Getting the Best from Your Fitness Tracker

You may remember that I have been using a fit bug orb to try increasing my activity levels. Well it seems I'm not in a minority,  with  the rising popularity of  activity tracker use,  more and more of us are counting our steps and tracking our exercise all from a watch and Mobile. It has never been easier to motivate yourself to move more and its been widely accepted that walking more than 10000 steps a day is optimum for your health, infact this information was researched originally way back in the 1960s so fitness trackers really aren't a new thing, although I'd like to think they are much more accurate and easy to use now!

For me, using a tracker has many motivations,

1. I really enjoy seeing my 'calories burned' climbing into double triple and then quadruple figures throughout the day
2. I'm one of those stubborn types who like to beat targets so I genuinely will run up and down stairs if I've not met my daily goal of steps! 
3.  The sadist in me loves seeing how much and what quality of sleep I managed, obviously just so I can prove to the Mr that I'm Way more tired than him!  
4. But most importantly with the rapidly approaching big four-oh I fund myself wondering about keeping fitter and healthier for the good of my family, you know the types of things you think about... Looking after yourself, planning for retirement, getting the right life insurance, having a will (I know no one likes to speak about that, but it's a very important subject) and so I like my fitness tracker to be a reminder that I'm striving for a better healthier me, and its not just for me! 

So here are my top 5 ways of increasing my steps

1.  The most obvious is to leave the car at home! If its less than a mile to your destination then walk, try to even if its more than a mile, fresh air is brilliant for your skin, your health and your happy levels.
2. I walk to my allotment and then weed weed weed, all that moving bumps the activity levels up without even thinking about it
3. Games in the garden! Chasing my kids in a game of tag, or playing British bulldog is so much fun and even though our garden isn't big, I can clock up 1000 steps easily.
4. Housework, we all do this necessary evil, unless you have a housekeeper in which case I'm sticking my tongue out like a petulant child to you!, but if you throw yourself into it with gusto it can notch up more steps than you'd think.
5. Dancing, turn up the radio ignore the to do list and dance like crazy to three or four of your favourite fast paced songs not only will you feel good after but the steps will be shooting into the high numbers.