{"id":460595,"date":"2026-02-05T18:32:24","date_gmt":"2026-02-05T18:32:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/460595\/"},"modified":"2026-02-05T18:32:24","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T18:32:24","slug":"what-10000-steps-a-day-gets-right-and-wrong-about-health-and-weight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/460595\/","title":{"rendered":"What 10,000 Steps a Day Gets Right (and Wrong) About Health and Weight"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019ve 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\u2019s often hailed as the gold standard for daily movement goals. It\u2019s a solid round number that somehow feels both achievable and momentous, helping you improve overall health, burn calories, and possibly even boost longevity<\/a>.<\/p>\n

However, research has shown that you may not need to move<\/a> quite that much to reap the wellness benefits of increased activity\u2014which begs the question: If 10,000 steps isn\u2019t the right goal, what is? And what if you aren\u2019t just trying to improve your health, but want to lose weight too? Do you need to hit that many daily steps then? Here\u2019s what science has to say.<\/p>\n

The importance of movement<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Skimping on NEAT doesn\u2019t 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\u2014whether that\u2019s walking to the bathroom at work, weeding your garden, folding laundry, or standing in line at the grocery store\u2014the more you\u2019ll boost your metabolic rate, which ultimately means more calories burned. Plus, research shows an association between prolonged sedentary time<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe little things definitely do add up, especially for folks who are more sedentary,\u201d Sarah Eby, MD, PhD<\/a>, a sports medicine physician at Mass General Brigham and assistant professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Harvard Medical School, tells SELF.<\/p>\n

And this is where that 10,000-step goal comes in. The exact figure is a bit of a farce. (It\u2019s believed to stem from a device called Manpo-kei, which literally translates to \u201c10,000-step meter,\u201d that a Japanese company created in the 1960s<\/a> as a marketing gimmick.) But your daily step count is still one of the easiest ways to determine the amount of NEAT you\u2019re 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\u2019t what you\u2019re doing to move more; it\u2019s that you aren\u2019t just sitting at a desk for eight straight hours, then in a car, then on your sofa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you\u2019ve ever tracked your steps with a wearable fitness tracker, a smartwatch, or the pedometer built into…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":460596,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[64,63,538,137,12728],"class_list":{"0":"post-460595","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fitness","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-fitness","11":"tag-health","12":"tag-weight-management"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=460595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460595\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/460596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=460595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=460595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=460595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}