If you’ve ever tracked your steps with a wearable fitness tracker, a smartwatch, or the pedometer built into your phone, you likely have, at one point or another, strived to reach 10,000 steps a day. After all, it’s often hailed as the gold standard for daily movement goals. It’s a solid round number that somehow feels both achievable and momentous, helping you improve overall health, burn calories, and possibly even boost longevity.
However, research has shown that you may not need to move quite that much to reap the wellness benefits of increased activity—which begs the question: If 10,000 steps isn’t the right goal, what is? And what if you aren’t just trying to improve your health, but want to lose weight too? Do you need to hit that many daily steps then? Here’s what science has to say.
The importance of movement
Your overall calorie burn is a combination of several things: the energy needed to keep your body humming (known as basal metabolic rate) and to digest your food, as well as intentional exercise and all your other daily movements. When people think about incorporating movement into their lives for health and weight-loss reasons, most tend to focus on the intentional exercise part of the pie. But that ignores the also important smaller bursts of movement, a category called NEAT, or non-exercise activity thermogenesis.
Skimping on NEAT doesn’t do your health any favors, as these actions play a vital role in your metabolism and overall well-being. The more of your day you spend doing literally anything other than sitting—whether that’s walking to the bathroom at work, weeding your garden, folding laundry, or standing in line at the grocery store—the more you’ll boost your metabolic rate, which ultimately means more calories burned. Plus, research shows an association between prolonged sedentary time and a higher risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and cancer, even if you exercise. Clearly, how much you move throughout the day really matters.
“The little things definitely do add up, especially for folks who are more sedentary,” Sarah Eby, MD, PhD, a sports medicine physician at Mass General Brigham and assistant professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Harvard Medical School, tells SELF.
And this is where that 10,000-step goal comes in. The exact figure is a bit of a farce. (It’s believed to stem from a device called Manpo-kei, which literally translates to “10,000-step meter,” that a Japanese company created in the 1960s as a marketing gimmick.) But your daily step count is still one of the easiest ways to determine the amount of NEAT you’re getting. That being said there are lots of other ways to move your body throughout the day that contribute to NEAT as well. The important thing isn’t what you’re doing to move more; it’s that you aren’t just sitting at a desk for eight straight hours, then in a car, then on your sofa.
