Do you do 10,000 steps a day?

[Fantina]

As the thread says. I’ve been trying to do this and I have massively upped my activity levels this year but I’m finding it so hard to find the time to do this many walks.

I am a single parent who works full time in a sedentary job but even by making all the changes I can, such as going for a walk during their extracurricular activities instead of watching them, I’m not often hitting 10,000 steps.

do you manage it? If so, how?!

Round here you would be expected to stay with a 3yo at any activity

I usually walk at least 20k a day. But I have a dog that needs quite a bit of exercise, I walk to work (30 mins there and back), and walk a lot during my working day.

Currently sitting at 9550 and I have not left the house all day. Doubt I will make it to 10,000 now.

I've no idea how you can get to almost 10k without leaving the house. Do you live in a multi story mansion @Citycentre3 ?

@rookiemere my thoughts too. Either a mansion with expansive grounds, or another example of a Fitbit racking up "steps" during cooking/cleaning/playing with kids etc.

I can get thousands without leaving the house... due to no childcare in the evenings my 'walks' are around a loop in the house, with an audio book. Boring but better than sitting on the sofa.
Or the cross trainer.

Oh use some critical thinking for goodness sake!

1. It's not 'tosh'. Exercising for say 45 minutes a day, and then not moving much for the rest of the day is broadly speaking unhealthy.

www.bbc.com/future/article/20190723-10000-steps-a-day-the-right-amount

Below are two sensible articles that correctly address the arbitrary nature of '10,000 steps'. In itself, it is meaningless. And as a marker of fitness, broadly not useful enough.

Will 10,000 steps a day really make you fit?

www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/health-family/will-10-000-steps-a-day-really-make-you-fit-1.2699018

1. However, achieving it for those who are otherwise inactive, represents a degree of activity over basic movement (which is regarded as 3 - 5 k without doing anything specific, just moving about during the day) and so it is useful.

1. For someone like you, and me, it's less significant as you are very active & exercise intensively but importantly for a significant amount of time and in varied ways. I do also find achieving a minimum of 10000 steps important for me.

In conclusion, everything I said was absolutely correct, but is variable based on the individual. I think it's remarkable that you can walk the dog and only get 4000 steps, even getting to & from your activities should add more, but there you go. It's generally held that if you didn't even leave your house you'd achieve 3 - 5k, and under 5k is regarded as having had a sedentary day.

I can't quite get 10000 without leaving the house. I can get 8k or so if I'm cleaning which I tend to be a lot - a lot of movement & running around!

That kind of movement is valuable in addition to my exercise which is also essential - I train intensively daily. It means I'm moving and keeping active throughout the day & not just doing a burst of activity & then nothing.

I think days at home vary a lot. I WFH two days a week and barely get to 3000 steps but I am not obviously cleaning or gardening because I am working. I did once out of curiousity check how many steps unloading and putting away our online groceries were and it was almost 1000! We keep some heavy things in the utility room so a fair amount of back and forth

@FrangipaniBlue

I should also add, which is a nuance I didn't put in my initial post, as it's not possible

Oops.

@FrangipaniBlue

... not possible to capture all points in one post.

It is highly individual. In the way exercise is.

If I have had a day where I've done < 10,000 steps, for me, that represents a level of inactivity that isn't good for me. Usually that I've been working too hard at my desk, rather than that I've had a lovely day watching a film & reading a book!

I exercise every day, and will have about 3000 steps after that - I get up first thing & go straight to my class / PT session. (One or two days I run, so obviously steps are different!). I get at least another 2.5k steps after my class & in the 1.5 hours I am running around, sorting kids, cleaning, getting ready for work.

Your exercise is the kind that takes place over hours sometimes eg you'll be out of the house on a long bike ride and so your activity level for the day is taken care of and meaningful for you.

As you too noted, individual patterns of behaviour are what matters. The 10k is utterly arbitrary but is a benchmark that allows some important health benefits to be realised, if nothing else is used.

Yes because I run most days and squeeze in walks wherever I can.

But hard to if you’re a single, working parent of young children.

My best days are when I'm doing a big clean of the house. Can easily crack out 12/14000 (don't live in a stately home, just a big standard house!)

I'm just not aware of it as much. I reckon on those days I clock 10k from the washing basket to the washing machine!

This thread has intrigued me as when I’m home all day (and not on the running machine) my Garmin watch says I’ve only done about 300 steps. I assumed I was seriously inactive but I’ve realised my watch only picks up more vigorous steps and doesn’t add steps if I just wave my hands about. I counted this morning and had done about 2000 by lunch time pottering about but my watch only said 152!

Id love to think my gentle pottering did count towards keeping me healthy but to be honest it barely raises my heart rate and certainly not into an active zone of any kind so do they really count?

14000 steps would be walking about 7 miles around the house? Two or more like three hours of solid walking without breaks considering you can’t really get up speed?