Is 10000 steps a day good for body and spirit?
Is 10000 steps a day good? Why 10000 and why not 5000 or 17000?
At the beginning of 2021 I was 56 years old and I weighed 260 pounds – I was obese.
Even though my job was sedentary it was (and is) highly stressful. In simple terms I was an excellent candidate for a heart attack
I was “working from home” and not venturing outside unless absolutely necessary, so my starting point was on average less than 1000 steps per day. 1000 steps is approximately 700 metres or less than 0.5 miles.
In this article I explain how walking 10000 steps per day transformed my life.
These are the 5 easy steps that I followed –
Is 10000 steps a day good? Maybe…Maybe not
Decide if you feel healthy enough to start
Define your goals and how to measure them
Do it
Celebrate your success
Is 10000 steps a day good? Maybe…Maybe not
“Is 10000 steps a day good?” is a question with multiple answers and all can be correct.
Whilst the simple answer is YES, a lot depends on a person’s starting point and factors such as the terrain, the speed of walking and the fitness level of the person who is walking.
A person of average fitness can cover about 5km per hour on a flat surface, so 10000 steps is about 7km or 4-5 miles. This means a walk of about 1.25 hours
I lived in an area with shallow rolling hills, and IF I walked I walked really quickly.
When I started walking my 10000 steps a day I told a colleague what I was doing. My colleague had participated in many Iron Man events around the world and he volunteered to walk with me.
During our first walk he asked me many questions. It was really difficult to answer him because I was out of breath.
After our first walk he told me that I was walking too fast and that walking too fast wasn’t really optimum for my health.
He explained that it was important to increase the pulse rate but not to increase it past a safe level. To stay within a safe range, walk fast enough that you can still maintain a conversation, but not so fast that you can hardly speak.
I invested in a pulse watch and I referred to an online chart from the American Heart Foundation to establish my safe range
Decide if you feel healthy enough to start
I had recently visited a doctor so I knew that other than being obese I was actually healthy so I had no excuse not to start exercising.
I was glad that I had the OK from a doctor and I would recommend that anyone who is about to change their life seeks medical advice first.
Define your goals and how to measure them
I decided on a 2 step approach
Step1) – Focus on the total number of steps
- My first goal was 10000 steps per day broken down into 2 4000 step walks and the remaining 2000 steps taken during the course of the day.
Step2) – Improve the quality of the steps
- Get used to regular exercise and then speed up
I used my GPS / Pulse watch to record my daily step count, time taken and pulse rate.
Do it
From my front door I walked along the country road counting steps as I went. Once I reached 2000 I looked around me for a landmark (there was a large oak tree very close to the 2000 step point)
From that day onwards I would walk to the oak tree twice per day.
In the beginning I paid no attention to how long it took or what my pulse reading was – my simple goal was 10000 steps.
After regularly meeting the goal for a few weeks I then started to focus on the quality of steps. This meant increasing my speed so that my pulse increased to a reasonable level (in my case 125 bpm) compared to a slow walking pulse of 85 bpm.
I soon realized that 10000 steps were easy to achieve. I was healthier and happier – I was proud of my achievement. So to the question…”Is 10000 steps a day good?” Yes. Is 10000 steps a day enough? In my case it wasn’t. Over the last 18 months I have steadily increased my daily step count. Even though I now live in Texas and the temperature regularly exceeds 100F (38C) I walk more than 20000 steps per day – every day.
I feel healthy and happy – I am proud of my achievement. In the last 2 years I have walked 5500 miles (8900km)
Celebrate your success
Before I started walking and improving my general health, celebrating usually meant eating a big meal and drinking lots of beer.
Of course I still enjoy a good meal but I now celebrate my success by sharing my positive message with other people. By showing them how walking each day has transformed my life I have inspired other people to follow in my footsteps – literally.
I am proud to say that in the last 12 months I have walked more than 6.7 million steps
Conclusion
Is 10000 steps a day good? Yes, Yes and Yes again.
Give it a try – it will change your life.
If I can do it, YOU CAN DO IT TOO.
Thanks for taking the time to read this post. If something I’ve said in this post has resonated with you then please leave a comment
