By: Chris Gates

Step counts have become a pretty common tool to promote physical activity, and the gold standard seems to be right around 10,000.

“Did you hit your 10,000 steps?”

It’s like a daily badge of honor.

In this article, I’m going to break down the latest in terms of what we know regarding steps counts, and how many steps you should walk a day to be healthy.

First, we’ll dive into the latest research about step counts and overall health. Next, we’ll talk about the role that physical activity plays in better health. And finally, I’ll outline the answer to this question:

How many steps should you walk a day to be healthy?

Research Evidence

A brand new study on step counts for overall health was published in the February issue of Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. In it, the researchers focused on fat loss in people who participated in physical activity and walked either 2,500, 5,000, or 8,500 steps a day.

The study focused on fat loss because reducing fat mass is generally associated with better overall health. Each person involved in the study hit an assigned daily step count for two days prior to taking a one-hour run on day three.

What researchers found was that the folks who walked 8,500 steps a day prior to the run had greater reductions in fat mass.

They also found that 5,000 steps or fewer a day in healthy people actually impaired the body’s ability to promote fat loss the next day.

If we sum this evidence up, it basically means working out isn’t necessarily going to be enough for you to maximize the positive health benefits from exercise, especially if weight loss/fat loss is your goal. You should also be active throughout the day in addition to your planned workouts.

I can’t write that without mentioning: this is one study, and one study doesn’t ever make things conclusive.

But this is evidence I really believe in, so I’m giving it a lot of weight. And it’s not the first time we’ve seen that more activity is better.

The physical activity guidelines for Americans in 2018 told us that we need to move more and sit less. More specifically, adults should:

• Do at least 2.5-5 hours of moderate-intensity physical activity a week, or…
• 1.25-2.5 hours of vigorous-intensity physical activity a week, and…
• Do strength training on two or more days of the week.

So you should do cardio, and you should lift weights, and you should be active in some way on most, if not all, days of the week.

Within those recommendations, some of your activity can and should be simply walking. So throughout the week, it’s clear that a mixture of strength training and cardio, some of which is walking, is going to give you a well-rounded routine that promotes greater health benefits.

Coaching Cues

The last thing I want you to do is just assume that 8,500 steps per day is the magic pill to better health.

It’s not.

That’s not the point of that study, or this article.

This is a much more nuanced topic than that.

I think from this study — and many others on the topic of step counts — you can conclude that more activity is generally going to be better for you. That’s a given, since on average we simply don’t move enough.

We can go a step further, though, and conclude that your planned activity should probably go a bit deeper than just doing a handful of workouts a week, or just hitting 10,000 steps a day, or any other benchmarks you’ve set for yourself.

We need a healthy combination of multiple modes of physical activity, each day, consistently.

There’s a number of ways you can accomplish this.

First, make sure you’ve actually planned out physical activity for the week. Whether it be going to the gym to lift weights or hop on a cardio machine, or going for a run, or doing home workouts … Make sure those are part of your week. Refer back to those physical activity guidelines if you need help figuring out where to start.

Beyond that, factor walking into your weekly routine as well. You’ve got your planned workouts — probably some combination of lifting weights and cardio — and then you can add walks to the mix to increase that step count.

I’ve said this many times: walking is the single most impactful exercise you can do, for a number of reasons:

1. It’s accessible. You can do it anywhere, and you don’t need special equipment to make it happen.
2. It’s a full-body activity. Anything that gets your entire body in motion is going to be a winner in my book.
3. It’s repeatable. You can walk consistently. It doesn’t take a tremendous toll on your body, so most people can do it every day.
4. And based on this research, and much more, the overall health benefits are unbelievable.

And walking can become part of your routine in a number of simple ways:

1. On the days you aren’t doing your planned workouts in the gym, you can go for a walk.
2. You can walk before and after your planned workouts as a warm up and cool down.
3. You can plan activity breaks throughout each day and go on several 10-minute walks.
4. You can park in the back of the parking lot when running errands to increase your step count.

The options are endless.

Your goal shouldn’t be to overwork yourself. It should simply be to move a little bit more.

And over time, add a little bit more to that.

There is no magic step count.

The magic is doing it consistently.

So, how many steps should you walk a day to be healthy?

The answer is: more.

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I hope you found this article interesting and helpful! If you’re interested in hiring a coach to help you put all of the pieces of an exercise routine together for you, that’s what I do! Check out my coaching page, and feel free to contact me if you’d like to discuss how coaching might work for you.

Thanks for reading!