10,000 Steps A Day vs. The Brisk 30-Minute Walk
Walking 10,000 steps a day for fitness is the most significant new lifestyle trend since learning we need a daily vitamin.
We all know we should walk but let's face it, we're busy, and how many steps are enough, anyway? Can 10,000 steps a day be as good, or better than, taking a brisk 30-minute walk?
Professor Dixie Lee Thompson, exercise physiologist at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, says it is all that, and more:
After a four-week study of “steppers” and “brisk walkers” Thompson said, “…the 10,000-Steps-A-Day group tended to walk more and to do it more regularly.” Her results showed “…that the pedometer in conjunction with the 10,000-steps recommendation gets inactive people active.”
Washington Post columnist, John Briley, on University of Tennessee’s
10,000-step research, reports the following:
“The researchers noted that the brisk walkers had to block out time for a continuous 30-minute march while the pedometricians were free to walk however long – and whenever – they wanted.”
“Those in the 10,000-step group also were told not to worry about intensity, while the other subjects were told to walk briskly – an order that may have dissuaded some from hitting the pavement on occasion. Perhaps for this reason, four women dropped out of the brisk-marcher group, while none of the step-counters quit.”
10,000 steps a day is considered the equivalent of walking about five miles, depending on the length of your stride. The average person is estimated to walk less than 6,000 steps a day. The number of steps defining “sedentary” is disputed. Some experts believe you are sedentary if you walk 3,000 steps, or less, a day and others define “sedentary” as less than 5,000 steps. The one thing that does not seem to be in dispute is that 10,000 steps a day, most days, is optimal for reasonable good health.
While we are busy, being busy, we are walking. Why not count the steps we take, while we're too busy to exercise, and let them count toward our daily health maintenance? We have to make the effort to add steps, but think of it this way, unless you are on the sofa all day, you've already started.
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