By: Chris Gates

In this article, I’m going to walk (no pun intended) you through exactly how many steps a day is good for better health.

And let’s address something right off the bat…

Daily steps are INCREDIBLY POWERFUL for your overall health. New research has shown a clear association between increases in daily steps and lower all-cause mortality rates. This means moving more each day will probably help you to live longer (more on that in a minute).

Movement is medicine, plain and simple. And the amount of steps you take each day can positively contribute to your overall health.

That’s probably why you’ve heard people say, “my goal is to hit 10,000 steps a day” before. I mean, when you search “how many steps a day is good for better health,” Google flat out tells you 10,000.

Step count goals have become a popular trend in the health and fitness industry, and for good reason.

• But how many steps should you be taking?
• How many steps are too many?
• And how few steps are, well… too few?
• Is 10,000 steps the magic number for better health?
• Is tracking your step count actually going to help improve your overall health?

We’re going to answer all of those questions and more in this article!

Let’s first dive into why walking and daily steps are such a valuable piece to your exercise program. Then we can dive into some new, impactful research that has come out about step counts and better health!

As always, we’ll wrap things up with a plan you can use immediately to get started.

Let’s dive in!

How Many Steps A Day is Good For Better Health? The Basics

First, it’s really important to acknowledge the legitimacy of walking.

It’s common to think that if you’re not sweating, or hurting, or peeling yourself off the floor after a workout, that you’re not “doing what it takes to improve your health.”

That’s completely bogus, and quite honestly it’s very misleading. But it’s what you’ve been led to believe by eye-catching fitness marketing.

The fitness industry runs on a pendulum of extremes. One of those extremes is thinking that exercise needs to be brutal.

It doesn’t.

The most important thing you need from your exercise program is your ability to be consistent with it.

And the magic of walking, and step counts, is that you can work towards better health anywhere, at any time.

Virtually everybody has access to walking, and it’s legitimately powerful for better health. So you should take advantage of it.

Here’s why…

How Many Steps A Day is Good For Better Health? What The Research Says

A meta-analysis published in January 2022 found “even a modest increase in steps per day may be associated with a lower risk of death.”

This research paper — which evaluated seven studies that included more than 28,000 participants — found that all-cause mortality rates dropped by 12 percent for every 1,000 steps the participants took on a daily basis.

This means that the more steps the participants took each day, the more they lowered their chance of death. And if you dig into the study results, the association between increases in steps and risk of death is more or less a linear realtionship.

That means more steps = lower risk of all-cause mortality.

Stronger by Science put together a really fantastic roundup of this research study. I’d recommend you take a look at it. The author, Greg Nuckols, breaks down his interpretations of this study, why these results are so groundbreaking, and how other research studies back up these results.

A few things I found particularly interesting:

• Previous research has found that walking leads to “improvements in systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, resting heart rate, body fat percentage, body mass index, total cholesterol, depression scores” and more.
• Based on this study’s findings, you could argue that being sedentary is more dangerous for your overall health and longevity than smoking. Yes… SMOKING!
• While strength training is absolutely beneficial for overall health, if that’s the only movement you have throughout the day you should probably think about moving a bit more.

If you ever needed to be convinced that taking more steps a day is good for better health, I hope this ended the debate.

Movement is medicine.

How Many Steps A Day is Good For Weight Loss?

Since better health and weight loss are typically associated with each other, let’s talk about how many steps a day is good for weight loss.

Really, I think the answer to that question is the same as the answer for better health, and for the same reasons as you learned about in that research paper.

More is better, because movement is medicine.

But there’s no magic number here. Ten thousand steps a day, for example, isn’t going to unlock some type of magic within the body that causes you to burn body fat.

Quite simply, walking is good for weight loss because it gets you up and moving, and it’s the most accessible form of exercise there is.

You can walk anywhere, at any time, and at any pace you’d like. And you can do it every day, which can’t be said for most other forms of exercise.

Walking will help you burn some calories, too. And that will help you get (and stay) in a calorie deficit, which is the true indicator of whether or not you’re able to lose weight.

A calorie deficit means you’re in negative energy balance. It means you’re burning more calories than you’re consuming from food each day.

To be clear, this doesn’t mean that you should try to burn as many calories as you can every day. Rather, I’d recommend that you set a step count goal for yourself each day, and then focus on reducing your calorie intake slightly to see how your body responds.

That’s how you lose weight.

Being regularly active is phenomenal for better health. If you combine that with a calorie deficit you’ll put yourself in a position to make dramatic progress with weight loss.

A great way to get started is to track your nutrition and see what your average calorie intake is. From there, you can reduce your intake by ~10 percent to see how your bodyweight responds.

Here are some easy ways to know if you’re in a calorie deficit. And if you’re just not a fan of tracking, here are my recommendations on getting in a calorie deficit without tracking calories.

Your Roadmap to Better Health

What I hope you’ve learned in this article so far, is…

1. Tracking steps is powerful.
2. More steps are associated with lower all-cause mortality.
3. Walking is great for weight loss, and losing weight will improve your overall health.

Now, let’s add a fourth item to that list. This one is all about your action plan moving forward.

What does your roadmap for better health look like?

How many steps a day is good for better health?

The answer for virtually everyone will be the same…

More.

More steps a day will very likely lead to better overall health and a longer lifespan for you.

And let’s be clear, because when I say “more” I don’t mean I want you to start walking as much as humanly possible.

Let’s say your average daily steps are right around 5,000 a day right now.

Then my challenge to you is to bump that number up to 6,000 next week.

And see if you can string 2-3 weeks of 6,000 steps together. Because don’t forget, that study we discussed earlier revealed a 12 percent lower all-cause mortality rate for every 1,000 steps taken during the day.

Increasing your step count by even just 1,000 steps will have dramatic health benefits.

Once you’ve gotten several weeks of 6,000 steps under your belt, then you can bump your goal up to 7,000.

Rinse.

Repeat.

And keep adding as much as is feasible for you.

In that study, the positive benefits of increasing step count seemed to plateau around 16,000 steps per day.

Do you need to keep going until you hit 16,000 steps a day, every day, for eternity?

No.

I don’t think that many steps a day is realistic for most people, unless you work in a profession that has you on your feet and moving constantly throughout the day.

But what I do think you should do is look for little pockets of time where you can fit in walking.

It could be as short as a five-minute walk. If you can fit 3-5 of those into your day when you’d ordinarily be sitting at your desk, or on the couch, or wasting time, then you’re taking small steps (pun intended this time) towards incredibly large improvements in your overall health.

Movement is medicine.

Let’s get out there and move more!

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I hope you found this article helpful! I was really excited to dive into this study and the associated findings, because I’ve programmed walking for my clients for years. Sometimes, walking isn’t seen as “real cardio,” but hopefully this will put that debate to rest.

If you’re interested in coaching to work your way towards better health, check out my coaching page to learn more about what me and my clients are working on! I work with folks all over the world to improve their health, build muscle, burn fat, and feel more confident. I’d love to work with you, too!

Thanks for reading 🙂

~ Chris