Step It Up!

Do you know what this is?


No, it's not an Ipod. It's a pedometer or step counter. Obviously, it counts the number of steps you take.
Isn't it cute? I bought this from the Japan Home Center for only P88! In my earlier post "Keep Yourself Healthy", I stated that we need to take 10,000 steps per day. I didn't know how many steps I actually take per day, but I had an inkling that it's way below 10,000. So to test that theory out, here comes the pedometer!

How does it work? There's a clip at the back...

And you clip it to your waistband or belt. Like this...
There's a small black button on the side. You press this button to reset the count, which you should do everyday to start each other with 0. Then that's where you start in knowing whether your number of steps is increasing per day. This model automatically shuts off when you've been sitting down or when you leave it on top of a table or any other immobile surface for at least 5 minutes. To resume the count once you're ready to start walking again, simply press the black button softly.
Of course, increasing your number of steps should be a deliberate effort as I believe that most people cannot just achieve the 10,000 steps/day goal by accident!
There are several other pedometer models in the market, some of which cost more than P1,000. The more expensive models can also serve as a watch and I would expect them to more accurate.
As for my Japan Home Center pedometer, I'm already quite happy with it cause it's cute and it serves its purpose. Plus, who can argue with that attractive price of P88? Though I noticed that it might not be that sensitive, especially when you're wearing slacks or any other bottom wear with softer/smoother fabric. Maybe cause the movement with these kinds of fabric is more subtle?
When I was at the mall during the weekend (I was wearing jeans during that time), I was able to achieve 7,000+ steps.
Today, I ran up the stairs of my office from the 5th floor parking lot to the 10th floor as I was running late (as usual) and the sole working elevator was taking so long. I counted 100 steps (20 steps in-between floors), and that didn't include walking from the stairs to my cubicle. But when I checked my pedometer, it was only able to count 70 steps! Oh well!
Yesterday, I tried the pedometer so as to get an idea how many average steps I take during a normal day at the office (which includes my involuntarily-recently-added morning routine of running up 5 flights of stairs due to the reason stated above) and here's what I got:

Gasp! 1,758 steps? Margin of error or not, that's too few!
Immediately achieving 10,000 steps per day might be too ambitious, so I will start with the baby step (pun intended) of 3,000 steps per day. That's a 70.65% improvement!
What to do? Here are some 'steps' I thought of:
1. Get to work early and take the stairs from the 5th floor parking lot to the 10th floor, even when the other elevator gets fixed.
2. Take a 'leisurely' walk down the stairs after lunch during the remainder of the break. Walk down as many flights of stairs as I can and then take the elevator back up to my floor. Of course, my ideal goal is to be able to walk down from the 10th floor to the ground floor and in the more distant future, be able to climb the stairs back to the 10th floor.
3. After work, take the stairs from the 10th floor to the 5th floor parking lot.
4. Climb up and go down the stairs at our house repetitively until I hit the 3,000 mark.
5. Continue setting badminton dates with my officemates.
6. Exercise at home when time permits (Correction: should proactively make time for it!)
Maybe I won't be able to immediately implement these 6 action plans above but with a little discipline, I know I can do it! We can all do it!
Any other suggestions, you guys? :)
Let's step it up and be healthy! :)