Do you get in 10,000 steps a day?

[Gahhhhhhhhh]

I don’t doubt the benefits but I’m not sure how realistic it is for lots of people. Which is obviously the problem (ie that modern life gets in the way of being active).

My kids walk themselves to school. I work mostly from home or drive to the office where I’m desk based for my full time job.

I would love to fit it in. But 90-120 mins of walking a day just seems unattainable.

Does anyone here consistently hit 10k per day? Do I need to be prioritizing this more (obviously the answer is yes)?

I found it easier to get the 10k in when I worked from home as I used the time I normally was commuting to go to the gym or for an extra run.

I mostly do.

At the weekend I do parkrun most Saturdays (am currently on 10,292) and walk the dog and go for walks as well as a gym workout which provides frustratingly few steps but is good for bone density and core strengthening.

During the week it can be a bit hit or miss. If I do my usual of parking a mile or so away from the office where it's free and walk along the canal that's my 10k there and back. If I work from home I have to make a concerted effort to go for a walk before I start, a 30 min dog walk and then something else as well. The days I get the bus into work are generally my lowest, as having paid bus fare, I find myself unkeen to get off early.

It may be an arbitrary number, but I generally feel better, sleep better and put on less weight or maintain when I'm doing a constant minimum 10k per day. I listen to Audible books as well to give me something to do.

I set my target as 5000. I generally do more than 10,000 per day, but it's on days that I'm nowhere near that a low target will motivate me more to put in a little effort to reach a more attainable target.

Plus some sports like swimming, cycling or weights don't really register so I don't want to feel off-goal when I've already had a healthy dose of activity.

10,000 is arbitary, but the more we move, the better for our bodies. Not all steps have equal benefuts though.

My pb is 61,084. That was marathon day which also involved significant use of public transport systems that added several thousand on top.

My average is about 20k. Club runner and two dogs that need to be walked separately that hate running…

I walk a lot, to the kitchen to scoff, to the bathroom to ahem, to the fridge, to the dishwasher, to the washing machine, to the clothes line, to the vacuum cleaner (and then say to hell with that today), and to the door to collect parcels, to the car, to the tram, to the garden (to sit in it for the five minutes it's not raining) and then I sit down at last after my 3k.

I do 3k a day most days, that's because my watch tells me. I am not worried about steps. Do millions of steps, do some, do none. No one will mind.

I manage about 5k most days. But I focus more on brisk walking rather than the amount of steps - there’s an app called Active 10 that records how many minutes of brisk walking you do and you aim for 3 x 10 min bursts of brisk walking in a day. I find that more achievable and it’s good for your cardiovascular fitness etc.

For me to do 10k plus steps I’d have to literally be on my feet for a few hours everyday and I just can’t do that - disabled child to care for etc etc.

He’s definitely right about that - it’s not necessary and a big responsibility to take on if you just want to increase your steps. I do 5-12K daily

I work from home too and I do YouTube walking or step workouts videos which are basically fitness workouts that get your step count up. A half hour one first thing in the morning usually gets me to 3,000 steps, and then I do a few random bursts of dance or just walking around in my flat for 5-10 minutes away from my desk that adds up to 2,000, so I’m at 5,000 before even leaving the house usually.

If I walk up to the library and back on my lunch (20 minutes) its another 3500 step so takes me to 8.5K.. I’m usually happy to get to 8K steps but if i do a 15 minute step workout in the evening it is another 1.5K which gets me to 10K steps.

If I go to the gym too it ends up being way over 10,000

I barely hit 3000. Don’t have time to fit any walks in.

The random bursts of dance are throughout the day btw. I’ll play a song or two and dance around to it for around 5 mins total. Each dance “session” is about 500 steps. It really adds up!

Yes I realised in January I needed to move more and have been doing 10000 steps a day ever since. Except for a couple of weeks ago I hurt my back so tried but couldn't for a few days. Sometimes I've gone for walks late at night just to get the steps in. Mon-weds I work in the office so go for a walk at lunch. Walking to make a coffee, go to the loo etc is further than at home. Mondays I'm at choir so move around there. Wednesday I go jogging. Thurs and fri are wfh days but one of them I walk with DD part of the way to school and pick her up and the other one I go for a jog at lunch. Sometimes it's a bit of a chore I have to say but it's good for my mental health and my skin- I was suffering from a rash on my face before

Some weekend days I don’t but I reach 15,000+ most week days but I don’t work and have 3 schools runs a day.

