Walk for Life

How many steps for better health ?

Most health experts recommend walking around 10,000 steps a day for general health. Since the average person’s step length is about 2.5 feet this means that 2,000 steps is around 1 mile and 10,000 equates to about 5 miles. 6,000 steps add up to about three miles, which is what the average adult walks during a typical day of working, doing chores or taking care of children. So you will have to make a conscious effort to get another 4,000 steps to reach the 10,000 target, which (depending on your walking speed) equates to around 30-40 minutes of walking. You could choose to take an evening walk with a partner or friend, but you could also look for other ways of increasing your step total throughout your working day (see panel). You’ll be amazed at how even just a few minutes here and there can really mount up and in no time at all you will become very adept at spotting opportunities to add to your daily total.

Towards 10,000 – Tips to increase your daily step total

• Take a walk during your lunch or tea break
• Use the stairs rather than the lift
• Plan a walking meeting
• Get off the bus / train / tube a couple of stops before your destination
• Go for an evening walk with your spouse, partner or Friend
• Walk during TV commercial breaks. This is a good one! Consider this...each commercial break is at least 2.5 minutes long. You can do 100 steps per minute, so each break is worth 250 steps and if there are only four commercial breaks in the whole evening, you have added another 1000 to your daily total. Easy!
• Take the dog for an extra walk
• Park farther from the shop/supermarket and walk the rest

Now add your own tips and suggestions !

How active are you ?

While the 10,000-step goal is a sensible target for healthy adults, it may not be sustainable for some groups, including older adults and those living with chronic diseases. Another concern about using the 10,000 steps per day as a universal goal is that it is almost certainly too low for children. Researchers have now classified physical activity levels in adults into several grades (see panel). If you are an older person, perhaps with arthritis or some other condition, you should aim to be in the Low Active or Somewhat Active levels in the first instance. For those who are physically well, then the Active and Highly Active levels are appropriate.

If you are relatively sedentary at the moment, a reasonable goal would be for you to increase your average daily steps each week by 500 per day until you can easily average 10,000 per day. For example, if you currently average 3,000 daily steps your Week 1 goal is 3,500 each day, Week 2 is 4,000 and Week 3 is 4,500. Continue to increase each week and you will be averaging 10,000 steps by the end of 14 weeks.