Finally got a new battery for my pedometer last weekend and wore it each working day this week, as I was interested to see roughly how much walking I did throughout my normal work week. The magic number of steps widely circulated as ideal to keep fit are 10,000 per day — about 5 miles (8km), or 2,000 steps per mile — so that was what I considered my daily target.
My normal weekday at the moment consisting of: wake, get ready, drive to work, drive a desk for 7½ hours plus one hour for lunch (nearly always at my desk), drive home, do one or more of my usual evening activities (reading, studying, watching TV, playing computer games, writing, blogging, stargazing in the back garden, etc), and go to bed. The most notable thing there is that there is no gym, running, or even much going out and doing interesting things. In all, things are in a bit of a fug at the moment.
With “10,000 a day” in mind I noted my daily and overall number of steps. Imagine my surprise to discover I didn’t even make the recommended daily amount over an entire working week. That is, I didn’t manage 10,000 steps in 5 days, let alone one day. Needless to say, it’s opened my eyes a little with regards to how I make use of my weekday free time — particularly my lunch breaks — and I’m going to look into ways of improving my physical activity before work and after work, regardless of the fact that Summer 2009 isn’t. The idea is to create something active that I do every day as naturally as waking up, not something that depends upon whether it’s a weekday or weekend, hot or raining, or subject to other planning or circumstances.
After the shock of the sub-2,000 steps per day result, I did some additional research into recommended and average steps to keep healthy. It seems that the 10,000 steps a day value is just a Big Round Number promoted by pedometer manufacturers, rather than having any basis in science. Presumably the idea was that by providing a sufficiently large target value, people would buy a pedometer to make sure they do it.
Having said that, a Harvard University study shows that as little as 6,000 steps per day are sufficient to lower the death rate:
A landmark study of 17,000 Harvard alumni suggests that men who burn an extra 700 or so calories a week by walking, playing sports, or doing some other form of dynamic exercise live longer than those who aren’t active. The health benefits continue to increase up to about 2,000 or so calories a week, then seem to level off from there. Information from a long-term study of female nurses shows similar trends for women.
The steps-to-calorie conversion is based upon the person’s weight, with a 120lb (54kg) person burning 85 calories per mile and increasing 10 calories per 20lbs (9kg) of bodyweight; a 119kg person burns about 155 calories per mile. So according to the study’s minimum, for a 119kg person (that would be me) to burn 700 extra calories per week they need to walk just 4½ miles per week, or 0.6 miles (1km) per day.
Excluding physical disability or illness, anyone can achieve that. The average walking pace is at least 3mph (5kmh), so walking just over half a mile should take no more than 12 minutes. That’s walking away from wherever you are for 6 minutes, turning around and walking back again (called an out-and-back), or a loop around the block (providing it’s a 0.6 mile-sized block). Nobody is so busy that they can’t actually set aside 10 minutes every day — after all, we all find the time to take a shower, make multiple cups of tea or coffee, chat by the watercooler, or hit the snooze button once or twice in the morning. It doesn’t have to be at the same time every day — it can be squeezed in before you head to work, before you start the working day, after you’ve scoffed your lunch, before you head home, once you get home, or any time in the evening. But probably best not done within an hour of going to bed, unless insomnia is something you want to try on for size.
So why don’t people do it? We’re lazy. We don’t realise how much such a little change will make. And for most of us, the “dying” part of our life seems so far away as to be something we can deal with later. Much later. But it seems that by spending 10-15 minutes a day in just walking, that day will be even further away.
