00:00: Objection. Objection, Your Honor. Objection in the court. That’s all very nice, but we can’t do it because we don’t have enough…

00:06 : Time.

00:07 : Time.

00:07 : Time. Well yeah, in order to do this, you need to make getting fit, a higher…

00:15 : Priority.

00:16 : Priority. Except there’s a problem with priorities. Because when I have a high priority, something even with a higher priority comes and bumps it, occasionally, often, very often, frequently, almost all time. And, “Fitness I can do tomorrow, and this meeting I have to do today.” Or, “This thing I have to do today.” Right? Anybody here ever had the experience where you had to drop off or pick up a child at school? So was that a high priority? Well actually, yeah, a very high priority, but a high priority can get bumped by a higher priority. “Gee Sally, I’m sorry I didn’t pick you up at school today. A meeting came up at work that had a higher priority. I hope hitchhiking home in the rain was a formative experience for you.” No. No. There weren’t priorities that came and bumped picking up Sally. Because you see, picking up Sally is not a priority, it is a requirement.

01:08 : You see, we don’t have enough time in the day for all the priorities, but we do have enough time for the requirements. And so if you make getting fit, and staying fit, a requirement, you can do it. So how do you do it? Well, there all sorts of ways. You gotta get creative. You can just… Jeannie never goes for a walk, she just does all sorts of stuff. She’s on her feet, going back and forth, doing all sorts of things all day long. She just picked up the pace. Sometimes at the end of the day, if she hasn’t got enough steps, she’ll hop on her treadmill. If she’s talking to her sister for an hour, she’ll hop on a treadmill and talk to her for an hour, or she’ll walk around the house, or she’ll walk outside.

01:45 : So if you’re on the phone with somebody, you don’t have to have papers in front of you, and it’s gonna be more than a two-minute… Walk, don’t sit. So easy. Oh, you couldn’t get a treadmill, could you? Nah, ’cause they’re so expensive, like $5,000, right? Well, if you want a gym-quality treadmill, that’s gonna be used 24/7, a lot by runners, yes, it will cost you five grand. But if you want a nice, good walking treadmill like what we have, which is that, 750 bucks. About the same cost as your phone. Yeah, watch TV. Anybody here watch TV? Do you sit? Try walking. The treadmill won’t cost you anymore than the TV did. Great way. Haven’t got enough room? Get a folding one. They’re available. Or get a dog. Dogs are great way to be fit.

02:38 : And so… Okay, so how much you have to do? How much you have to do? Well, here it is. Basically, the sweet spot where you like to get to is 10,000 steps. 10,000 steps is about 500 calories. Which is about what we need for our bodies… What our bodies expect. That’s fit. But you don’t have to get there right away. I want to tell you, go very slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly. If you’re here, your first goal should be here, because look, that’s the biggest hit. That’s the huge hit, from four to seven, gives us this. This is the sweet spot. This is where you’re gonna feel the best energy, is in here. Okay?

03:18 : So get to here for health and get to here for energy. You’ll feel great. And you get all the way to here, you’ve got another 15%. How fast do you have to go? Not fast at all. I have a friend, she’s very fit. Does a lot of walking. She married a guy, John, a wonderful guy, a schlump. [chuckle] “Come on, John, we’re gonna go walking.” “Oh no.” “Come on, just come on, we’ll do just 10,000, do 2,000.” “Oh no. I can’t do it. Oh no.” They both now walk about 10-12,000 steps a day, I can’t even keep up with them. Are they trying to go fast? No. It’s just that as they slowly, but surely, built up their step count, their strength built, and they went from _______,  because that would just be their natural pace, as they got stronger and more fit and more aerobic capacity. So don’t worry about how fast you go. It doesn’t matter. Just do it, alright? Just do it. So how do we get there? How fast? How long? Buy a pedometer.

04:28 : First thing, buy a pedometer. Now, the Fitbits are okay, but the problem with the Fitbit type of things, there a lotta different models and makes, is that they don’t count the day-to-day steps. They count really well if you go for a walk, but if you’re just walking around, which is the same amount of energy… If I take 20 steps here, and then I keep right on going, I take another and another and another, it’s the same amount of energy if I take 20 steps. I talk to you for a bit, come take 20 steps, and I talk to you, same energy. It doesn’t matter whether I do it all at once or little bits all day long, but those Fitbit things don’t count the little bits very well. So we like the mechanical ones.

05:08 : I like the Digi-Walker, the Yamax, that’s the one the scientists use, that’s sort of the gold standard. It’s mechanical, there’s a little thing in there, you can hear it clicking, but it counts pretty much every step, it’s within 5%, which is good enough. Okay? Cheap, easy to get on Amazon. And then what you do is, you see in your handout, on the next to the last page, a little baseline form. And here’s what you do, you get the pedometer, and then you spend a week, doing nothing unusual but you log what happened. So on Sunday, it turns out you did a lotta steps, you got 7,000, you went shopping. But the next day you felt tired. We’re not gonna count that. Then the next day, it’s these days during the week, normal day, normal day, you felt great, at the end of the day. Okay, we’ll count those. Saturday, you went for a walk with a friend.

06:00 : You did 6,700 steps, but you felt tired, so we’re gonna throw that out. I only want the days where you felt really good afterwards. So you add up these five days, divide by five, now that’s your baseline. Now, here’s the trick. You only add 500 steps, which is just five minutes of walking. Only add 500 steps. I tell you, if you do more, here’s what’s going to happen. You’re gonna get tired, you’re gonna get sore, you’re gonna get grumpy, you’re gonna get mad at me and you’ll quit. I guarantee you. Just take your time. It doesn’t matter if it takes you two years. Just take your time and only, only, only add 500 steps until that extra 500 steps above your baseline feels really comfortable. Then, add another until you reach your goal. But the key is, you gotta make sure that you log your steps every day.

06:57 : So if you look on the very last page of your hand out, there is the “No Sweat, No Guilt Walking Log”. Alright, you can copy that and make as many copies as you like. But they key message is, no matter what happens, log your steps every day. Okay? Always, always, always. Whether you met your goal or not, it doesn’t matter, log it every day. Just make it absolute habit. Don’t put yourself down. That’s why we say “no guilt.” Didn’t make it? Fine. Analyze why, come up with a plan. And if that doesn’t work, come up with a plan B, or C, or D, or whatever, and then you’ll get there. That’s basically it.

And so, your mission, should you choose to accept is, is to make getting fit and staying fit, a requirement for the rest of your life. Thank you.