Are you walking 10000 steps a day?

A few years ago when the company rolled out a series of program to encourage us to exercise, I participated in the walking program. The aim was to get us to walk at least 10000 steps a day. 


Since I love walking, I did not think that 10000 steps was a problem. I did not need to join the walking program to walk 10000 steps a day. What I wanted was the pedometer. The company gave us a free pedometer, on the condition that we walked an average of 10000 steps a day.

10000 steps seem a big number to many people. If you do not have a habit of taking an evening walk, your average steps per day would likely be 4000 steps only.

Just how much is 10000 steps? While the mileage differs according to the length of your stride, the average people walk 100 steps in a minute. And that means slightly less than 2 solid hours of walking.

So, 10000 steps mean 100 minutes of walking. Even if you do not walk continuously, you can achieve 10000 steps a day by consciously taking 5 minutes walk every hour. If you keep reminding yourself to walk 5 minutes every hour, you would have accumulated 500 steps every hour. For 16 walking hours, you would have accumulated 8000 steps. This is on top of your usual walking activities.

I think it is an obsession for someone new to walking to check the pedometer every now and then.  It is very encouraging to see the 0 step turns into 1500 steps by the time you reach the office.  When you return from the washroom and pantry, you see the 2000 steps displayed on the pedometer.  You may even check the calories burnt for the 2000 steps. 

When my colleagues and I were in the walking program, we used to eat a bit faster, and spent the rest of lunch hour walking and comparing the number of steps. 

The problem is the determination to walk. Let us assume that you want to accomplish the task of walking 10000 steps in ten hours. That means 1000 steps every hour.

You are likely to get the first 1000 steps in your first waking hours. You can park the car a bit further away from your working place. The trick is to incorporate more steps in the hours at work. You may have to use the stairs instead of waiting for the elevator. You may have to walk more frequent, and take the longer route to the washroom. You can go the photocopier more frequently. Even though each trip may generate just 50 steps, all these steps do add up to help you reach the 10000 steps a day target.

Lunch hour is the time when you can take a 20-minutes walk. You can go for a ten-minutes walk before meal and the other ten minutes walk after meal.

If you are those that find it hard to get out of the house after you reach home, you may have to take a 30 minutes walk after work. You can walk in the shopping district near to your workplace. Once you start walking, you can easily encourage yourself to just walk another 200 steps, and another 200 steps. After all, 200 steps is just an effort of 2 minutes. You may find that you have walked for 45 minutes, and you are hungry.

It is surprising how a pedometer can motivate you to walk. The fact that the steps add up quickly add to your motivation for walking 10000 steps a day.

I find that walking is easier when I am not thinking of the number of steps at all. Once I tried to read while walking on the treadmill. I set the treadmill to an extremely slow speed. Since I was reading a thriller, I could walk and read at the same time. The thriller was absorbing, and I forgot all about the walking. By the time I felt thirsty, and stopped the treadmill, I had read 50 pages, and the pedometer showed 4000 steps.

My friends have similar experience with exercise bike. They watch the soap opera and cycle unconsciously through the hour-long episode. They cannot even feel the muscle aching until they step off the exercise bike.

That is why many people arrange to go for window shopping as part of the exercise routine. They can easily walk 10000 steps without thinking about it.

If you are walking for weight loss purpose, I am very sorry to tell you that 10000 steps is not enough.  Walking 10000 steps is just enough to prevent you from putting on weight.  It is not enough to make you lose weight.  You need to aim for 20000 steps a day to lose weight.