10,000 steps? More chance of joining the group Steps.

[nickinwarwick]

I've been jolted into taking health more seriously, and have started to use myfitnesspal to log food and exercise. I've got this synced with a newly purchased Fitbit.

So the recommended daily number of steps is 10,000 daily. Is it just me or is this a really high figure for a day which doesn't include specific exercise? Granted I do have a desk job but I'm certainly not stationary all day, and I'm only doing about 3000 steps. Nowhere near the 10k

I don't want this to be a negative post and I can and will try to do more, like going out at lunchtime, but I still don't feel I'd get close on a work day. So I was just wondering whether others manage to hit this figure as part of normal daily life?

 

[Pigeon]

They do pedometer challenges at my work sometimes and yes, a standard desk-based day can only be around 3000. I can normally get to 6500 if I got for a walk at lunch, plus trying to do stuff like walk to the pharmacy or corner shop. Supermarket shopping is good for step counts! Have you tried running? Once a week I do 5k at lunch with colleagues, gets us some exercise and fresh air in the park! Other suggestions include going to talk to colleagues rather than emailing, and going the long way round to the toilets, tea room etc if you can. I've also tried daft things at home like dancing to the radio while cooking tea, once I put the ironing away one piece at a time!

 

[Wirrallass]

@nickinwarwick Hi ~ with my gift of a fitbit I aimed for 2K steps to start with then after a week or two I upped it to 3K steps. There's no way I could walk 10K steps to start with. I suggest you set your target at whatever you're comfortable with then gradually increase the number of steps when you feel you're ready. You can make use of your weekends to accustom yourself to walking. I'm currently struggling to walk 5K steps which isnt bad for a person with dodgy hips & knees ~ if I don't reach my new daily target I don't berate myself and endeavour to reach it the following day.

The fitbit is a great motivator isn't it ~ it won't let you sit for too long before it buzzes to remind you to *Take a stroll* or *250 steps to achieve your target*. One day I excelled myself and walked 7.50K steps ~ fitbit rewarded me with a high achiever award It also reminds me when to drink more water ~ what my heart rate is ~ how many hours of sleep I have had etc.

There are some forum members who walk far more than 10K steps ~ and one member @Stitch enters into walk marathons! As l recall, one member @RobK walked 45K steps during the course of one working day🙂

Theres an old adage:~ Don't run before you can walk ~ so take things slow at first Nick and increase your step target as and when you feel ready. Take care.

 

[Ditto]

I aim to walk to the shops daily which is 3 miles or more, not sure how many steps that is, I don't want to mess about with the Garmin, I'd never get it going again. 🙂 I voted. I like clicking things. I live a quiet life.

I'm gonna be humming Tragedy all evening now...

 

[Wirrallass]

I aim to walk to the shops daily which is 3 miles or more, not sure how many steps that is, I don't want to mess about with the Garmin, I'd never get it going again. 🙂 I voted. I like clicking things. I live a quiet life.

I'm gonna be humming Tragedy all evening now...

Good for you Ditto but take your time and don't buy too much coz you have to carry it home!!!😡

 

[nickinwarwick]

... I've also tried daft things at home like dancing to the radio while cooking tea, once I put the ironing away one piece at a time!

I'm addressing diet and exercise but no-one told me I had to start ironing as well.

 

[Copepod]

@nickinwarwick. I can honestly say I could count my ironing sessions, since diagnosis 21 years ago, on fingers of one hand. Would have been different if I had been allowed to rejoin Territorial Army, after having to return to UK from New Zealand, where diagnosis meant the end of my marine ecotourism career.

 

[RFS]

I've been jolted into taking health more seriously, and have started to use myfitnesspal to log food and exercise. I've got this synced with a newly purchased Fitbit.

So the recommended daily number of steps is 10,000 daily. Is it just me or is this a really high figure for a day which doesn't include specific exercise? Granted I do have a desk job but I'm certainly not stationary all day, and I'm only doing about 3000 steps. Nowhere near the 10k

I don't want this to be a negative post and I can and will try to do more, like going out at lunchtime, but I still don't feel I'd get close on a work day. So I was just wondering whether others manage to hit this figure as part of normal daily life?

I bought my FitBit One to help calculate my TDEE and I stupidly joined a FB group (this is all pre-T2D days) where they were aghast that I wouldn't step every second of every live long day and ... what is this GYM you speak of going to. I quit the group in the end.

