How do you do 10,000 steps a day when working in desk job?

[Littlemiss74]

I’m thinking of doing a charity challenge (Alzheimers Society) of 10,000 steps a day during September. I need to get back into regular exercise so I thought this might help give me an incentive.

I know to many people 10,000 steps a day is the norm but it isn’t for me. I work in a desk job 4 days a week and normally most of my steps during those 8 hours are to the kitchen & bathroom!

If you do 10,000 steps a day and have desk job please can you tell me how you do it?

@boxcar

I have a full on, full time desk job & run twice a week. But even though I average 8-9 miles a week of running, I average about 4K steps a day.

Wow. Not counting exercise I averaged 13k steps a day when I went to the office for work and worked in a slightly bigger office than I do now. You must drive everywhere. I would get up to 16k sometimes on a Saturday just going to the shops and looking around, not doing any actual 'exercise'. I am short so a step for me is not like a step for a tall person and not many kms.

As others have said, walk to work or part of the way, park further away if you have to take your car. Walk around at work eg go to get visitors yourself from reception. Even going to the kitchen, toilet and printer will mean walking a lot more than wfh

To be fair, that requires you to have a commute that allows you to walk all or part of the way - I definitely couldn't do that at my place, I'm beside a dual carriageway - I don't have visitors I can collect at reception, and the loo is right opposite my office (lovely - not...). Even the kitchen and printer is just along the corridor.

For some people it really is much harder - maybe not impossible as such, but definitely harder than for others.

I walk my dog before work for about 30 mins, then the same at lunchtime, and do another walk or a workout after work and I rarely do under 10k steps.

If I didn't have a dog, I very much doubt I'd do more than a few thousand a day.

Thanks everyone. Yesterday I did my 10,000 steps by doing an hours walk in the evening which I really enjoyed. I think that is going to be the best way for me so am going to try and get into a routine of doing this & just generally move as much as I can.

Just to confirm I drive to the office on 3 days a week & wfh one day a week.

Do you need to drive? Can you take public transport and walk more?

I have a job which often requires about 10-12 hours a day at my desk between my office and my home office, but I don’t drive - I walk everywhere. In a standard working day, I can sometimes clock up 20,000 steps - walking to the office, walking to various meetings, walking to the gym, walking back into to the office, walking home.

I have my FitBit set to 15,000 steps as my daily target, and it’s really not that hard.

Use a standing desk. It adds quite a few steps to a normally sedentary day

If you currently drive to work, walk further away. I usually walk to work, and that does account for most of my steps. On days I'm not going to work, and if I can't squeeze a walk in, I'll do a dance exercise video from YouTube (I've found dance once the most enjoyable and best for steps). Failing that, just step on the spot whilst watching TV, or leave things upstairs so you need to walk upstairs regularly. If it's a goal for you (it is for me), you do need to plan it a bit hit once you're in the habit of doing things slightly differently it's not that hard. The key thing really I've found though, is that if you're driving everywhere, that needs to be the first thing to go, you need to get used to walking places instead, and plan around that.

Sorry, my first sentence should have read "park further away and walk". In fact that could be a rule for almost everything, shopping, taking the kids to school, going anywhere really. If you're used to parking in the closest place to where you're going, flip that so you're walking the entire journey or parking in the furthest reasonable place (which could be anything from a 20 min walk away if you have the time, to the other side of the car park if not) and walk.

It's really difficult! I usually only manage around 5k. I walk to work but it's only a 15 minute walk. I recon I'd need to either get up at 5.30am and walk for an hour before work, or go at 9pm. The thought of either losing an hour of sleep or losing my evening social time with DH isn't very appealing (he couldn't come with me cos of DC).

I purposely put time aside to go for a walk and make sure I get out at lunchtime whether I'm in the office or WFH. It's harder some days than others though.

Shame I don't seem to have the same discipline to reduce calories intake!

Can you walk part of the way to work and back or at lunchtime? When I commuted into London I blocked off 30 mins at lunchtime in my calender every day to make myself get up from my desk and using a fitbit helped me calculat that 10K steps for me was walking an hour total a day (which worked if i did the lunchtime walk). Now im working from home i set in my calendar for lunchtime (or book swim or gym). If i miss those, i do the 30 min walk when i've lobbed something in the oven for supper for 30mins!