The Truth of Walking 10000 Steps for Health
The simplest way of exercise is walking thousands to 10000 steps. We are being told time and time again. Walk 10000 steps is easy, and it is weird that people really consider it exercise.
Ask yourself seriously, can walking 10000 steps keep you fit? Sounds too good to be true.
Yes, it is a way to achieve a healthy lifestyle, but is it really helping us lose weight?
It is not as simple as you think.
We have to see what advantages can walking (long walking) provide, and what actually happens to the people that claim they achieve fitness by walking.
This is Antlerium PotatoNews, a series focusing on the daily lives of ordinary people, including habits. Today we explore an exercise: walking.
Advantages of Long Walk
In the article about jogging, I mentioned that 30+ minutes of exercise is needed to stay healthy. So, consecutive walking for that amount of time.
Walking requires you to use most parts of your body, so we can achieve these advantages:
- Improve responsiveness.
- Improve cognitive flexibility.
- Improve balancing.
- Improve body flexibility.
- Improve mental health (prevent depression).
- Prevent chronical constipation.
- Prevent heart disease.
- Prevent Alzheimer disease.
Now, I want you to proofread this again. Do you see any mentions of losing fat? Do you see any mentions of strengthening muscles?
How does somebody claim they keep fit by walking 10000 steps?
Are you sure they just walk 10000 steps to get slim?
I have walked 10000 steps every day for half a year. From my personal experience, I don’t think that these so-called success stories are only caused by walking.
Those successes may involve these actions:
- Eat healthily
- Cut off more food
- Do something more than just walking
Research found that walking 10000 steps only spent about 500 kcal. And to actually lose weight, we need to (1) exercise long enough to activate the fat-to-energy mechanism, (2) spend all the calories intake.
Before you jump to the conclusion that walking 10000 steps can lose weight and achieve fitness, please consider all of these factors.
Now you know walking 10000 steps is not that effective. How about adding more steps? How about walking longer?
Can we walk more than 10000 steps?
If you mean consecutively, I have to warn you that this is dangerous. This can damage your knee or whole feet. The older you are, the more dangerous.
Once you injure your feet, you only have one option: rest, and don't exercise your feet until they feel good again.
Even if you hear that walking more receives more health benefits, don’t think that there is no limitation.
Not just walking, every exercise has an intensity limit.
Walk 10000 steps. This is a huge number. This amount of steps is already close to the limit. Increasing a thousand more can be harmful.
Therefore, you must stay around 10000 steps to obtain the maximum benefit.
Are there other ways to increase walking effectiveness without chasing numbers?
So, we have abandoned the idea to increase steps. But if you want to increase the effectiveness of long walking, all hopes are not lost yet.
Try to add more staircases on your route.
Walking on stairs increases the pressure felt by the feet. One well-known theory is that walking upstairs you will feel 3 times your weight, and walking downstairs would be 5 fold.
When you walk on stairs, you move more muscles than simply walking on flat ground, further improving body flexibility.
If you add stairs to your long walking route, you strengthen your feet more.
Don't think that is as easy as walking
The simplest way of exercise is walking thousands to 10000 steps, but we cannot naively count on this as a way to keep in shape. Even though long walking can improve one's body, it is unlikely to lose weight and get slim.
When you push walking to the optimal limit, keep it around 10000 steps.
This is the misconception of walking to fitness. To learn more about habits or other topics related to our ordinary life, make sure to follow PotatoNews. We will also post some cliffsnotes on our socials, make sure to follow them.
Similar articles
- 🏃 You Are Jogging Wrong? Guide to Jogging
- 🏃 4 Ways to Motivate Yourself to Jog
- 💤 My Quest to Get Sleep Well That Will Inspire You
- 🥛 Drink Milk Can Get Sick? How To Identify Lactose Intolerance
