‘Forget 10,000’: Surprising tips for anyone who counts their steps

Walking more than 10,000 steps a day wasn’t bad for people – it didn’t increase the risk of dying – but also didn’t add much, in terms of reducing mortality risks.

The benefits also weren’t confined to longevity. In other studies, step counts of at least 8,000 a day for adults substantially lowered risks for heart disease, type 2 diabetes, dementia, depression, many types of cancer and even sleep apnoea, says Janet Fulton, senior science adviser in the Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity and Obesity at the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

Even a small increase in daily steps is good for you

Not managing 8,000 steps a day at the moment? Or 6,000? Or even 5,000? You’re not alone. Before the pandemic, most Australians were averaging 7,400 steps a day. And COVID-19 seems to have reduced many people’s daily step counts by 10 per cent or more, according to some recent research, with daily activity levels only slowly returning to pre-pandemic levels.

How do you begin to increase your step counts? Even very small increases in daily steps are good for you.

“I suggest starting with an increase of about 500 to 1,000 steps per day,” says Ulf Ekelund, a professor at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences who studies physical activity and was one of the co-authors of the Lancet step-count study.

Other researchers agree.

“We currently consider 500 steps a day as the minimum target for increased activity in inactive individuals,” says Thomas Yates, a professor of physical activity, sedentary behaviour and health at the University of Leicester in England.

Every week or two, try accumulating another 500 or 1,000 steps, Ekelund says, until you reach at least 8,000 a day, or 6,000 if you’re past age 60.

You don’t need an expensive step counter

“Phones or watches are reasonably accurate,” says I-Min Lee, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who studies physical activity.

But not everyone owns a watch or similar activity tracker, Fulton says, while “almost everyone has a smartphone now”. And almost every smartphone, Apple or Android, contains an accelerometer, which is a movement tracker, that can tell you how many steps you take, Fulton says.

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These devices are not as accurate as the research-grade accelerometers used in scientific studies, Ekelund says, and their readings may differ enough that your step count will be different from mine at the end of our identical walk.

But these issues are relatively trivial, Yates says. Most phones and other types of trackers “are reasonably reliable,” he says, and if they over- or under-estimate your steps somewhat, they’ll do so “consistently”, so you can track your progress.

A more intractable problem may be that many of us don’t carry our phones all the time, says Charles Matthews, a physical activity epidemiologist at the National Cancer Institute and another co-author of the Lancet study. If your phone sits on your desk, it won’t count your steps. So, for an accurate measure of total daily steps, bring your phone as you amble. Carry it in your pocket, purse, or hand. The accelerometer should pick up your movements regardless, he says.

Learn step count maths

Here’s some basic step-count maths: 1,000 steps is about half a mile. Want to go that extra mile? For most of us, 2,000 steps is about 700 metres, depending on stride length. Taking 10,000 steps would mean walking for about eight kilometres.

Speed doesn’t matter

In terms of time, a half-hour of walking equals around 3,000 steps for most of us, if we don’t hurry.

The good news is we probably don’t need to hurry. In almost all of the recent studies of step counts and mortality, the intensity of the steps, meaning how fast people walked, didn’t seem to matter much. It’s the overall number of steps they took throughout the day that made a difference.

Intensity is the “icing” on the cake, Matthews says. Walking faster has the potential to amplify the health benefits of walking, but only slightly, he says.

The key is to walk as frequently as you can manage, whatever your pace.

Step goals aren’t about weight loss

Walking is not a calorie zapper. In broad terms, accumulating 2,000 steps, which is walking for about a mile, burns about 100 calories for an average adult moving at a strolling pace.

Your typical doughnut contains about 300 calories. An apple has about 100. Even 10,000 steps a day adds up to only about 500 calories.

It’s easier to count steps than minutes of exercise

Why count steps at all? Because, for most of us, it’s a simpler, more-concrete goal than accumulating “150 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity per week”, as the Australian Physical Activity and Sedentary Behaviour Guidelines recommends.

“I have stopped trying to explain and prescribe the physical activity guidelines to my patients,” says William Kraus, a professor of medicine at Duke University, who was involved in writing the 2018 guidelines. “They do not understand them and cannot absorb them. I have gone to prescribing steps. I tell them they need to get to a minimum of 7,000 steps per day.”

“Some is good, more is better,” Lee says, and the first step is to just get up and take a few steps.

This article originally appeared in The Washington Post.

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