Do you get in 10,000 steps a day?

I set 8,000 as a target. I don't work but by aiming for 8,000 it means I need to go for a reasonable walk every day and be active at home. Failing to meet 10,000 was demoralising whereas achieving a lesser target encourages me to keep consistent.

And as a bonus I recently read that 7-8,000 has defined benefits!

Saturdays (parkrun), Sundays, Wednesdays (5k run) and Thursdays (speed-walk Waterloo to Fleet St and back), as well as all the normal running around, yes.

Mondays and Fridays, probably not.

Most days I do, mainly thanks to my 4 year old! I can do a few thousand pottering around the house, and I try to do either a pre work or lunchtime fast paced walk for 20-30 mins.

I also do a 4 times a week 25minute high intensity work out on evenings when it’s not my turn for bedtime, or before work if DS is chilled! We’re out and about quite a bit on a weekend so happens naturally.

I’m not overly fussed about hitting 10k but my brain just needs me to move to feel better mentally and physically.

Yes, mytargwt is 13000 and I mostly hit it, but always manage 10k.

I always go for a walk in my lunch time and get time outside every day. I have an office based job whether in the office or at home, and suffer with back pain so make sure to get up and move around as much as I can. Walk to speak to people rather than email or teams. Walk to the printer each time rather than letting it build up.

I'm also quite overweight.

I hardly move except when I'm doing my two to three miles' walk!

I do around 7,000 to 8,0000 and that's only because of my dog!

Walking the dog, an active job, 2 sports with training and 1 of them with a match some weekends. I average 15000 a day.

I hit it most days but usually average over 10k a day over the week but I often his 20K or more at weekends. On an office day I can hit 12k by walking one way (just over 2 miles) and a lunchtime walk (usually about a mile). That said, I'm WFH today and have only done 1000 so far!

I average about 90k a week. On days I’m in work it tends to be more. I do a “get fit with Rick” walking workout on days I’m not leaving the house so generally hit the 10k or just about. I’m a total fidget so pottering around the house doing bits and pieces really adds up!

I do most days, usually more. I walk to work and back which adds up to about 13,000 steps. On the days I work from home or don't work I'll go out for a morning or lunchtime walk then go out in the evening too.
I basically use walking as my mode of transport so if I'm taking the kids to school, swimming, Guides etc I'll walk. If I'm going to the shops I'll walk. I think rather than finding time specifically to walk it's best to just include it in your daily routine.

Do a minimum of 10,000 and try to do 12,500. I tend to do far more when I’m in a city / town for the day.

I don’t, I think I average about 6-7k. I’m a healthy weight, i weight train 4x a week and cycle regularly with long hikes when I feel like it. As long as you’re active in some way then I don’t think it matters. Plus 10k steps was just a random number picked to advertise a pedometer.

I try to. Have horses so get a fair bit of walking in sorting them during the day, 2 dogs to walk too but often DH does that while I am doing the bedtime routine with DD.
I have a desk job wfh and have noticed some weight gain so I purchased an under-desk walking pad so that I can get my steps in when replying to emails or in meetings.

Yes. But we have a treadmill in the house and a small dog to walk.

Do hits 20,000 a day, I dunno how HE does that lol

It's about an hour of walking for me to get 10,000 steps. Perhaps easier if you break it down to 4 x 15 minutes or 3 x 20.

Yes, usually. On days I'm in the office (3 days a week) I walk 15 minutes to the station, 5 minutes to office, 20 minute walk at lunch time, same commute in reverse then I've got my 10,000 steps - or by the time I've made dinner I have.

When I'm at home it's easier, get it from walking the dog and steps round the house. Then also I go to the gym three times a week, get about 4,000-5,000 steps there in an hour, more if it's a cardio only session.

So I do about 80,000 a week as a baseline really. If I go to Bluewater or do a lot of gardening or a longer walk then it can be a lot more. I'm usually only third in my league table of friend on FitBit though. Two of my friends do over 110,000 regularly. One is a dog walker and one runs a fair bit. And they are very slim so there is something in it!

Easily. Impossible not to with a dog, 10k would be a particularly low day. Usually average about 20k - I exercise every day as well as 2 x walks.

This is the summary of a recent study. (from Dr Karan’s newsletter if anyone follows him)

The world's largest study has shown the more you walk, the lower your risk of death (obviously..I guess), even if you walker fewer than 5,000 steps!

The study, published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology , found that walking at least 3967 steps a day started to reduce the risk of dying from any cause, and 2337 steps a day reduced the risk of dying from diseases of the heart and blood vessels (cardiovascular disease).

However, the new analysis of 226,889 people from 17 different studies around the world has shown that the risk of dying from any cause or from cardiovascular disease decreases significantly with every 500 to 1000 extra steps you walk.

An increase of 1000 steps a day was associated with a 15% reduction in the risk of dying from any cause, and an increase of 500 steps a day was associated with a 7% reduction in dying from cardiovascular disease.

Additionally it was noted that even if people walked as many as 20,000 steps a day, the health benefits continued to increase. They have not found an upper limit yet.

Clearly as an "observational" study (not randomised), limitations include that it cannot prove that increased step counts cause the reduction in the risk of death, only that it is associated with it.

10k steps is a great arbitrary number to aim for...sure but don't let the failure of hitting this number discourage you from movement altogether.

There is a human tendency to disregard the whole after a failure of a component. E.g you eat some "junk" food and break your diet, it is tempting to throw your diet out for the entire day and consume whatever you want.

TL;DR - walk as much as you can, as often as you can even if it's shy of the magical "10K target". There is likely no harm and only things to gain from a health perspective.

So that’s for all the 10k steps is a marketing ploy/conspiracy lot who are no doubt the same people who think BMI is pointless, cos bodybuilders (like anyone every got confused between a bodybuilder and someone who is just plain old obese)

The more movement (steps) someone does is associated with better health outcomes and those associated benefits keep increasing.

No one needs to go for a 10k step walk, just smaller chunks through the day. 1k steps is roughly 10 mins.

if I’m light on steps for the day/week I treadmill walk whilst watching Netflix or something.

just build it up slowly OP, get a a tracker and do things like an extra lap of the supermarket, park further away etc and you’ll be surprised how easy it can be to get more steps in.

No? Disability. I walk as far as I can on any given day and do as much physio as I can.

The exercise is correctly identified as cycling by fitbit. It's just that for some reason fitbit counts steps for my cycling minutes. Am happy to hear away to fi that, if you know.

Here are screen shots.... I cycled today at 1156am & 238pm. Those 2 events, 49 min & 31 min long, are also when I got most of today's steps. I did fairly little walking today actually.

You know you can recategorise the exercise?

Around 50-55000 steps a week. Different amounts on different days.

I dunno because fitbit counts cycling as steps.
Like today fitbit says I did 12,527 steps. But at least 8k of that is cycling (about 80 minutes).
Probably not then.

10,000 yeah. If I do less on some days, I make up for it on other days so it’s never less than 70,000 for the week. I’m at 68,159 now and I don’t want to do any more but I’ll have to make myself!