{"id":24896,"date":"2025-07-26T10:38:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-26T10:38:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/24896\/"},"modified":"2025-07-26T10:38:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-26T10:38:08","slug":"10000-steps-myth-do-we-really-need-to-stick-to-recommended-daily-doses-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/24896\/","title":{"rendered":"10,000 steps myth – do we really need to stick to recommended daily doses?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Emily and Lucy are, however, “definitely nailing it” when it comes to exercise. <\/p>\n

Through their group, Soft Girls who Hike, they have found a love of walking which has not only improved their mental health, they say, but connected them with many other women.<\/p>\n

They don’t try to meet all the healthy benchmarks on their radar, they explain, because “life just gets in the way”. But they are doing 7,000 steps a day and taking long, low impact walks at the weekend.<\/p>\n

The Chief Medical Officer recommends doing 150 minutes of exercise a week , external<\/a>and two strength training sessions. <\/p>\n

Is that achievable for most?<\/p>\n

Dr Sinead Roberts, a sports nutritionist who trains elite athletes, is pragmatic in her approach. While moderate strength training and physical activity is vital for maintaining muscle mass, she says, as well as resistance to injuries and supporting our immune systems, you have to adapt the recommendations to fit with your life.<\/p>\n

“Rules are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise people,” she says. “This phrase really does apply here.<\/p>\n

“I have friends who do nothing – and that really does show, I say, ‘You’re walking like an 80-year-old!’<\/p>\n

“But if you are doing one strength session a week and some moderate exercise then that is definitely a good thing, just try and do more if you can.”<\/p>\n

She uses an analogy of a highway – the more things we can do to stay healthy the wider the road, which, in turn means we can go off course sometimes without careering up a grassy verge.<\/p>\n

“All those benchmarks are interlinked – you can’t just do one healthy thing and ignore the rest. Equally you don’t need to put so much pressure on yourself to achieve them all.”<\/p>\n

This attitude chimes with Emily and Lucy, who say they happily “chip away” at some of the health benchmarks.<\/p>\n

“For example, we might do five minutes of meditation [which is] better than nothing, but we wouldn’t stress about not hitting the recommended goal.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Emily and Lucy are, however, “definitely nailing it” when it comes to exercise. Through their group, Soft Girls…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24897,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[6647,102,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-24896","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fitness","8":"tag-fitness","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24896"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24896\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}