How do you do your 10000 steps!

[ODFOx]

I'm very sedentary (wfh) and have put on lots of weight since the spring. I've been assessed and told that in the first instance I should walk 9000 steps each day, limit calories a bit and drink more water.

All theoretically easy, but I walk at about 3mph so I'd need to walk for 2 hours a day? Does anyone who sits down to work for 8 hours a day find time to walk for 2 hours?

How is it done? Thanks

Someone wants me!

Hi OP, I also WFH

I try to do 10k steps five days a week. To do this I walk for 3-3.5 miles which takes about one hour and I do this in the morning around 7.30am (but my kids are at the age to manage themselves so I'm not doing school runs any more).

I find that takes me to anything between 5k-6k steps.

I have a fitbit and that reminds me to do 250 steps per hour and so I get up from my desk and I move around up and down the stairs, in and out of rooms (or outside in the garden if the weather is halfway decent) until I have hit 250 steps for that hour. This usually brings me to my 10k steps over the course of the day. Sometimes I just put a great song on (3-4 mins) and jump around to get some activity in. It certainly does need thinking about.

I take 2 days off per week more because I have run out of time than anything else.

If one hour seems a lot, start with half an hour and build it up. Rome wasn't built in a day.

You don't need to do 10k steps. Try increasing your daily activity and doing a 10 minute very fast paced walk every day.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09qjl7d

Achievable consistent action is the key.

Can you walk faster? I naturally plod but if I walk with dh I can walk faster, itvs just not as comfortable. So you could focus on trying to walk a bit faster, might make it easier to get more steps in. Apologies if this isn't possible for any reason

I wfh, DH drops dd on his way to work (construction site) and DS takes himself to school. I have days where I barely do 1000 steps. I run in the evenings, and try to really up my mileage of running and walking on weekends. DH is away next week, so I am going to have to try and fit in running during the working day.

I'm also wfh and aim for 10,000 steps per day. In fact my Garmin tells me I'm on a 51 day streak so I'm obviously managing it!

I have a dog, so for me it's fairly straightforward to get my steps in across 2 dog walks. I do two walks of 45 mins: one from 7:45 to 8:30 before I start work (we are up early as DS has an early start for school); then the second roughly 3-3:45 as an afternoon break. I only take a 30 min lunch and have a very flexible job, so I can work later to allow the walk in daylight. Each walk is around 4K steps, then I cover the rest around the house just in normal life.

Oh, and I meant to say that weirdly I do fewer steps when I walk faster - maybe longer strides? My dog faffs a lot, so when I walk without her I need to do a longer route to get the same steps out of the outing. Very odd.

I go out at 8am and have a brisk 1 hr walk. Normally do a bit over 7000 steps and back to start work at 9am. Then the other steps add on through the day, currently just under 14,000 but I did a lunchtime fitness session in the front room with a video.

I take a brisk hour walk every evening, which is round about 10k steps. Especially now I WFH its the only movement I get.

Walk before work.

Brisk 20 min walk in lunch break.

Longer walk or run after work.

I try to do things like litter pick, letter positing, recycling drop off, quick supermarket trip on my walks. Are you in a safe town where you can plan an errand or destination?

I wfh and have only left the house today to do the school run with my 8 year old, but that’s already got me just under 10,000 steps. I also cover a lot of ground inside the house — it’s a tall Victorian house with lots of stairs and it’s 50 steps of stairs (not counting hall and landings) from the kitchen to my study.

I do this 1.0 Mile Happy Walk with Leslie Sansone. She does other walking videos that you can work up to slowly. It helps to be able to put a short video on the tv & just walk on the spot or around the room when the weather's bad outside, & you don't want to brave the outside. Good luck!

Used to hit 20k pre WFH, now manage 10 or 11but that's because I have a dog. Without the dog I'd struggle TBH.

I’m on maternity leave at the moment, but when I was at work in an office job I’d do about 10,000 steps a day waking to and from the railway station and going for a walk in my lunch break after eating.

3 miles is about 6k steps though OP so you only need to do 1.5hrs for 9k steps. However I find I do the other 3k just walking round the house etc so really only 1 hour walk!

How about a 15 minute HIIT first thing to get you started? Joe Wicks is doing a 6am one 3 days a week. There are loads more on his You Tube channel.

Do you spend much time on the phone at work? I started pacing around the house while on calls. I actually started because my chair was hurting my back and it really helped with that, but also obvious raised my step count quite a bit

Huge Leslie Sansone fan. It’s the beat of the music not the steps. You can do a 3 mile walk in 45 minutes approx. one mile 3 times a day if necessary.

I wfh too at the moment and kids make their own way to school. I probably hit 10,000 steps 5/7 days by general moving around the house and a short run after work (could be a walk if running isn’t your thing). I might also walk round to the local shop and it soon adds up.
At the weekend I tend to cover more ground as I might run and go for a walk in the same day.
Just looking at my Garmin and I’ve done just over 15,000 so far today from cleaning the house (my day off) and a jog and walk with a friend.

I read a good way to do it when WFH is go for a walk as part of your morning "commute". Get up, walk for 30 mins in a circle to "work" (your house). Then walk "home" from work too!!

Thanks! It definitely looks like a pre-work walk is going to be the only reproducible way to do this. Thanks for all your ideas: I'll start the day with a walk and hope that as my fitness improves I can go a bit faster/further. At this point I think that 3 miles is all I can hope for right now. I have either document development or Skype meetings all day so very little opportunity to get off the chair at all!

Another Leslie Sansone fan here. There's also another walking working on YouTube called BeFit. Its slightly higher energy but work at youe own pace and she has everything from 5 minute to 30 minute workouts so you can fit them in around your schedule.

I love Lesley Sansone and bought a subscription to her daily walk workouts. I use them on rainy days or when I only have time for a quick 15 mins.

Perhaps oddly on a normal working day I find 10,000 steps easier to do if I go for a walk then if I go for a run. The slower you go, the more steps you do over the same distance. So I might pick up more steps just walking to the supermarket, doing a shop and walking home, than I would going for a lunchtime run.

I average 15k steps a day but I don't do that every day - on my long run days I'll do 30,000 steps easily, but on a "normal" day of pottering around, dropping kids at school, going for a run etc it'll be 9 or 10,000.

I go for a 20 minute walk before work, 10 minutes at lunch, and 10 minutes when I finish for the day.

Don't focus on the number of the steps too much; going for a brisk 10 minute walk three times a day can give you more benefit than 10,000 steps (and is more achievable!). The key is to make sure you are walking "briskly"; as in just a little bit out of breath. So you can still talk fairly comfortably but not sing apparently.

Benefit of three 10 minute walks over 10,000 steps:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-42864061
walking.heartfoundation.org.au/benefits-of-walking#:~:text=Walking%20for%20an%20average%20of,muscles%20that%20benefit%20from%20walking.

There's also an NHS app called "active 10" that shows when you are walking briskly enough:
www.nhs.uk/better-health/get-active/