My cousin's husband is retired and his Fitty was instrumental FOR HIM to reverse/put into remission his Pre-diabetes. BUT - he is retired and can go off for a long afternoon stroll whenever he feels like it! Oh my, we have had battles royal - he is not built for running on a tready or cycling, I am. I am a firm believer that ANY exercise which elevates your heart-rate over sitting on my behind counts as exercise, and with no cartilage left in my knees I combine my extensive rehab sessions from physios with cardio, and it seems to be serving me well. But he will just keep banging on at me until the cows come home that walking is the only exercise that works for 'reversing' diabetes and lowering my blood pressure.

I work at home, or freelance on a Sports-desk when I am not at a tournament covering the event, so I think 3000-5000 steps incl. getting to work, any walking around there and back sounds about right. I rack up a few more when I am at a tournie running to courts to catch bits of matches and dashing back and forth from press conferences, but the days are maybe twice as long. 12-14 hour days at a tournament for a week are not uncommon.

Incidentally since being diagnosed as T2 slap bang in the middle of the clay and grass court season, I have made a few tweaks to my MFP that you might find useful. I used to calorie count, and now I have changed my settings to be Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Snack (am), Snack (pm) and I carb count now. I make notes of what my Freestyle Libre BG scanner is telling me. I also log my exercise there and like you, my Fitty is linked to MFP so it picks up what meagre steps I do, but more importantly it gives me an indication what my total energy expenditure is for the day.

I don't think is by any means a negative post Nick... quite the opposite. I am going to see a friend on Saturday who was diagnosed in April, who is complaining bitterly that they hate all forms of exercise and won't do it. Very different to my "I hate walking so I will do an hour at the gym or at home cardio boxing"... so keep up what you can and all the best. Hope the MFP/Fitty combinations works for you!

 

[grovesy]

I used a pedometer well before fitbit, and I used to walk around in ad breaks on tv, walk around whilst making a cuppa and brushing teeth. It helped push steps up.

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

Have you got the one that prompts you to walk 250 steps an hour? If set for 8hr day that would be 2000 steps right there. Some hours you almost certainly do already, other hours you'd probably just need to go to the loo at the other toilets, you know the ones down the far end... or walk up and down the stairs twice. Beneficial in that it will shift your fixed-focus viewing point too.

For me the days when I don't manage are the ones with less dog walking in the mornings. 25-30 minute walk with the dog is often 4000-5000 steps. If I fit in an errand at lunchtime (or even just intentionally walk somewhere for no reason) I can get the steps in. My average is 9,850 a day, but it'd be nearer 5000 I think without the dog!

Having said that I think 10,000 steps is pretty arbitrary and based on some pretty weak evidence. Just makes a nice round number I guess?

Not sure how you get to work, but you may be able to fit more walking in there too, at either end of the day (if driving, park your car further away from the building, if public transport choose stops further away, if working from home have a 'trip' to work by leaving the house, walking a loop and returning. Time spent walking before/after the working day can be great to process what has happened, provide some space, and return home feeling in a more 'home' frame of mind.

Hope you find a way that works for you.

 

[trophywench]

I've been looking for a reasonably priced pedometer and preferably one that tells you the distance you've walked too, cos in addition to the D I also have intermittent claudication - and all the HCPs want to know how FAR you can walk before the pain sets in and you have to rest.

Frankly I haven't the slightest idea! I'm one of those benighted wimmin drivers who doesn't have instant spacial awareness - out in the car this morning (husband driving) and although the road we live in is fairly 'main' - a 'B' road and a bus route - older residential properties along most of it, lots of terraces of all ages, so loads of parked vehicles some fully on the road and some half up the pavement so you always have to 'weave'. Following a KA that was forever stopping for traffic coming the other way whereas in the words of both my former husband and the current one, you could have got a tank through there. Meanwhile my thoughts were, Yeah - I'd have stopped and waited, too! LOL

I do NOT want to spend the amount of dosh a Fitbit costs. (Neither do I want all the other things they tell you, thanks)

Any suggestions?

 

[grovesy]

I found the Omron walking style range durable and reliable used for years before going on to an activity tracker.

 

[Radders]

I count my cycle to work in my step count. I saw a converter for various exercises to step equivalents which said that 15 minutes cycle was equivalent to 3000 so I do 9000 steps right there, plus the 2-3000 at lunchtime in my walk round the block. On wet days I walk nearly a mile at each end of the bus journey, sometimes more. If there's more than 5 minutes to the next bus I walk to the next stop. All of this is so much preferable to going to the gym for me. It costs nothing apart from the bus fare, and gets me where I want to go. I hardly did any exercise when I had a car, so glad I got rid of it!

