The Rookie Diaries: The 10,000-Step Challenge
Posted by Tula Karras on Wed, Feb 10, 2010
Ten thousand steps a day. That's the magic number experts say will help you lose weight (or keep it off) and stay fit. Depending on your fitness level, 10,000 steps may sound like a lot…or a little…or who knows? I certainly didn't.
I consider myself to be a fairly active person in daily life. I live in New York City and have to walk pretty much everywhere, even if it's to get to the subway. My guess was that I was easily racking up my quota, even on days when I didn't hit the gym. To find out, this past Saturday—a day when I typically run a lot of errands on foot—I tracked my steps with a pedometer (I'd highly recommend the Omron HJ-303 Tri-Axis Pocket Pedometer, which tracks your steps no matter what direction it's facing in your pocket). Here's a rundown of my day, not including the walking I did inside my home (like shuffling from the couch to fridge for snacks, which I did about a zillion times):
• Twelve-minute walk to specialty grocery store to buy over-priced specialty groceries (like imported cheese).
• Six-minute walk back home, stopping halfway when I realized I'd been overcharged $3 for already-expensive cheese.
• Brisk five-minute walk back to Rip-offs 'R Us to get credit for $3 overcharge.
• Twelve-minute walk back to my apartment, enjoying a puffed-up sense of satisfaction at having caught—and corrected—the discrepancy.
• Five-minute walk to bank to deposit checks; 30 seconds of walking from machine to machine inside vestibule trying to find one that issued receipts.
• Five-minute walk to less expensive grocery store to buy the basics.
• Ten-minute slooooow walk around aisles of grocery, which is crowded with people walking at a glacial pace and talking loudly on their cell phones about what to buy for their Superbowl party on Sunday.
• Ten-minute walk back home lugging heavy bags (burns more calories!).
• Five-minute walk to dry cleaners to pick up clothes I insisted on having done as a rush but forgot to pick up for a week.
• Fifteen-minute scenic, frigid walk along Brooklyn Promenade to watch sun set and contemplate life, pondering whether my soon-to-be nephew will inherit the Karras family nose, and wondering why doctors divide pregnancy into three trimesters and not four quarters or two halves, like the Superbowl.
• Brisk five-minute walk back home to Google answer to trimester question [According to Wikipedia: It's somewhat arbitrary, but it also helps to simplify stages of prenatal development.]
• Two-minute walk to take out garbage and recycling.
In sum, I spent one hour and 32 minutes walking. Was it enough? Nope. I'd clocked an impressive 8,678 steps, but I'd overestimated my activity level, and I suspect a lot of us do.
So unless you walk for a living (waitressing, package delivery), you have to step it up, literally. In fact, for the average person, 10,000 steps works out to about five miles. For most of us, going to the gym three or four times a week is necessary to make up the deficit. If you live in the suburbs, it's even tougher to hit the target. My recommendation would be to get a pedometer, track your steps during a typical day, and then add 10-minute increments of walking until you hit 10,000: Park at the south end of the mall when the store you need is at the north end; use the 15 minutes of commercial time during every hour-long TV program to walk around; at work, take the long way to the bathroom (and drinks tons of water so you have to go often☺); walk over to coworkers instead of emailing them. Pretty soon, you'll find hitting 10K is…a walk in the park!
If you've discovered fun and useful ways to walk the walk in your life, please share!