, do you wait for it to motivate itself to work or do you get another car to jump-start it into action? It is important that rewards further encourage health, and my favorites are those that keep families moving together. A great example is entering a run/race (which can be walked) together, as nothing gets more people addicted to fitness than the adrenaline rush of a race (if you need help finding a race, try active.com or watch for flyers or signs in your community), but you could also reward your family's "most improved" or "longest distance" winners with new running shoes or shorts, but avoid rewards like a trip to Bruster's or a new video game.
So how do you get started?
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for the entire family. You may meet with greater success if your children choose their pedometer, but if you choose them, you could let them decorate them. 2. Learn all about it: pedometers count the vibrations made by your feet striking the ground and are most accurate when worn on your waist, centered above your knee, and parallel to the ground (not tilted); counts are not as accurate when the pedometer is worn in a pocket. Be warned that if you tell teens that the pedometer works on vibrations that they will figure out that shaking the device will advance the counter. Also, as the device works on vibrations, it will not register consistent movement on a bike, which is a great outdoor activity for kids and teens; if you want to include biking in your step-miles, an estimate is that one mile biked equals 2,000 steps.
Now that you understand the basics of pedometers, learn what your goals should be, and, unfortunately, it is not an even playing field, as girls ages 6-12 need about 12,000 daily steps and boys 15,000 to maintain a healthy Body Mass Index (June, 2004 "Preventative Medicine" by Catrine Tudor-Locke Ph.D. and associates) versus adults who only need 10,000 steps. As the average person is no where near these numbers, use the first week to simply record your daily steps and make subsequent weeks about improvement.
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4. Need more encouragement: There are many neat programs that help you to track your progress and offer ways to encourage you to keep moving. Webwalking allows you to virtually walk the American Discovery Trail, which crosses the midsection of the United States. GeoPalz is a program geared toward children with special pedometers made to look like a variety of things and pointers for parents, but a little internet research will reveal plenty of additional options.
5. So how do you reach your goal: if five miles per day seems impossible, whether because of time, energy, or distance, remind yourself that on the first day, you do not have to set out on a five-mile walk. Instead, start small; park in the last available spot in the parking lot, if you are going up or down two stories, then take the stairs, if you have an office, pace briskly while on the phone. Also, remember that multiple small walks are just as good as one long walk, so recruit a co-worker to walk with you for the second half of lunch or walk the track instead of sitting in the bleachers to watch your daughter's practice. Finally, our family favorite is the after-dinner-walk, which has many benefits, such as walking-off that stuffed feeling from dinner instead of going to bed feeling uncomfortable, and as exercise suppresses your appetite, if you are a bedtime snacker, it will help to curb your snacking habit, but the best part about this walk is that your family can do it together.
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