And also in January I joined slimming world and have lost 2 stone

Never. I WFH virtually tied to my desk
After work I exercise but it's spin class and weights so not steps

It was a marketing ploy out of Japan to encourage walking. There's no magic number, but 10000 certainly isn't it - though obviously walking more is beneficial simply because exercise is better than no exercise. But much lower amounts are good too.
4000 seems to be the minimum I've seen, with 7,500-8000 offering definite benefits (over walking less than 4000).

I do a min of 15k steps a day. I also have an office job and on my butt for 8 hrs a day, Inc lunch. I make myself step in the spot every 30 mins or so for a few mins, I walk to the furthest loo and do about 2mins stepping when there. If I'm printing anything, I step then too. If I'm at home I step watching TV or stick Alexa on and dance for a bit. I find it easy

10,000 yeah. If I do less on some days, I make up for it on other days so it’s never less than 70,000 for the week. I’m at 68,159 now and I don’t want to do any more but I’ll have to make myself!

I dunno because fitbit counts cycling as steps.
Like today fitbit says I did 12,527 steps. But at least 8k of that is cycling (about 80 minutes).
Probably not then.

Around 50-55000 steps a week. Different amounts on different days.

You know you can recategorise the exercise?

The exercise is correctly identified as cycling by fitbit. It's just that for some reason fitbit counts steps for my cycling minutes. Am happy to hear away to fi that, if you know.

Here are screen shots.... I cycled today at 1156am & 238pm. Those 2 events, 49 min & 31 min long, are also when I got most of today's steps. I did fairly little walking today actually.

No? Disability. I walk as far as I can on any given day and do as much physio as I can.

The more movement (steps) someone does is associated with better health outcomes and those associated benefits keep increasing.

No one needs to go for a 10k step walk, just smaller chunks through the day. 1k steps is roughly 10 mins.

if I’m light on steps for the day/week I treadmill walk whilst watching Netflix or something.

just build it up slowly OP, get a a tracker and do things like an extra lap of the supermarket, park further away etc and you’ll be surprised how easy it can be to get more steps in.

This is the summary of a recent study. (from Dr Karan’s newsletter if anyone follows him)

The world's largest study has shown the more you walk, the lower your risk of death (obviously..I guess), even if you walker fewer than 5,000 steps!

The study, published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology , found that walking at least 3967 steps a day started to reduce the risk of dying from any cause, and 2337 steps a day reduced the risk of dying from diseases of the heart and blood vessels (cardiovascular disease).

However, the new analysis of 226,889 people from 17 different studies around the world has shown that the risk of dying from any cause or from cardiovascular disease decreases significantly with every 500 to 1000 extra steps you walk.

An increase of 1000 steps a day was associated with a 15% reduction in the risk of dying from any cause, and an increase of 500 steps a day was associated with a 7% reduction in dying from cardiovascular disease.

Additionally it was noted that even if people walked as many as 20,000 steps a day, the health benefits continued to increase. They have not found an upper limit yet.

Clearly as an "observational" study (not randomised), limitations include that it cannot prove that increased step counts cause the reduction in the risk of death, only that it is associated with it.

10k steps is a great arbitrary number to aim for...sure but don't let the failure of hitting this number discourage you from movement altogether.

There is a human tendency to disregard the whole after a failure of a component. E.g you eat some "junk" food and break your diet, it is tempting to throw your diet out for the entire day and consume whatever you want.

TL;DR - walk as much as you can, as often as you can even if it's shy of the magical "10K target". There is likely no harm and only things to gain from a health perspective.

So that’s for all the 10k steps is a marketing ploy/conspiracy lot who are no doubt the same people who think BMI is pointless, cos bodybuilders (like anyone every got confused between a bodybuilder and someone who is just plain old obese)

Easily. Impossible not to with a dog, 10k would be a particularly low day. Usually average about 20k - I exercise every day as well as 2 x walks.

Yes, usually. On days I'm in the office (3 days a week) I walk 15 minutes to the station, 5 minutes to office, 20 minute walk at lunch time, same commute in reverse then I've got my 10,000 steps - or by the time I've made dinner I have.

When I'm at home it's easier, get it from walking the dog and steps round the house. Then also I go to the gym three times a week, get about 4,000-5,000 steps there in an hour, more if it's a cardio only session.

So I do about 80,000 a week as a baseline really. If I go to Bluewater or do a lot of gardening or a longer walk then it can be a lot more. I'm usually only third in my league table of friend on FitBit though. Two of my friends do over 110,000 regularly. One is a dog walker and one runs a fair bit. And they are very slim so there is something in it!