When your fitness tracker throws you some shade …

I wear a fitness tracker because I like to count things. Steps matter to me; active minutes matter; and types of activities matter. I don’t much care about the weight and food tracking, but occasionally I like to see what it says about my sleep quality and cardiac activity.

We’ve had a spell of decent weather in my part of the world, and this week I decided I would tidy the garden before the snow flies. There was the usual last-minute scramble to plant bulbs in ground that was already pretty hard and resistant, and there was the final packing away of the greenhouse, including cleaning up flower pots, hoses, and compost bins.

I spent a good 90 minutes to two hours walking the length of the garden, pushing wheelbarrows, dragging bags of soil, stacking chairs, and emptying greenhouse beds of late fall produce and dying foliage. I discovered some forgotten but not dead yet plants, so I also spent time digging, planting, covering and securing. I finished up all my garden efforts with picking up random bits of garbage blown in by the wind and heedless walkers.

“Well done,” I said to myself, feeling the pleasant ache hard work brings and the glowing satisfaction of ticking another chore off my list. While waiting for my kettle to boil (it was 2C or just above 32F and got colder as it got darker), I decided to check out my Fitbit data.

I wasn’t impressed. Fitbit said I was in the moderate zone for 38 minutes but noted I had not yet reached the vigorous zone despite all the time I had spent moving, lifting, and carrying. On the upside, I had walked close to 7500 steps, so yay for me. In between, I did more than a dozen reps of farmer carries, multiple squats and lunges as I was bending, digging and cleaning, and several flights of stairs as I trekked up and down the patio steps and back and forth across our generously sized backyard.

My goal in seeking fitness is to build strength, improve cardio, and be able to look after myself as I grow older. We tend to fall into the trap of thinking fitness activities need to take place in the gym; in fact, regular, consistent movement and intensity in daily life activities offer just as many benefits as spending a chunk of time running on the treadmill or lifting kettlebells.

Regardless of the shade the Fitbit was throwing, I was, and I still am, pretty chuffed with myself. What are the kinds of things you do to be really active outside the gym?

MarthaFitat55 is enjoying being able to do all the things.