How many steps a day?

[Onegingerhead]

I was wondering how many steps a day you aim for to accelerate weight loss? Is it a part of your journey or you rather ignore it?
I am/was reasonably active and always managed to do 10K a day without even trying (dog walks plus 4-5K at work). I still gained quite a bit of undesired weight so presumably it wasn't enough..
Do you have a number you try to hit each day and if so, does it feel like its helping you?

I don't think it's unrealistic. I just think it's unusually high

And I remain confused about your heavy exercise load, and why it needs further augmentation.

"Very active" usually means at least 3 days a week with vigorous exercise (weekly total - minimum 75 vigorous minutes per week). 150 moderate active minutes a week is the measure given by some. But I think those are aimed at maintaining health, and will not necessarily either improve fitness or make a huge difference to weight.

Do you wear a device that monitors your heartrate, so you know if your exercise counts as vigorous?

I believe that very active actually refers to your daily life such as a job whereby you're required to be in your feet and moving around a lot for 8+ hours a day. I do 6/7 days of heavy weight sessions plus 15k steps a day but as I don't have an active job I always class myself as lightly active in terms of working out TDEE

It depends on the calculator, @tilestoclean

Some just ask for activity level (I always put in "moderate" unless I'm in serious race training).

Others it's by occupation (I put in sedentary or light, depending on definitions) plus number of days a week exercising (usually put in 4, but varies between 3 and 6 depending on training cycle and definitions)

And of course it's also worth knowing what your estimated BMR is!

Yes I do, its Apple watch. It actually tracks the heart rate throughout the day and then uses it in combination with other metrics (age, gender and weight) to estimate AMR.
My gym sessions really pump the heart rate, it is in 80-90% HR max (zone 4) that counts as hard.
Daily activities (walks etc) that also contribute to AMR is 60-70% (zone 2).
Rest is BMR which for me age and weight should be about 1650 kcal (presumably this it what I burn if staying in bed all day)

No no, I don't think you're sedentary! But if you're recording your activity separately using your tracker, you need to use the sedentary tdee and then add the exercise calories burnt to that. If you use an active tdee and then add the exercise cals, you've doubled them haven't you?

10k was debunked as an arbitrary number. You could do 10k at a slow stroll or eg 5k at a marathon pace, your energy burn will be different. All movement is good though.

Yes! Exactly this!

But I don’t, the tracker does all the job. It knows my BMR because I input my age and weight and all the activity is added on top by the tracker. Activity is everything what rises my heart rate above some basal level (apparently). Some activities rise the heart rate a bit, some a lot.
I don’t think it’s right just to take my bare BMR and arbitrary add some exercise on top (say 500 kcal) because even if I sit on my butt all day (I never do) I spent more than the BMR suggests. Why would I do that.
Snapshot from the All health data that gets the data from Apple watch and the fitness app to illustrate

The point is, with all the exercise you do, I don’t see how upping from 15,000 steps to 20,000 steps is going to do as much as you think. If you’re at the gym 5 times a week on top of all these steps, as I said before, you’re eating too many calories.

You said you count calories, and don’t eat back what you’re supposedly burning through exercise. So how many calories are you eating? It will be much easier and quicker to just reduce a few hundred calories than it would to increase your exercise by that much. How long will it take to do an extra 5-10,000 steps per day, on top of all your gym workouts, compared to just cutting the equivalent of a few biscuits or a slice of toast or whatever.

I aim at 1500 kcal tracked by myfitness pal and I don't eat biscuits/toasts or anything else bready. My snacks are either apple or orange.
I may drink too much coffee (1 tea spoon of sugar, 16 kcal) and have water retention from this or overexercised muscles
I'm not sure I want or even can cut any further and I'm always mortified when I read someone eating 1000 kcal a day. I won't be able to properly function/work let alone doing workouts.
Maybe I should just accept and stay fat.

Those numbers should be a deficit for most people - how much do you currently weigh and how tall are you? If you are as active as you say and truly do track everything properly, weighing food etc, then on appear you should be losing weight unless you are already lean or are especially short!

I should be in deficit so i don't really know.
Initially I was not even going to count calories but thought to get rid of unhealthy eating habits, such as eating 2 croissants/Danish in the morning, snacking on chocolate (one worth of 500 kcal a day was easy for me), cheese, salami etc.
My initial reasoning was that with all mine no so healthy eating habits and the level of past activity ( minus the gym) as I no longer gain weight (nothing gained from the last year) cutting the bad habits and adding the gym should be sufficient to lose the weight.
Decided to actually count calories and track what i eat after reading here that its next to impossible for a woman who hit 40s (due to peri) to lose the weight unless practically starving herself.
Yet, it will be 4 weeks Sunday and nothing lost.
I'm 5'10'' and 11 st 5 lbs but I'm an ectomorph and was 8st 6lbs pre pregnancy and lockdown and my current weight is really too high. I used to be very lean. Lots of belly fat accumulated (32 inch waist) now topped up by huge thighs. I also started suffering from high blood pressure and I'm sure its due to excess weight

And how many calories a day are you eating?

The typical American walks between 1.5 and 2 kilometers per day, or between 3,000 and 4,000 steps. As a starting point, it's a good idea to determine how many steps you currently take each day. Next, you can gradually increase your daily step count to 10,000 by trying to add 1,000 extra steps every two weeks.

Calorie deficit to lose weight.

Movement/ training to maintain weight. 7k+ steps a day to maintain joint and heart health

Yes, this, scary the difference being office based for only 3 weeks was (I'm a horticulturalist, I spent yesterday literally lugging (small) trees about and hoeing weeds out of a greenhouse)