Name: I walked 10,000 steps a day for 30 days
Uploaded: 2024-10-25T02:47:12.000Z
Duration: 13 min 8 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

In the fitness world, there's no shortage of trendy workouts.

Gerund

F45, CrossFit, Pilates, and HIIT training all have cult followings.

The superlative

But the best kept secret when it comes to living a healthy and active lifestyle might have been under our noses the entire time.

Apparently, you just get your ass off the couch and move your legs in a forward-like motion, propelling yourself into the space in front of your lifeless body.

Most of us are taking fewer steps than our ancestors did and for a myriad of reasons.

We drive to the office, work in front of a computer screen, and spend our downtime melted into our couch.

Recent research has found that physical inactivity can increase the risk of chronic disease like diabetes and cancer.

And it's now the fourth leading risk factor for global mortality.

So I lift weights regularly, and I consider myself an active person.

But if there's one area I definitely ignore, it's cardio.

And my average steps per day for the past three years has been less than 4,000.

I wanna finally add more movement into my daily routine.

And so I'm gonna walk 10,000 steps a day for 30 days, starting now.

So we've all heard the recommendation to get 10,000 steps a day in, but where does this advice actually come from?

It turns out the number has more to do with marketing than science.

In the 1960s, the Japanese company responsible for the first commercial pedometer released a new step counter with the slogan, let's walk 10,000 steps a day.

The slogan was catchy and easy to remember, so it stuck.

Recent studies have shown that just 4,000 steps a day leads to better health outcomes.

But 7,500 steps is ideal for most people.

Call me an overachiever, but I'm still gonna stick with the 10,000 step goal.

I'm gonna be tracking all my health data closely over the next 30 days to see if I notice any significant changes.

I'll be weighing in daily, reporting my blood pressure, and tracking all other data points to see how I go.

One thing that was clear as I made my way through the first week is that it's not always easy to find the time.

It is surprisingly difficult to get 10,000 steps into a day.

I keep finding myself checking my tracker at 8 p.m. at night and realizing that I'm 2,000 or 3,000 steps short.

And so what I've had to do is go out after dark and just walk around my neighborhood, which isn't creepy at all.

Something is definitely gonna have to change.

I'm definitely gonna have to switch up my routine, figure out a way to get my steps in early, because I definitely can't keep this up.

One of the things I've done to help me track my steps is to get a smartwatch.

I got an Apple Watch, and it uses a combination of GPS tracking and arm motion when estimating distance and steps.

If you happen to use a wheelchair, it can also track pushes.

I noticed a few times that my watch recorded steps while I was asleep, but it gets close enough.

Of course, you can track steps with your phone, but I don't like to bring mine with me wherever I go.

So I find that I miss out on a lot of steps every day.

And as I'm learning so far, every step counts.

So right now it's 1044, and I have 9,800 steps, which means I need to walk around until I hit 10,000 steps.

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I think the one thing that I'm realizing is that my life up until now, at least over the past couple of years, has been quite sedentary.

So I'm not getting up and moving a whole lot.

When I start my work, I sit down for eight hours or 10 hours, and I rarely get up.

I'll get up to go to the bathroom, to make another cup of coffee, maybe to go to the gym, but my steps and my movement overall has actually been quite low.

I really want to make a commitment to get in my steps as early as possible so it's not this thing that I'm always thinking about, like, oh my God, am I gonna have to walk at 11 p.m. at night again just to make sure I hit 10,000 steps?

I don't think that's the way to do this experiment.

I want to do it in a sustainable way, in a way that I might be able to carry on after the 30 days.

The first thing that really started to work for me was focusing on incidental exercise.

Incidental exercise is any movement done in small amounts that adds up over the course of the day.

We all have choices that we make each day that impact the amount of movement we get, like taking the stairs instead of the elevator, walking the long way to the gym, or using a smaller cup of water so you have to refill it more often.

This kind of exercise requires less effort than carving out a dedicated hour to go to the gym and can be built off everyday activities and routines.

So I began making different choices every day and I started to notice a difference.

A few hundred steps here, a couple thousand steps there.

So this alone isn't getting me across the finish line, but it's still nice to see some progress.

Perhaps my biggest breakthrough was after having a chat with my friend, Josh.

I was like, do you want to go for a walk?

And then we got close to the post office.

I'm like, do you mind if I actually pick up my parcel as well?

And so if you could come by, that would be great.

I never really thought about taking work meetings and calls while walking.

The way we typically think about meetings is that they're around a conference table or in front of a video screen, but they don't have to be.

Phone calls are so important to stay connected, especially when you have friends that are all over the place like I'm in Melbourne, you're in Sydney.

I might as well do it whilst I'm walking to get up my steps.

So first thing in the morning, if I had some calls to make,

I'd grab my AirPods, put on my sneakers and get moving.

Yeah, so I was thinking actually about our next course launch.

And for someone that has a totally unhealthy relationship with productivity and perfectionism, this was a really satisfying way for me to reach my goal.

So I just had a quick morning call, but this time instead of sitting at my desk,

So far today, I've got 4,800 steps in when I typically only get 900 at this point.

There were a couple of times in the middle of a conversation with Natalie that I asked if we could actually take a walk around the neighborhood instead of sitting down on the couch or in my office.

So we'd put on our sneakers and walk around the neighborhood, finishing our chat.

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I walked 10,000 steps a day for 30 days

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