If you work full time in an office and drive to work, how on earth do you get to 10k steps per day?

[Bluesheep8]

I've just installed an app on my phone that tracks my steps. I have to drive to work and am desk based. I get half an hour for lunch. How do you do it?

The only way I've managed to do it is by walking to gym before work then going for an additional walk after work but more often than not, once i'm inside I don't want to go out again! My office building is a house so not much scope for using stairs instead of a lift, or using the toilets/kettles/photocopier furthest away! Its only one flight of stairs as it is! Used to find it easier when I had my dogs and they needed to go out before and after work.

I came here to say Leslie Sansone too - walking in your living room. Or 5 minutes every hour walking on the spot.

I think we’re in the same place running. 10,000 steps will take you about 120 minutes if you’re walking at a steady 3 miles an hour, 100ish at a brisker 3.5. Either way it’s a big chunk out of your day if you can’t multi-task it with a commute or a school run you’re doing already.

The 10-15 minutes per thousand steps rule of thumb is also a good sanity check for whether your step checker is reliable. If you’re racking up 7,000 steps and you can’t account for, say, 1 hour in brisk walking and another thousand steps of pottering then there’s a strong possibility that your smart watch is counting keyboard taps as steps or something.

I must say it's inspiring me to do as much as I can. My office is on one level but I'm now using the loos in another building, parking my car as far away as poss and using the ensuite loo at home as it's up 3 flights of stairs. It all adds up!

I found once I got a fit bit I realised I was doing a lot more steps than I thought.

I work on the 1st floor so will often use the ground floor loo or kitchen instead of the nearest ones and the fit bit seemed to pick that up much better than my phone did.

I fit my extra steps in at the gym!

I think it’s really hard when you are rushing to fit work in around kids.

I walk 0.7 miles to work and back but unless I can fit in a decent walk at lunchtime I don’t get anywhere near 10,000. Sometimes I come back for meetings in the evenings so do it twice.

That isn’t always possible. Today for instance, deadlines mean I will stay at my desk all day (brought lunch with me) because I have got to leave on time to take DD to a sport this evening. I need to meet my deadlines and I need to get home for DD so 🚷.

Lone parent.

It's hard - I probably only make 10k once or twice a week, sometimes not that.

BUT my aim is to take more steps rather than meet a generally unobtainable figure. Wearing my fitbit means I do take more steps than I would if I wasn't wearing it so it helps regardless of the 10k steps.

I read somewhere that there are diminishing returns over 4k (although that was for over 60s) so I make that a minimum to aim for and everything else is a bonus.