What I Learned from Walking 10,000 Steps a Day
Why an already active lifestyle still benefits from consistent daily movement
For the past month I’ve been actively focusing on hitting 10,000 steps a day and I want to provide my honest opinion on the experience. I already live a relatively active lifestyle, running and lifting multiple times a week, so I didn’t expect to see much additional benefit from reaching an arbitrary step goal. However, a month later I am pleasantly surprised.
I started doing this for a few reasons. Firstly, I started to notice that the people in my life who consistently hit high step counts were leaner and seemed more energetic in their day to day activities. I also realised that outside of running and lifting I was living a relatively sedentary life, resulting in days with 2,000–5,000 steps on a regular basis. I would get 3,000 steps from a 5km run and essentially no steps from a gym workout. Unless I consciously went on a walk I wouldn’t get above 5,000 in a day.
It was also around this time that I started seeing a lot of walking pads on social media. These are essentially small treadmills that have desks attached to them so you can do work while getting steps in. I was seriously considering buying one because I was tired of sitting down all day but after seeing the cost I decided against it.
This is when I had a stroke of genius and remembered that we had an old treadmill in our garage. This treadmill was very rickety and practically useless for running — hence why it was collecting dust in the garage — but for walking, well that was a different story. I immediately went into the garage and pulled it out, covering my mouth to avoid getting dust in my airways. I wiped it clean and plonked it down in the family living room.
Now I had a treadmill — but to justify using it I needed to be able to do work on it. After some brainstorming and creativity this is the monstrosity that my dad and I managed to create:
A monstrosity that I’m currently walking on as I’m typing this out.
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Although I struggle to do focused work while walking I can still attend meetings, do light work or watch YouTube, making it significantly easier to get my steps in.
Along with this I was also opting to walk whenever the opportunity presented itself. I would take the stairs, walk to the next bus stop and walk around the gym between sets, and across the day these steps would add up.
Now it’s been almost a month of me consistently hitting 10,000 steps a day and here’s my honest review…
I highly recommend it.
As I mentioned earlier I already live an active lifestyle so I really didn’t think this habit would have much of an impact on me. But after doing it I realised how wrong I was.
Working out 1–2 hours a day while spending the rest of your day sitting down just isn’t very balanced, and while it’s better than not working out at all, it’s still important to incorporate activity throughout your day. Light activity keeps your blood flowing, improves your mood and promotes greater mental clarity.
Although I used a walking desk to hit this goal it’s still 100% possible without one. You could just as easily take meetings while walking outside and regularly opt to walk instead of drive whenever reasonable.
Humans weren’t made to sit indoors all day and aiming to hit 10,000 steps a day is one simple way you can drastically improve your well being.
Thanks for reading,
Kush
