A Chic Paris Lockdown – Day 29 – A Step A Day…
Fiona Ferris calls Day 29 in her book 30 Chic Days, “Walk Your Errands.” She encourages us to put as much gentle activity in our day as possible. There are all sorts of wonderful benefits that come to us when we incorporate walking into our daily schedule. We all know the benefits such as growing stronger, staying limber and youthful, and using calories in an effortless way.
Mireille Guilliano, author of French Women Don’t Get Fat and French Women Don’t Get Facelifts, agreed with Fiona. Mireille, like Fiona, both enjoyed and advocated a mindset that embraced walking as a way to connect with the world and a primary way to keep one’s waistline in check.
Paris, like most European cities, demands that we walk often and far. Happily, the surroundings are so beautiful, we don’t realize how many steps we’ve taken in an ordinary day. Before lockdown, I would usually log between 16,000 and 20,000 steps on my Fitbit on a normal day.
But what do we do when we aren’t in Paris or Madrid or Lisbon? What if we live in a town or area that was built after the introduction of the personal car? That’s a challenge. It was a challenge that stumped me at my US hometown before I discovered the secret of the parking spot. One cold, cloudy morning, after an incredibly chaotic and stressful morning (two toddlers and a husband late for an international flight), I arrived at work completely wrung out. Too wrung out to even look for a parking spot close to my building. I just drove to the back of the parking lot and pulled in to the very farthest spot. The several extra minutes of walking – Solitude! Quiet! Bliss! – introduced me to a whole new way of looking at parking spots. You will not be surprised that the next morning, I was happily parking right back at the same spot and enjoying a quiet several minute walk to my building. That little change started a collection of small habit changes. I didn’t make any one giant “workout” hour or take a big, dedicated multi-hour walk. I just started parking at the far end of the parking lot wherever I was going. The daily steps started adding up. And I enjoyed a few extra moments of gentle movement plus a chance to feel the air as I went about my day.
But what about now? In Lockdown? The days of 16,000 – 20,000 steps clearly are not a part of the new routine. I’m lucky if I can break 10,000 steps. Between the rule that we can be outside only one hour a day and the rule that we cannot go any further than 1 km from our place of residence, walking is now a luxury. Of course, I do go out for my morning “gratitude” walk. I also try to at least walk around the block outside after lunch or right after dinner. Other than that, as I told myself this morning while I was tidying up the mess of my apartment, pushing the vacuum cleaner can count as walking!
