Increasing Your Daily Steps

 Instead of using a blanket 10,000 steps per day as a goal, some suggest your personal goal should be based on your usual baseline plus incremental steps.

Adding 2,000 to 4,000 steps to your daily count is a good indicator you are getting the recommended amount of daily activity or increasing activity to burn more calories.

Let’s look at the example of Sara, who puts on a pedometer in the morning and wears it as she goes about her usual daily activities and only takes it off before bedtime. She does this for a few days and notes that she logs around 4,000 steps per day. Her goal should be adding an equivalent of a half hour of walking to her day. The number of steps she would log in 30 minutes is from 2000 to 4000, depending on whether you walk slower or faster.

That’s between one and two miles of walking. See how many steps are in a mile depending on your height and stride length.

What Should Your Step Count Goal Be?

While Tudor-Locke advises a goal of 10,000 steps per day as a good baseline, she offers other tips in order to match physical activity recommendations for heart health. Increase your daily steps by 3,000-4,000 steps spent in 10-minute or longer bouts at moderate to vigorous intensity, which is a pace of brisk walking to jogging. Achieve a goal of 8,900 to 9,900 steps at least five days per week with at least 3,000 steps of moderate to vigorous intensity bouts of 10 minutes or more.

Alternatively, set a goal of 9,150 to 10,150 steps at least three days per week with at least 3,250 steps of vigorous intensity bouts of 10 minutes or more.

A three-day a week training routine may be good for maintaining your weight, but probably not good for losing weight. I would try the walk routine 5 or 6 days a week. Especially if that’s all you’re doing. I like to alternate walking with other types of exercise but that doesn’t work for everyone. You have to do what’s right for you and if your losing weight with your program stick to it, if not change it. Losing weight is a trial and error system.

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