 

[Chris Hobson]

My job involves a reasonable amount of moving around so I usually get ten thousand or close to ten thousand steps most days. If I do any actual exercising I tend to exceed ten thousand quite easily. A 10K run is enough to run up the steps as my running stride must be slightly less than a metre long. I'm trying to take it a little easy now that I have finished all my organised events for the year as I think that I really need to take a bit of a rest. I find it interesting that, as I have exercised more and more since my diagnosis in 2013, I now find it hard to sit still for long.

 

[nickinwarwick]

Some very good suggestions here, although I'm feeling it's reinforcing my belief that 10,000 isn't realistic without specific extra exercise - well for me at least. A definite practical change for me would be to get the train to work, since the station is further away than the public car park I have to use. Rail fare is about the same as driving. (Except that I have 2 months remaining on carpark season ticket, d'oh!). I think I'll try 1 or 2 days a week.

@everydayupsanddowns Yes it does prompt but doing the 250 an hour isn't really an issue during the day, it's the extra needed to get anywhere near 10k. I'd love to own a dog but simply couldn't, I'm out 12 hours a day and I don't think I could take it to work 🙂

@trophywench You can get very cheap pedometers for £2 or £3 and I think I had one free from Special K once. Or copycat Fitbit clones for £20 on eBay. Might be less accurate but then again the Fitbit seems to count steps while I'm driving so I don't know how accurate any such device truly is.
Edit to add - sorry I see you're after distance as well but you could calibrate a cheapo pedometer by walking a known distance? (Map a walk on google maps then see how many steps?).

 

[Radders]

Some very good suggestions here, although I'm feeling it's reinforcing my belief that 10,000 isn't realistic without specific extra exercise - well for me at least. A definite practical change for me would be to get the train to work, since the station is further away than the public car park I have to use. Rail fare is about the same as driving. (Except that I have 2 months remaining on carpark season ticket, d'oh!). I think I'll try 1 or 2 days a week.
.

Yay! Reducing your carbon footprint at the same time! 🙂

 

[Robin]

I count my cycle to work in my step count. I saw a converter for various exercises to step equivalents which said that 15 minutes cycle was equivalent to 3000 so I do 9000 steps right there, plus the 2-3000 at lunchtime in my walk round the block. On wet days I walk nearly a mile at each end of the bus journey, sometimes more. If there's more than 5 minutes to the next bus I walk to the next stop. All of this is so much preferable to going to the gym for me. It costs nothing apart from the bus fare, and gets me where I want to go. I hardly did any exercise when I had a car, so glad I got rid of it!

Ah, that's really useful, it never occurred to me that you could do that. I just Googled a chart. I used a pedometer once, (a cheap £1.99 one) but I realised that an hour's heavy pruning with the long handled loppers at full height had knackered me, but not recorded any steps! It never occurred to me you could look up the equivalent! On the basis of the chart I found, today's exercise class followed by a couple of hours heavy gardening, plus other bits and bobs, easily gets me over 10000.

 

[trophywench]

🙂

@trophywench You can get very cheap pedometers for £2 or £3 and I think I had one free from Special K once. Or copycat Fitbit clones for £20 on eBay. Might be less accurate but then again the Fitbit seems to count steps while I'm driving so I don't know how accurate any such device truly is.
Edit to add - sorry I see you're after distance as well but you could calibrate a cheapo pedometer by walking a known distance? (Map a walk on google maps then see how many steps?).

That sounds like an idea Nick - will have to look on eBay again for something cheap!

 

[nickinwarwick]

I decided to try the train to work option today. Previous daily steps was 3100, today... 7335.

Pros:
More exercise obviously!
Home quicker and with less stress

Cons:
Had to get up at 5:45. It's just not natural! (And in all seriousness probably not sustainable. Ideally need to change work start time, just 20 mins would help fit with train times).

Definitely going to do this 2 times a week to begin with and go from there.

 

[Radders]

I decided to try the train to work option today. Previous daily steps was 3100, today... 7335.

Pros:
More exercise obviously!
Home quicker and with less stress

Cons:
Had to get up at 5:45. It's just not natural! (And in all seriousness probably not sustainable. Ideally need to change work start time, just 20 mins would help fit with train times).

Definitely going to do this 2 times a week to begin with and go from there.

Fantastic! 5:45 is ok once you get used to it, honest. 🙂