BELTWAY LIKES PEDOMETERS TO HELP TIGHTEN THE BELT

Contra Costa Times (California)
August 9, 2004
By Judy Holland

Pedometers, electronic gadgets you clip on your belt to count the steps you walk, are the latest craze in the nation's capital.

Cabinet secretaries, members of Congress, foreign dignitaries, Capitol Hill police, government staffers and journalists tote this new fashion accessory to measure their daily exercise progress or their competition with office colleagues.

Tommy Thompson, the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, a pedometer pioneer here, gives the gizmos to visitors to his office, including foreign health ministers, Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

The Pentagon chief was recently spotted running across an airport tarmac in Iraq with one affixed to his belt.

Thompson said he started charting his peripatetic progress three years ago after an employee at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta gave him a pedometer.

"I looked at that thing and became addicted to it," Thompson said. He proudly attests that his daily goal of walking 10,000 steps, a number he encourages others to attain, has helped him drop 15 pounds.

Next in his campaign to encourage staffers to exercise: Paint the stairwells in the Health and Human Services building and pipe in music to make the stairs more inviting and the elevators less so.

On Capitol Hill, where lawmakers march down long hallways in marble office buildings as they race to cast votes and attend hearings, some 30 House members are part of the bipartisan pedometer rage.

Rep. Mark Udall, D-Colo., who sometimes logs 20,000 steps daily because he forsakes the Capitol Hill subway network that links six office buildings and the Capitol, said tracking steps is a friendly competition for goal-oriented types and a way to see concrete results in a place where progress isn't always apparent.

"It's like playing poker. You might keep the number hidden, or, if you are feeling good about how you are doing, you might share it," Udall said.

Most modern-day pedometers are smaller than a pager. Some fancier devices require you to first calculate your stride length. Some light up in the dark.

Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, wears two pedometers to ensure accuracy but says he only counts "the one with the highest reading" for his daily total. Harkin gets a head start by striding 2,700 steps each morning in his neighborhood with his wife.

Harkin pit his staffers in a friendly all-Iowa stepping contest against the office of Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa.

Harkin grouses that he was at a "disadvantage" because was at the Democratic National Convention in Boston, while Grassley was out walking cornfields in their home state.

There was a Tennessee walk-off this year when the offices of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a marathon runner, and Sen. Lamar Alexander, who once walked 1,000 miles across Tennessee in a 1978 gubernatorial race, kept track for a full month.

Team Alexander outpaced Team Frist, 5.3 million to 4.1 million steps.

Alexander said he finds walking to be the most pleasant exercise.

"I've rarely seen a happy-looking runner," Alexander said. "They always have these terrible looks on their faces."

Frist's spokesman Bob Stevenson, always ready with a positive spin, said his boss has literally demonstrated "he's willing to go the extra mile for the American people."

Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, R-Utah, often seen briskly stepping through the halls as Capitol subway cars whiz past, said he clocks 8,000 steps a day after doctors operated on his back last year and recommended lots of walking.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., wears a pedometer -- sometimes.

"Every once in a while, when I remember, I put it on," Clinton said.

James O. Hill, founder of America on the Move, a national nonprofit that promotes use of pedometers and author of the new "Step Diet Book," said increasing physical activity "is absolutely critical if you want to keep weight off."

Hill, director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the University of Colorado in Denver, said he hopes pedometer use will become more than a fad in a nation where obesity is on the rise.

The average American logs 5,000 steps per day, or about two miles, Hill said. The same average American adult gains one to three pounds a year. Hill claims that walking 2,000 additional steps a day and eating 100 calories less, the equivalent of a pat of butter, will stop the weight gain.

According to America on the Move:

One mile is equivalent to 2,000 to 2,500 steps.

10,000 steps is equivalent to four to five miles.

Nine holes of golf without a cart requires 8,000 steps.

One city block is about 200 steps.

A 90-minute soccer game requires 8,000 to 10,000 steps.

The average person walks about 1,200 steps in 10 minutes.

The average number of steps per day for females, age 30 to 39, is 5,819.

The average number of steps per day for males, age 30 to 39, is 5,162.

The Web site www.Americaonthemove.org

U.S. pedometers retail for $4 to $50, depending on degree of accuracy and extra features.

Ron Sutton, president of Accusplit Inc., in Pleasanton, one of the nation's largest pedometer companies, predicted that about 3 million will be sold this year, with businesses giving away about 20 million pedometers as promotional items.

The McDonald's fast-food chain, which hews closely to market trends, is expected to distribute 15 million pedometers with its salad meals.

Blue Cross Blue Shield, which aims to keep health costs down, distributes them free of charge in some locations to help children lose weight.

Pedometers have an early American heritage, according to Sutton.

Thomas Jefferson owned a French-made version that he used in the late 1700s while walking the perimeter of his property, said Sutton, known as "Mister Pedometer."

The original pedometers were mechanical, moving a pendulum with each step, which rotated gears like a watch dial.

Those in the 21st century are electronic with a pendulum striking electronic contact that signals each step, said Sutton.