Laura Schoenfeld: That’s a really interesting question. I don’t know if you all are familiar with the reason 10,000 is the number that’s recommended, but that came from the original creators of the pedometer, which I believe was from Japan, and that was part of the marketing strategy, to recommend 10,000 steps a day. I don’t know if the evidence supports that at all. I do know the reason that was even a thing was because of a marketing team in Japan. I’m not saying there are any downsides to walking 10,000 steps per day. My point is more that 10,000 isn’t some special magic number that either you need to get to to be healthy or if you go overboard, that you’re not going to be healthy.
That said, I personally don’t do a lot of step tracking, and the reason for that is because, for me, it stresses me out to feel like there are days that I’m not getting the steps in. I’m quite active and I enjoy being active. I do a lot of weight training and hiking and just random movement as much as possible throughout the day, but for me, it was kind of a blessing when my Fitbit broke because I just was not really enjoying the pressure to have to hit 10,000 every day. I do have a pedometer on my phone, but I don’t really check it that often. For me, I feel like a day that I get 7,000 or 8,000 in the day, especially a workday, then that’s great and I feel really good. Then the other stuff that I’m doing, like the weight training and maybe the longer-duration cardio-type activities on the weekends, maybe I’ll go a day that’s 15,000 steps or something. Personally I don’t really worry that much about getting 10,000 as the number. The goal that I have set on my phone is 8,000, but that’s just what I’ve established as the appropriate goal for me.
When you’re thinking about setting goals for yourself or clients, what I typically like to do with a person if they do want to use a pedometer, if they have a Fitbit or they have their phone that’s going to track steps, is I’ll tell them to track what they’re doing for a couple of days and just look at what their average is. Maybe their average step count is 5,000. I’m not going to tell that person who is doing 5,000 steps a day to double their step count. I’m going to tell them to set a goal, add 2,000 steps to that average, so the goal being 7,000 instead of 5,000. That way if they add in, like, another 20 to 30 minutes or walking, they’ll get a little bit more and that little step-wise goal is going to be much more motivating to them than trying to aim for 10,000 if they’re at 5,000.
Now, I’m not saying there’s any downside to doing 10,000 steps a day. I just don’t like to just arbitrarily pick a number for people because I think it’s not helpful and it may not even be necessary, and it can also kind of discourage people if they feel like, Well, I’m so far away, I may as well not even try. Really it’s going to come down to what the person is already doing and if you want them to do more or if they feel like they need to do more because of their goals, and then just looking for a reasonable goal to set, whether that’s 8,000 steps, whether that’s 15,000 steps.
The other thing is that I’ve seen this become an overtraining situation for a lot of people, where they’re doing 10,000 steps and then they’re also doing, like, CrossFit or they’re doing some kind of high-intensity weight training or something on top of that 10,000 steps, and they’re trying to do that multiple days a week, if not every day. I don’t think that people need to worry about 10,000 steps if they’re pretty active and they’re doing things to keep their bodies moving because some things like weight training or yoga, that’s movement, but you’re not getting the step count in there. So I’m not religious about the 10,000 steps, and again, I’ve seen it kind of backfire on people when they feel discouraged and they don’t think that they can get to 10,000, so then they don’t even bother adding any steps to their day. Ultimately it’s really more important that the person does exercise that they feel good about and that they enjoy, and if that’s something that doesn’t add to their step count, that’s not a bad thing.