Feeling like a sloth as all my friends bought pedometers and fitness trackers I finally broke down and bought Fitbit. Right away I felt subpar.
I only walked 3,000 step my first day, and the goal is apparently 10,000 steps a day. So that made me wonder who came up with 10,000 steps a day!
Experts do say 10,000 steps is a good number to reach, but they all also point out that any quantity of steps beyond what you’re presently doing will likely benefit your health.
The Origin of 10,000 Steps a Day
The 10,000-step recommendation isn’t exactly clinical. Pedometers offered in Japan in the 1960s were marketed under the name “manpo-kei,” which means to “10,000 steps meter,” according to Catrine Tudor-Locke, director of the Strolling Behavior Laboratory at Pennington Biomedical Proving ground in Baton Rouge, La. The pedometers became so popular people started walking in groups.
Research studies conducted since then show that people who increase their walking to 10,000 steps a day do in fact experience health advantages.
One study found that women who increased their average amount of walking to almost 10,000 steps a day minimized their high blood pressure after 24 weeks. Another study of overweight ladies found that walking 10,000 steps a day improved their glucose levels.
Walking 10,000 steps a day is not an official recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC recommends grownups participate in 150 minutes of moderate activity a week, such as brisk walking. That would be about 7,000 to 8,000 steps a day.
If you typically walk about 5,000 steps a day, getting in an additional 30-minute, vigorous walk into your day would take you to about 8,000 steps. The average U.S. adult walks 5,900 steps a day.
The Mayo Center suggests that individuals using pedometers initially set short-term goals, such as taking an extra 1,000 steps daily for one week and after that develop to a long-lasting objective such as 10,000 average steps.
Tudor-Locke said that there’s not a single technique to increase your step count, everyone has to find what works for them. The essential thing is to increase your activity beyond what you were doing before. Dr. Clay Marsh, a primary development officer at Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, agreed saying, “people don’t need to feel like they need to achieve 10,000 steps to be active. We just want people to get up, and start” adding. “Any quantity of activity that you can do today that you didn’t do yesterday, you’re most likely going to begin gaining from it.”
My Daily Steps
I have been adding 1,000 steps a week. I’m now doing 6,000 steps a day and tomorrow I bump up to 7,000 steps a Day. I’ll keep you posted.
