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?!

What are “zone minutes”?

I average out at around 15,000 steps a day. On long run days it'll be upwards of 30,000 but on rest days when I only do yoga or weights it might be 8,000 or so.

I do walking meetings with my team whenever we can, and will always choose to walk if I'm doing jobs locally rather than getting in the car.

Some pedometers are really inaccurate, as pps have said, but one way to counteract it is by setting them so they only start counting after 15 steps (ie so you're actually walking rather than just waving your arm around). That's what I did with mine after noticing that I'd rack up hundreds of "steps" while making dinner!

I walk to and from work but it's still only around 4000 according to google. Can't increase it without using up my scant free time in the evening and too bloody knackered.

Previous job as a guide dog trainer I was hitting 28-30,000 steps per day 5 days a week, but that was doing training walks with 5 or so dogs two or three times per day plus also walking my pet dogs morning and evening.

Same again when I moved from the UK into another very outdoor job. Regularly hitting 25-28,000 steps.

Now post second round of maternity leave, in a WFH office role (and with 1.5m of snow on the ground) I'm struggling to get 5-6000 per day. Super depressing.

Personal best steps achievement I ever made some years ago was 55,000 steps in a day, but that was walking/hiking for the entire day and late into the evening.

Heard on some chat show about a woman who managed 100k steps per day, have no idea how that would be sustainable...!

I do 15k every day with a job that is desk based.

On the days I wfh I get up and do a 5k Get Fit with Rick walking workout if the weather is bad or it’s dark. If it’s nice I go for a walk outside for 40 minutes.
Then I will try and go for a walk or do another walking workout at lunch time or hoover the house and another one after work. Sometimes I do Shabam a dance class on Les Mills. In the summer I would be mainly walking outside.

If I go into the office I get up 30 minutes earlier to either walk near there or do a walking workout. Then I go for a lunch time walk and after work I go food shopping and walk there and carry stuff back to the car. Or another walking workout

I have a back injury so need to be careful with what I do. In the good weather DH try to find some nice local walks

Ten minutes per thousand steps is a good rule of thumb so that's over a hour and a half spent just walking.

If you've got a working day like my office ones: ten minutes home to tube, ten minutes tube to office, twenty minutes going out to get lunch and back, and another two blocks of ten on the way home, and a "baseline" two thousand steps just pottering, then the remaining two thousand steps are trivial to make up.

But if you work on an industrial estate in the middle of nowhere only accessible by car then finding eighty minutes every day to do the additional eight thousand steps above baseline would be a big ask.

If I go out for a just over a mile and a half walk at lunch time whilst in work, I can normally get to over 10,000 by about 9pm. I've gone over 10,000 4 times this week by doing that.

Yes, a teacher so on my feet most of the day, if I haven't done 10000 steps I will usually (but not always!) go for an evening walk to make up the rest. Easily do over at the weekends.

I work in retail.15000 is usually about 2pm then I get home and walk my dogs most evenings. 22-25 k isn't unusual. I'm always shattered by 8pm though.

It very much depends. On work days not unless I go out for a walk at lunchtime and then walk somewhere in the evening, I drive to work and work in a very small building (you can go round the whole building interior in 100 steps). I have started going for a 20 minute circuit as soon as I have eaten lunch and then doing the same after work. My DCs are older and I’m no longer taxiing them everywhere in the evenings though. When they were I used to go and walk while they took part, weather and location dependent. I’m going out in a minute for my evening walk as I’ve only done 6000 around town today.

'Yeah, I'd love to walk in woods or on the beach in zone 2 London. And I am overweight and unfit. What's that got to do with the price of fish or the OP's question. You wouldn't be lecturing me would you Janiie?'

I'm sure they have parks in 'zone 2 London', you know just any outdoor spaces to walk round doesn't have to be beaches and woods obvs.

I'm not lecturing you <no need to be so defensive we all have to start somewhere>. If your are overweight and unfit then what physical activity do you do? Try walking! you might like the fresh air and the exercise. HTH.

This is a lovely essay by David Sedaris, pretty funny, he walks 60k, but it takes more than nine hours a day!!!

www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/06/30/stepping-out-3

Sedaris litter picks too. I go round the block with my litter picker and a podcast if I'm a couple of k off target.
Walking also gives you vitamin D several months of the year.

Run 5k before work, walk about a lot at work, walk the dog after tea... usually about 20k steps per day

No. I used to manage it, but I got depressed then couldn’t be bothered. I also have a sedentary job. Just this week I am starting to make moving more a priority. A walk before WFH, a lunchtime half hr walk and another one afterwards. 10,000 steps takes some doing due to my job, but I’m determined to get fitter.

FFS Janiie! I've already told you I find walking boring. I'm not saying that I shouldn't walk more for the benefit of my health but it's boring. I live 10 minutes walk from two absolutely gorgeous parks - but after 18 years, they bore me too.

Question was: do you? My answer was: no. Why can't you leave it there? Do you honestly think I don't know the benefits of walking. I'm 60 years old.

Yes, I do. Set it as a new year's resolution in 2022 and got an average of 11,100 steps per day last year. Planning to try to maintain that this year.

I walk to and from the nursery drop off, and to and from work. I go to the bathroom that's furthest from my office, take slightly longer routes to various places in my workplace, and very rarely work from home.

As others have said, it's not a zero sum game when it comes to health outcomes and 10,000 is completely arbitrary. I found this summary graphic of the hazard ratio for death vs steps per day quite instructive (two separate lines for those at and above, and those below, 60 years of age). It comes from this systematic review and meta-analysis in the Lancet Public Health: www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2667(21)00302-9/fulltext. It looks like benefits kick in at different points depending on your age, but basically any number of increased steps is a good thing.

You don’t “HTH” at all, you are bring patronising to that poster with your faux concern.

being ffs.

I do. For me the only way I can stick at it is to build it in to my daily routine so it's not something "extra" I have to do. For example I walk to work and back. It's 3 miles (45 minutes) each way. I know a lot of people would say that's too far to walk and would drive but I don't think it's too far. I walk my son to school, walk to the shops, walk to kids activities and walk to pick them up from play dates. Basically always walk instead of drive where possible.

In the summer I hit around 25k most days, this winter my average has been 9670

Yes. Because I am 73 with arthritic knees. I have to keep up walking because if I don't I think I will end up on a mobility scooter in a few years time but My God it's BORING

“Try walking!” is hilarious, like a shit compulsory course leader at work

Ifind eating 8-10 portions of fruit and veg easy though
I find this nearly impossible!

Same here. The only days I definitely hit 10,000 are when I walk into work with a colleague. It's a 50 minute walk but we started during Covid when we wanted to avoid the bus and it's become a habit.