A new study shows that we can live longer simply by increasing the number of steps we take each day. The study of 3,000 Australians over 15 years showed that a sedentary person who increased their steps from 1,000 to 10,000 steps a day, seven days a week, reduced their mortality risk by 46%.
This is just the latest in a series of studies which show how incredibly powerful the impact of walking is on the human body – against the backdrop of a world-wide craze for pedometers and upping your “steps”.
Here our panel explains what motivates them to put on their trainers each day.
Emily Wilson: What’s not to love about the idea of getting fit for close to zero effort?
There was a time when the western world was a major bore on the subject of jogging – these days the western world is a major bore about walking, or as it’s now known, “steps”.
And obviously it’s a much better world trend than jogging because as long as your legs work OK, it’s way easier. Unless you live in the tropics, you don’t even have to sweat!
This idea that you can get fit and thin, transform your life, put off death, just by upping how much you amble about – that’s a great notion. That’s why stories about how walking is brilliant for you do so well with readers. What’s not to love about the idea of getting fit for close to zero effort?
I moved into the steps-bore A-league earlier this year after reading this brilliant feature by the super-witty US columnist Joel Stein. After watching actor Chris Pratt transform from slightly podgy Parks and Recreation Chris Pratt to hunky Jurassic World Chris Pratt, Stein goes on a journey to find out how movie stars transform their bodies so dramatically for roles. Without wanting to ruin the story, the trainer he goes to tells him that doing 12,000 steps a day is the baseline requirement for a new movie star body. And like, how cool is that?
After that I bought a pedometer thing. It turned out I was doing roughly half the right number of steps every day, so I had to tweak my life to involve more walking in my day, either during meetings or my commute. Now I am, in patches, a slave to my steps. I know how many steps there are from my office to the ferry, and from my house to the corner shop … straining to please my pedometer thing has made me a great deal more likely to offer to pop out for milk. Has it actually made me any fitter or healthier or more like a character in Jurassic World? Not discernibly so. I guess it can’t be doing any harm though, right?
Brigid Delaney: A small device is now your jailer, minder, boss and mum
Since hearing about the miraculous benefits of walking – and being into any fitness fad for around three weeks – I purchased a Fitbit to measure my steps.
It was great. Suddenly walking had a purpose, other than getting me where I wanted to go. The minimum was 10,000 a day – preferably 10,000 before breakfast.
This is great if you wake up early and go for a walk or, even better, walk to work.
But miss this window and you find you are constantly chasing your steps. It becomes a HASSLE to get the steps in. You arrange to have lunch in the next suburb. Or walk home in the rain. Or walk at night up and down your street in the dark, eyes trained on the steps ticking over on the small device that is now your jailer, minder, boss and mum.
Then, on holiday in Dallas, I left my Fitbit in airport security and was on a plane by the time I clocked its absence. What was the point in walking, I wondered, if there’s no device to measure the steps? Like the tree falling in the forest and all that stuff.
In New York I become lazy and took the subway. There was no point walking without my Fitbit.
I returned to Sydney and purchased a new Fitbit which I then put through the wash. It’s forever frozen at 4,572 steps – my goal forever out of reach.
Gabrielle Jackson: I hate the gym so I walk
I hate the gym and ever since I got run over by a train after running to get on it, my objection to running anywhere ever has been justified. So I walk.
I walk up stairs instead of taking the lift or escalator. I find “travelators” abhorrent and for the best part of the past 13 years I have lived within walking distance of my work. I currently hate my flat but it takes exactly 30 minutes to walk to and from work so I stay. I walk in rain, wind and hail. Nothing can stop me.
My logic isn’t complicated: we have to exercise, so why not make exercise part of life? I just do it on the way to doing something else and never worry about it too much. I’ve tried gyms and I do pilates sometimes, I’ve joined all-female dance-themed non-gyms and taken up cycling. I’ve stuck to none of that but I’ve always kept on walking.
That’s why I find the current walking trend so gratifying. I love being right.
Elle Hunt: Another word for ‘addicted’ is ‘goal-oriented’
I have had a little pedometer for four months. It was the cheapest way I could think of to motivate myself to move more: less commitment than a gym, less likely to gather dust than dumbbells at home. Since then, I have gained the “Trail Shoe” (30,000 steps in a day) and “Serengeti” (804km) badges, and meet my daily goal of 12,000 steps a day on average four times a week.
It has had the effect of making me prioritise walking. Every day that isn’t marked with a star by midnight feels, at one level at least, a failure. I have slipped out of the house after eleven o’ clock in my flip-flops and pyjamas to get those last couple of hundred steps; done a loop around the block (four times) on my way home to get me up to 12,000; even walked lengths of the house. I have no idea whether this is improving my health or increasing my fitness at all – I guess it doesn’t hurt?
Sometimes I leave my pedometer at home by accident, and I resent every step that goes unquantified, dragging my feet on the way to the bus stop, preserving energy for any movement that could go towards tomorrow’s goal since today is a write-off. I don’t know if this is the intended purpose of a pedometer. But what can I say – another word for “addicted” is “goal-oriented”.
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