3 Ways A Pedometer Can Help You Achieve Your Fitness Goals

21 May, 2015

Fitness

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A pedometer is a great tool for achieving weight loss and fitness goals. It tracks the number of steps you take, which means it can be used to monitor your progress, provide motivation and make exercise more fun. You should be aiming to take around 10,000 steps per day in order to maintain a healthy heart and manage your weight, and having a pedometer on you at all times allows you to manage your activity levels accordingly.

Using a pedometer for weight loss

There has been research into the use of pedometers that has revealed people who use them to track their movements actually increase the average steps they take by up to 2,000 per day. To put this statistic into some context, 2,000 steps equates to around a mile. For the average person, taking an extra 2,000 steps a day will burn off an extra 100 calories, or 36,500 calories over the course of an entire year. If you can make this relatively small adjustment to your daily routine, you could lose more than 10 pounds in a single year.

There are three effective ways to use a pedometer to achieve fitness goals, and they are relatively easy to implement.

1. Plan your activities around your daily steps target

You might think that taking 10,000 steps every day is a tall order. This equates to around five miles – something you might consider to be an impossible task. What you’re forgetting, however, is that you are probably already taking several thousand steps a day going about your daily business. You don’t always need to set aside time specifically for activity, as making a few changes to your daily routines is often enough to drastically increase the number of steps you take.

If you make the one or two mile commute to work by car or bus, trying walking occasionally instead. Simply getting off your bus or train a couple of steps early might also help you to achieve your 10,000-step goal. Instead of shopping on the Internet, head to the supermarket or shopping mall. And instead of using the elevator, take the stairs. If you spend a lot of time on the phone at work, go hands free and walk around your workplace as you talk. There are countless ways to make walking part of your everyday life, they just require some permanent changes to your lifestyle.

2. Use a pedometer with a healthy eating regime

A healthy, balanced diet is crucial to fitness. There is very little to be gained in tracking your steps if you aren’t also tracking the foods you eat. Some people keep food journals in order to track their consumption levels and net calorie intake, but a fitness tracker can perform both functions in the background.

In order to make your workout sessions as effective as possible, you need to fuel your body accordingly. Eat too few calories, and you simply won’t have the energy your exercise requires. Eat too many calories, however, and all the extra steps your pedometer is counting will be for nothing. An activity tracker acts as a pedometer and a calorie counter, and some of the latest trackers provide useful recipes and nutritional information too. Stated simply, you won’t be able to reap the full rewards of a pedometer unless you have a healthy eating regime in place.

3. Set challenging goals for yourself

In order to lose weight and gradually build on your fitness levels, you will need to be constantly pushing your boundaries. You can use a pedometer to gradually increase your activity as your fitness levels improve. This will not only allow you to monitor your progress, it should give you some much-needed motivation. And if done correctly, it can be a lot of fun too. An activity tracker can help you set and track your goals – providing you with a real sense of achievement when your performance starts to improve.

A pedometer can play a major part in fitness and weight loss regimes, but only if it is used in the right way. By using your pedometer effectively, it can provide the motivation and information you need to achieve all your long term health goals.

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About Paul Stainthorpe

Running has been part of my life since 2011. While growing up I hated running and would do anything to avoid it at school. Give me a ball and a racket any day. It’s funny how some things change. I run for good. In 2012 I ran the 12 Days of Christmas for the Percy Hedley Foundation. In 2013 I attempted (with friend Lee Nyland), the 12 parkruns of Christmas for the Tiny Lives Trust.