How do you get 10,000 steps a day?

I go to work. Usually I hit 10k steps by about lunch time and around 14k by the time I get home.

On my days off I have hit 10k bu going to the zoo for the day or to the museum or the botanical garden. Mostly thought I just hope to break 5k on my days off.

I love going for walks, I also give myself a true rest day even from 10,000 steps. There are some days when I do twice this many so I average them all out over the week to get 70,000+ in a week and call it good.

For me it's a little easier, as I work in retail and can easily spend 7-8 hours running around my store, which is huge already (case in point: 13,349 steps so far today!). And when I go down to school, I park in a side lot instead of the main garage and walk the path through all the buildings, then take the steps from the third floor to the basement where the library is. That's close to 3/4 of a mile each way.

I'm trying to get back into the habit of walking on my days off...3-4 miles depending on if I have other obligations that day. Sometimes when I go to the mall, I walk the entire length and back and all the way around the anchor stores.

I'm doing C25K now (just started week 6), and on the days I do that, it's part of a 5.5 mile route which I finish out walking. The other days? I walk 3 miles before lifting. On my rest day, I just walk the 5.5 miles. That gets me to 10K. I'll often do an additional 2 miles or so in the afternoon. Walking is my stress reliever.

For additional steps, whenever I'm cooking something and there's time where I'll have to wait, I'll walk around the house. Waffle's in the iron for 5 minutes? Go walk. Potatoes have another 20 minutes? Walk around. Kettle's on the boil? Off I go.

When I put away laundry, instead of putting away a pile of something, I put each one away individually. I'll fold all the underwear, leave it on the couch, and then bring each pair up and put it away one by one. Tedious, but it adds up to lots of steps.

I'll do sort of the same thing when putting away groceries and things like that.

It's funny, we used to be told by all of the efficiency experts how to combine things to save time, and now I'm looking for ways to stretch things out to get more steps in!

I should add that for the most part, most of my steps are done as purposeful exercise, for all the fun steps I do with laundry and the like. I get a lot of calories from them because I'm either walking quite briskly or running.

When I'm feeling well, I usually do 20K steps a day.

The "step" is an extremely imprecise measure of activity, you know. For a typical person walking at a moderate pace, 2000 steps equals a mile. On my afternoon run today, I took 1442 steps per mile (my Garmin watch tells me that), so 1 running step equals about 1.4 walking steps.* (My running steps today were 1.12 meters per step, or 2.24 meters—7.35 feet—per stride.) When I step around my kitchen making an Indian dinner, I might take a lot of steps but most of them are pretty short. If I bicycle 90 miles, I don't take any steps except when I stop for potty breaks. How should I count that?

Point is: 10,000 steps is a target that can be met in many ways. Don't fetishize the number; instead, think about the underlying point: it's good to be active, both purposely (exercise) and in your everyday life (taking the stairs, biking for nearby errands instead of driving, parking at the first convenient spot rather than as close as possible, etc.).

* That's only in terms of distance. Running a 7-minute mile uses more energy per mile than walking a 20-minute mile, so in terms of metabolic expenditure, the running step is worth more like 1.65 walking steps.

Do a lot of walking. At lunch I do a 3 mile walk. I walk about 7 miles a day on average. I am a computer programmer so instead of emailing, I walk over to the persons desk. When I get home from work, I walk before dinner. If I don't get my 10,000 in, I will go out and walk my apartment complex until I do.

I'm so going to start the 'running on the spot' idea!!
I've got a fitbit flex - and I'm now on maintenance (well, slowly trainsitioning) and I never, ever get above 5000 steps even with work-out's (I have a very sedentary job). I'm going to run on the spot for 5 minutes each day like a crazy person and see if it helps heh

Honestly, for me it's pretty easy: It comes down to choosing to live in a highly walkable area.

I walk for most things. I drive very rarely. I cycle or use public transit to commute and to get everywhere in my daily life. My social life, errands and day-to-day activities are all walking distance from me.

Now, I realize that's not an option for everyone. But the suburban drive-everywhere life combined with a desk job can be really brutal on NEAT. So if you are moving or considering a change, you can use https://www.walkscore.com/ to gauge how walkable your new neighbourhood is. It's also worth advocating for urban planning that prioritizes walking and other active modes of transport.

I walk 30 minutes to and from work. At work instead of phoning my colleague down the hall or upstairs, I will go to their office and speak to them in person.

Ladybug_1794 wrote: »

Lol jog in place!!!

Jogging in place burns relatively few calories, though. And Fitbit will overestimate the burns 'cause it can't distinguish a step in place from a forward-motion step.