How many steps should you walk a day? The answer to that question depends on your individual goals.
- Are you looking to not be sedentary?
- Do you want to optimize your health?
- Maybe you are trying to lose weight?
This article will tell you how many steps to walk a day depending on what your trying to accomplish.
Number of Daily Steps to Not Be Sedentary
According to the Center of Disease Control or CDC, walking at least 5,000 steps per day is necessary to avoid a sedentary lifestyle.
Some people are misinformed about what it means to be sedentary. Just because you go to the gym 4 days a week for an hour a session doesn’t mean your lifestyle isn’t sedentary.
The problem is you are still inactive for the other 23 hours in the day and 3 days out of the week.
Depending on the nature of your job, you might be getting well over 5,000 steps a day without even realizing it. If you have a job that’s physically demanding like:
- Waiting tables
- Construction
- Package delivery
You are pretty much exceeding the CDC recommended amount of daily exercise.
If you work a desktop job all day, you will have to make a more conscious effort to get 5,000 steps a day. 45-minutes of walking at a moderate pace would equate to 5,000 steps.
Walking is something you can do in intervals throughout the day. You don’t necessarily have to look at exercise in a vacuum.
Some of the ways you can break up your walks include:
- Going for a 15-miniute walk after each meal. This assumes you eat 3 meals a day.
- Going for walks during your breaks at work. You probably get two 15-minute breaks at work and a lunch break. Those are great opportunities for you to get activity in.
Avoid being sedentary if you can. Studies show it can be just as bad for you as smoking cigarettes.
How Many Steps a Day for Optimal Health?
It is recommended you get about 7,000 steps a day to reduce your risk of all-cause mortality. This is based on several pieces of research. 7,000 steps can be achieved in roughly 1-hour of brisk walking.
You can even break 7,000 steps up into:
- 20-minute walks, 3 times a day after each meal
- 30-minute walks, twice a day, a session in the morning and a session in the evening
If you integrate this healthy habit into your life, you can significantly:
- Reduce your blood sugar levels
- Lower your blood pressure
- Manage your stress
- Improve your cognitive focus
- Fight chromic depression
The awesome thing about walking is that it doesn’t feel like exercise. It is an activity that is very passive and practical.
How Many Steps Do You Need to Walk to Lose Fat?
Before we can even talk about how many steps you need to walk to lose fat, we first need to understand what is foundational for fat loss.
- You must place your body in a caloric deficit for a prolonged period. The calories you are taking in must be less than the calories you are expending every day.
- You need a good workout program with an emphasis on progressive overload.
- You need to eat enough protein so your body can build and repair. Also, eating higher protein will keep you satiated in a deficit.
In terms of walking for fat loss, you want to aim for 8,000 steps or more per day. This is based on current guidelines for most adults looking to lose fat.
When you walk 8,000 or more steps a day, you are increasing NEAT or Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis. NEAT can be thought of as the calories you burn unintentionally.
These are movements like:
- Taking the stairs instead of the elevator
- Washing dishes
- Walking to restaurants for lunch with your co-workers
- Partner dancing
- Walking from the end of the parking lot to the supermarket
- Walking around the mall shopping
- Doing chores around the house
You are essentially exercising, but you’re not conscious of it.
It’s not enough to just cut back your calories, go to gym 3 days a week, and stay still the rest of the day.
New research is showing you need at least 8,000 steps per day just to oxidize bodyfat from a structure resistance training workout.
In other words, if you are sedentary, you won’t burn that many fat calories during a weight-lifting session.
The great thing about maintaining a high step count is that you don’t have to drop your calories too low to lose fat. Since your level of NEAT is so high, you are maintaining a solid caloric deficit without feeling too hungry.
If you choose to just lift weights and not move the rest of the day, your calories will have to be pretty low for you to lose fat.
Of course, chronically low-calorie diets are not recommended. You want to be eating in a way in which you can maintain an energy deficit, but still meet your macronutrient and micronutrient needs,
If you would like to learn more about NEAT, read this article 3 Ways Your Body Burns Calories in a Day.
How Much Walking to Do for Accelerated Fat Loss
For accelerated fat loss, you should aim for 15,000 steps per day. This is beneficial if you want to lose fat quickly without having to cut your calories too much.
Depending on how much you weigh, you can burn 1,000 calories just by walking 15K steps a day. If you have a resting metabolic rate of 2,000 calories, the walking will increase your body’s caloric maintenance to 3,000.
If you add other activities such as weightlifting, recreational sports, and partner dancing, your maintenance calories would be significantly higher than 3,000
Let’s say you’re trying to lean down on 2,200 calories a day. Assuming you are strength training a few days a week and walking 15,000 steps a day, your body would easily be in an 800 -1,000+ caloric deficit.
Therefore, you would be losing 2 pounds of fat per week.
Conclusion
It’s irrefutable that walking is one of the best forms of passive exercise. We just need to do it more intentionally.
- Walk at least 5,000 steps a day to avoid sedentary lifestyle
- Walk at least 7,000 steps a day to get all the health benefits
- Walk at least 8,000 steps a day to optimize fat loss
- Walk at least 15,000 steps a day for faster fat loss.
For fat loss, still make sure nutrition and strength training are accounted for or else how much you walk won’t make a difference.