By Shannon Magsam
In an effort to be healthier, my daughter and I are having a “step-off”.
This morning, like we have every morning for a week, we put on our clothes and then strapped on our secret weapons against a sit-too-much lifestyle: the pedometer.
She started the trash talk the first day we started:
“I’ll beat you for sure, since you sit at your desk all day!”
On the third day, her dad joined us. Now the whole family is getting some extra exercise. You can’t help but move more when you become more aware. Now I jump up and down, step in place or bounce on my Pilates ball (I figured out my pedometer will count a step for each bounce) while I’m waiting for a page to load on my computer or while reading emails.
On the first day, Ladybug smoked me. And the second. I edged her out on the third day and she has left me — and her dad — in the dust most every day after that. I was surprised to find that she walked so much at school.
Anytime we see notice other doing something “active” we all join in so nobody gets an “edge”. We’ve laughed a lot more over this little experiment — and we’ve taken more family walks. The dog is ecstatic.
I want to thank my awesome business partner, Gwen, for the idea of getting Ladybug a pedometer after she said she wanted to be healthier. That sparked the idea of the family competition.
It has been such an effective way to get us moving that we’re considering enlisting my parents and siblings’ families to join us. I started thinking today about how it would be an awesome way to get school kids moving more. Find a company to donate cheap pedometers to all the kids in a school (or maybe just a classroom to start) and get them competing with each other — and teachers. Make it fun and it’s more sustainable over the long haul, I say.
As I said to Gwen recently: Seriously, this could be a movement! (Pun intended)
Shannon Magsam is a tween mom, married to a newspaperman and the love of her life, and co-founder of nwaMotherlode.com.
