In the Clinic with Exercise

One thing about it, you have to love the habits of health and the ripple effect they have on those around you.

In the office we try as often as possible to model those activities that support good health and overall wellbeing. This "do-as-I-do" attitude lends credibility to the things our providers tell their patients when discussing medical problems related to lifestyle choices, such as diabetes, metabolic syndrome, high blood pressure and the like, but is often easier said than done.

To facilitate this healthy focus, I purchased a Nike FuelBand several years ago and was immediately depressed by the paltry number of steps I achieved in the course of a day. I found that by 5 pm (when the clinic closed), I failed to come close to my goal of 10,000 steps a day, which meant that I had to find time to add those 6000-7000 more steps I needed to track before midnight.

In our small office it is difficult to hide much of anything and my comments about the lack of progress I was making soon became a topic of general conversation. Our ever-energetic and enthusiastic medical assistant Andrew caught quite an interest in my healthy endeavor and also decided to jump on the 10,000 step per day bandwagon.

Armed with his own Fuelband, he started tracking his steps and we enjoyed comparing notes throughout the day as to our step-status. Eventually this led to a friendly competition to see who could clock the most steps before quitting time. As late afternoon approached, we would call out to each other as we passed through the clinic our current count, and there were times when we were quite literally within dozens of steps of each other. All of this produced a frantic push on the one of us behind at that point to be as active as possible, and I have to admit that I found myself stepping in place while I waited for a fax to come through or some such other menial task.

Not to be outdone, Andrew decided that he would build himself a workstation where he could stand to do his work, and keep in "perpetual motion" as he answered phones, completed forms or did computer work. Mary, our administrative assistant, soon joined in the fray, creating her own workstation where she had the flexibility to either sit or stand. She soon upped the ante, and with her FitBit firmly planted on her wrist, twice a day both she and Andrew took time to complete the "7 Minute Workout" from an app Mary had downloaded on her phone. Attempts, by the way, to get Jeannine involved in this, were hit and miss -- but this is the topic for another story.

Since I still have too much pride to lend myself to doing crunches on the floor in front of a few onlookers, I had to figure out something else to improve my FuelBand numbers. It was at this point that I made the decision to haul myself out of the comfortable reverie of slumber and begin my quest for 10,000 steps at 5:30 in the morning.

Puffed up like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, I began greeting Andrew as he entered the office each morning at 8:15 with my 3000+ steps already showing on my FuelBand. My good-natured friend would with humor acknowledge his deficit and the day would move forward.

All of this effort on healthy movement lasted for about two months. Not sure how or why it happened, but we all sort of lost our competitive spirit. We still get plenty of movement in during the course of the day, but the teasing and tormenting has fallen by the wayside.

Most of us in the clinic still embrace the habit of healthy movement. Andrew has replaced his office chair with a huge blue ball -- core training at its best during office hours. For me, I can still find time to run in place as I wait for a fax or am taking a lengthy phone call, but I now find that the best movement I get seems to be when I have waited too long to use the restroom and, at the point of almost no return, am sometimes forced to dance around waiting for the room to be less occupied.