A gold or silver watch is a nice way to complete a well-pulled together outfit, but that won’t likely be found on my wrist very often.
No matter what I wear, a nice outfit or a pair of pajamas, what will be found on my wrist is my “ugly” pedometer.
I’m not sure if everyone would find this pedometer ugly, but I do. It’s not feminine in the slightest. I’m not even sure if it was designed at all with a woman in mind.
It’s not small and discrete; it’s big and plastic with a big metal plate for measuring my heart rate.
It was hours before Resurrection Sunday that my “ugly” pedometer had a resurrection of its own.
I never thought that it would really ever come back to life again after it died, but it did and I’m glad.
It was approximately a year or two ago when the “ugly” pedometer bit the dust. Just before it died, the alarm squealed like it was losing its mind and I couldn’t turn it off no matter how hard I tried. Eventually all the battery’s juice was sucked up by this annoying little alarm and it died.
I wasn’t sure it was only the battery that was the problem because I’ve never had a watch or pedometer die in such a fashion and so I wondered if that episode was the pedometer’s last hurrah.
Out came the miniature screwdrivers and off came the back of the pedometer. I needed to find out what type of battery this thing took and so I set about my task of finding out.
Only for some reason when I ended up not realizing that this thing would end up in more pieces than I anticipated, I gave up on the pedometer, almost altogether. I put it in a zippered plastic bag and set it aside.
However, eventually I found myself needing a pedometer. Rather than doing what made sense – buying a new battery to see if my old one still worked – I bought a new pedometer.
I bought a new “ugly” pedometer to be precise. Only this one was slightly less objectionable in its appearance and was a brand name instead of being a generic store brand. I held hope that this would be a good replacement for my previous “ugly” pedometer.
I was wrong about this new pedometer. I had judged it by its appearance and found it to be wanting in the areas that it really counted.
If it was possible to buy a mindset to walk with a pedometer, that mindset did not come with this new pedometer.
It did however come with the old pedometer.
A few slight changes in features would make all the difference, one way or another.
Both pedometers looked like they had similar features, and for the most part they did, but in a few cases, what one could do, the other could not.
My old pedometer had a great memory. I could track steps until I decided to reset the memory. I could track all week and it would keep my count. The new pedometer would only track one day’s steps at a time. One day would roll into the previous day’s memory before disappearing completely.
I found that particularly maddening when I accidentally set my clock wrong and at noon everyday the day’s memory would be wiped clean. It took me months to figure out that the pedometer thought that noon was the stroke of midnight and therefore the next day.
While I consider myself to be a mildly intelligent human being, I find myself wondering why it took me so long to figure out that I needed to switch the a.m. and p.m. designation on this little contraption instead of throwing hateful glances at it ever time it set my steps back to zero again.
Ah, that little fix helped me suspend my disdain for that pedometer for a time, and so I went about using it, wearing it every day with the aim for counting my steps. After all, that’s the whole point of wearing a pedometer, isn’t it?
Well it turns out that this pedometer had another trick up its sleeves in its mission to keep me from counting my steps.
This pedometer’s default screen was a clock, not the pedometer screen and from what I could tell, it was not a setting that I could change.
So when I looked down at my pedometer, I saw what time it was and not how many steps I had taken for that day.
I had to push a button to display the pedometer, which doesn’t seem like much, but I’ve found that there is some truth to the old adage “Out of sight, out of mind.”
Eventually the pedometer became a watch to me and not a pedometer. Sure I would put it on with the intention of tracking my steps, but I never remembered to do so. And with that, I fell out of the habit of tracking my steps.
This was not a good thing.
Then the day came when that newer pedometer’s battery bit the dust.
Thankfully, it did. I needed a change. I needed to go back to my old pedometer.
Finally, I stopped procrastinating. I bought a battery. Instead of buying a new pedometer, I decided to try to bring new life to an “ugly” old friend of mine. That gray pedometer is now on my wrist and with it I have the mindset to track my steps back again. I didn’t have to work for it. I’m reminded to track my steps every time I look at my wrist.
So this year, besides having the best resurrection holiday ever, I had my old “ugly” pedometer back. Some people enjoy eating chocolate on Easter. I enjoyed looking at my pedometer.
Giving full disclosure though – I didn’t eat any candy on Easter day. Since Easter’s conclusion however, I’ve eaten two 35-cent pieces of Easter candy and two 50-cent pieces of Easter candy. Those pieces of candy are gone, but I get to enjoy this pedometer all year round.
This gray plastic fashion faux pas is going with me everywhere – with every outfit, nice looking or not. I’m even wearing this thing around the house while wearing my pajamas.
And if this pedometer ever suffers the fate of permanent death, maybe by then I’ll have found a suitable replacement – hopefully in a nice shade of pink.
If you want to follow my weight-loss journey, read about it occasionally in my column, “Healthy steps” or you can watch my weight-loss journey unfold and show your support by liking the page www.facebook.com/GretchenGetFit on Facebook or following me on Twitter @GretchenGetFit. Contact the writer at gbalshuweit@thedailyreview.com.
Healthy steps is written by Gretchen Balshuweit, news editor and now health and wellness page columnist for The Daily Review in Towanda, Pa. as she pursues her own journey to health and wellness in hopes of losing a total of 200-250 pounds of excess weight.
