A catch 'em all cardio session! Gaming fan quits her gym and vows to get in 'the best shape of her life' by walking around the city while playing Pokémon Go

A woman dedicated to taking 10,000 steps a day ditched the gym for a week in favor of playing Pokémon Go throughout New York City in the hopes of getting in the best shape of her life. 

Tess Koman, a TK associate editor at Cosmopolitan.com, chronicled her journey for the outlet to see if capturing, battling, and training virtual Pokémon while playing the wildly popular location-based smartphone game would help her reach her 10,000 steps without any trips to the gym.  

'True Life: I abandoned my fitness tracker in favor of catching Pokémon all over the city and I'm in the best shape of my life,' she optimistically tweeted the day before she started the challenge, however, in the end her prophesy didn't ring true. 

True gamer: Tess Koman gave up going to the gym for the week to see if she could reach 10,000 steps a day by playing Pokémon Go

Prophesy? Before starting the challenge, Tess optimistically tweeted this misleading headline 

Motivated: The associate editor woke up bright and early on Monday, July 11 to share this photo of herself playing the wildly popular smartphone game 

Tess explained in her essay that she is an 'incentive-driven person' who credits her fitness tracker for helping to motivate her to get into shape. When Pokémon Go launched in the US on July 8, she wondered whether she could become the best Pokémon trainer in her office — while reaching her daily goal of 10,000 steps. 

She said she typically hits her goal by spending about '40 minutes on the treadmill' three or four times a week, but in keeping with her challenge she banned herself from the gym for a week to see if she could 'obtain all steps from Poké-hunting'.

Tess kicked off her adventure on Monday, July 11 by taking the long way to her office at Hearst Tower and 'checking out the courtyard behind the building'.  

'Nothing other than a few Pidgeys was happening, but I saw the Hearst Tower was a Pokéstop, consoling me with Razz Berries and Pokéballs for hitting just 1,000 steps on the way in,' she recalled. 

Getting there: Tess kicked off the week by taking the long way to her office as Hearst Tower 

Good start: On her first day of the challenge, she walked 720 steps more than when she was enjoying the Fourth of July 

After work, Tess had plans with her friends 25 blocks away from where she lived, and she had 'amassed 5,000 steps by dinner'. 

The next day she said she 'woke up dragging and exhausted from a day of major stepping', and she spent Tuesday taking every chance she could get to go outside and get more steps — and more Pokémon. 

But by Wednesday she realized catching the 'same old Hell's Kitchen Pokémon wasn't enough motivation', so she started to branch out into different neighborhoods. She continued to use her lunch and coffee breaks to play Pokémon Go and by 630pm she said she had 'amassed a 1,000 more steps' than usual. 

On her way home, she walked 15 blocks north, and while she was convinced she had reached 9,000 steps when she reached her apartment, she was still 1,000 short. 

Playing the game: Instead of going to the gym, Tess walked every night in the hopes of reaching her goal of 10,000 steps — and finding more Pokémon

Falling behind: On Tuesday, she walked 2,285 less steps than she did the the Tuesday before the challenge 

'What was I going to do, pace back and forth in my apartment with the Pokémon Go app open until my fitness tracker buzzed at me to let me know I'd hit my goal?' she asked. 'I wasn't that far gone.'

Tess woke up even more motivated on Thursday, but she had to leave work halfway through the day because her Crohn's disease was making her ill. 

'I walked my 600 steps home and worked from my couch the rest of the day, sad and hurting. I remembered at 8 p.m.-ish this week was going to be a failure goal-wise if I didn't do anything about it, but I wasn't OK to not be near a toilet,' she revealed. 

Instead, she said she paced around her apartment with the app open until her fitness tracker buzzed and let her know that she had reached her goal for the day. 

New technique: Tess started to get bored with hunting Pokémon in her neighborhood, so she branched out to other areas in the city. However, on Wednesday, she missed her goal by 1,707 steps 

Getting better: Even though she was sick on Thursday, Tess paced around her apartment until she reached 10,146 steps 

For the love of it: On Friday, Tess coerced her fiancé Michael into walking to Times Square with her in order to reach 10,161 steps

Even though she still didn't feel 100 per cent better the next day, she refused to give up on her goal. After work she enlisted her fiancé Michael to walk to Times Square with her because she believed there would be a 'goldmine of Pokémon'. 

During their adventure, she admitted that she kicked someone by accident, and her boyfriend ended up falling on his face. 

'We argued more in a span of two hours than we have in the last six years,' she said.

On Saturday, she tried to get Michael to walk an hour and 16 minutes to their destination in Tribeca, but he reminded her that there is 'more to life than catching 'em all' and ordered them an Uber. 

Tough times: Tess, who snapped this picture on Snapchat during their journey, admitted they fought more in those two hours than they did in six years 

Weekend woes: Michael refused to walk over an hour to get to their destination on Saturday, and Tess only made 7,331 steps 

Problems: Tess woke up on Sunday to learn that the launch of the game in Canada caused the app crash 

Cheat day: Tess reached her daily goal by going to the gym, and after the week was said and done she walked 16,800 steps less than she did the week before she started the challenge 

'Though I may not have hit 10,000 steps that day, I gained something even more valuable: Do you know how many water Pokémon live above ground on the West Side Highway and where to find the best of them? I do. I do,' she wrote. 

Despite her best efforts, the last day of her challenge was a bust because the the launch of the game in Canada caused the serve to crash and she ended up going to the gym instead.

Comparing her results at the end of the week, Tess realized she walked 83,000 steps the week before the challenge and only 66,200 during it.   

'I wanted to tell you I Abandoned the Gym for a Week to Catch Pokémon and Am Now in the Best Shape of My Life, but it wouldn't be true,' she admitted. 'In reality, catching Pokémon on my walk to the gym is much more satisfying than catching them instead of it.'