Yep those garmin vivofits are great - there are so many excellent and relatively inexpensive fitness trackers out there that are brilliant for our needs. Plus most are available to some degree as an app for android or iPhone. I use a great deal of them eg pedometer, water meter, food tracker, hrm, bloods logbook, carb counter dos I like them and they do help me analyse what's going on right or wrong. For eg my present high fasting bloods.Day25 ND, 4.9 keeping away from buns and chocolate eggs!
@Baruney, I use a Garmin Vivofit to keep track of my walk/runs as it ties into many apps, such as you describe, even sleep, which I don't believe I ever get enough of, and perfect for checking progress towards my goal of 20 km before my next birthday.
Recently read of a Japanese study of walking quickly for 3 minutes then walking moderately for 3
minutes, which had metabolic advantages over maintaining a steady pace. So, a variation on HIT.
Cannot give reference, as was only reading while waiting for an appointment.
Yes your right about varying your pace - in running walking it's sometimes called tempo, interval or fartleg training rather than HIIT. All goes on the same principal though in that you are using different energy sources to fuel your activity so a bit of fat burning a bit of endurance and a bit of carb burning and as you vary the zones you can do more for longer. You can also burn as many calories as a longer brisk walk as a shorter fast run or whatever activity you enjoy and that's probably the key. HIIT gardening could be the way forward!
This time last year, although not a complete couch potato, I doubt that I could have run a full mile. This time next week I'm running the Brighton marathon.
Huzzah!