I did 10,000 steps a day for five years - Can it change your life?

according to the centers for disease control one in two american adults does not get enough aerobic physical activity for high school students that number jumps to 77 inactivity contributes to 1 in 10 premature deaths in the united states and is associated with 117 billion dollars in annual healthcare costs yet at the same time we have a never-ending supply of fitness crazes tybo p90x zumba spin class crossfit or if we want to go way back in time buns of steel but why with all these options are we as a nation still so out of shape i believe it's because we need something simple and more sustainable let me share my story i stepped on the scale during a routine visit to the doctor's office i looked at the nurse and said your scale is off there's no way i weigh this much she smiled and said let's try another one then we did and we got the same result i was about 10 pounds heavier than i thought how is this possible i was in the middle of training for a marathon running dozens of miles per week in my free time i was often going on long backpacking trips and walking mile after mile after electromile sometimes 15 20 miles a day if anything i should be losing weight right wrong and i'll get to why in a minute not long after that incident with the scale i celebrated 25 years with my employer they sent me a catalog and told me i could pick out a gift i selected a fitbit fitness tracker it arrived in the mail a few days later and life for me has never been the same within a few weeks of tracking my daily steps i started to notice a pattern on days i was running i routinely hit ten thousand twenty thousand or even thirty thousand steps i had days backpacking over 50 000 steps however on days where i wasn't active i sometimes didn't even get 3 000 steps i wasn't burning many calories on those easy days but because of my hard work on the other days i still had a huge appetite and i was eating like a wild animal i believe this is the reason i was gaining weight even with long backpacking trips and marathon training all that work created a substantial appetite but those low activity days were leaving me with a calorie surplus and hence weight gain around the same time my wife successfully completed a 30 day 10 000 step challenge the goal of this challenge was to record 10 000 steps per day for 30 days and she did it not to be outdone with my new fitbit i decided i would do a 10 000 steps per day challenge for at least 31 days on running and hiking days or days i was mowing the lawn or doing a lot of work around the house it was easy i hit the number without even thinking about it other days were a different story i'd come home from work with 2500 steps maybe and have to make up the difference to 10 000 before bedtime it takes me about 10 minutes to do 1000 steps so that means i'd have to walk for 75 minutes straight to hit my goal this was seriously interrupting my evening couch time to address this problem i made a goal of having at least 5 000 steps by the time i left work this meant getting up and walking around the halls of the office several times per day instead of just sitting at my desk for hours on end it meant parking farther away from the building to get in a few extra steps in the morning and at night it meant skipping the elevator and taking the stairs i found a few like-minded co-workers and we even started having walking meetings instead of sitting around in a conference room this greatly reduced the evening step gap and made it much easier to reach the daily goal already you can clearly see how my routine was starting to change getting up and moving around more regularly throughout the day getting in extra steps that i wouldn't have had before making sure i was active every day not just workout days i made it to day 31 as planned but i didn't want the streak to end so i kept it going and going and going and going that first day of my 10 000 step streak was may 6 2017. this video was shot in the fall of 2022 and i have not missed a single day that entire time my 10 000 step streak currently stands at over five years i've gone over 1 900 days with 10 000 steps or more and not missed a single day this is that moment where you say who cares good for you let me explain why i think you should care during this time several positive changes have occurred first my weight started to drop and eventually leveled off in a healthy spot that i'm happy with let's just do some simple math to explain why this happened even though i was active on most days i used to have one or two low step days per week these were typically three thousand step days now all of those three thousand step days have become ten thousand step days the difference in calories burned between a three thousand step day and a 10 000 step day is about 350. now that's going to vary a bit by person but that's about what it is for me it's also commonly held that 3 500 calories equals about a pound of body weight so for every 10 light days of steps i was turning into 10 000 step days i was saving about a pound i was averaging one to two light days per week so that would equate to about a pound every six weeks or about eight to ten pounds per year now i'm not sure if it's exactly that simple but the point is i was burning substantially more calories while doing the step challenge than i was before and all those extra calories burned contributed toward me maintaining a healthy weight another benefit relates to back pain i used to suffer from debilitating back pain that started right about the time i started working a desk job right out of college every couple of months i'd throw my back out and be in a lot of pain for several weeks until it would heal and i believe that this back pain was the result of all that prolonged death sitting at my job with my step challenge i was now getting up and walking around at least a half a dozen times a day breaking up those long hunched over periods at my desk i honestly don't remember the last time i felt any pain in my back and i would say i'm the most pain-free i've been in about 30 years the third reason is financial according to the cdc you can reduce your annual health care costs by 1861. if you maintain a healthy weight it's almost like you're getting paid to do it and finally according to a study done by the university of denmark getting at least 9 800 steps a day reduced your risk of dementia by almost 50 percent now having had a grandmother that i had to watch suffer through dementia i want to do anything in my power to prevent that from happening to me a healthy weight reduced back pain saving money lower dementia risk if you're not convinced yet i don't know what to tell you but you may be asking why the 10 000 step program why this one and not one of the many other that are available out there there's a couple of reasons and one of them is that i think this is a lot more accessible than some of those other programs for example my mother is 77 years old she's had a knee replaced she's had a hip replaced yet despite all that her current 10 000 step street stands at 479 days great job mom if it hadn't been for a shoulder operation her streak would be even longer than that next is flexibility there's no specific workout program all you have to do is be active whether it's working around the house hiking jogging playing tennis you get the picture just be active every day and keep that streak going in a nutshell the step challenge meets the criteria of simple and sustainable that i had mentioned earlier another question you might ask is why every day why never take a day off no matter what and just keep the street going and going and going well the reason is this if i take one day off then i'll take off another day and another and another and eventually i'll end up right back where i started there's always an excuse not to do it there's always a reason to just lay on the couch and not do anything the challenge is overcoming those hurdles and finding creative ways to get it done even when it's difficult or inconvenient if you try a step challenge will you have the same results i did maybe maybe not maybe you'll come up with completely different benefits that i didn't experience but there's only one way to find out and that's to give it a shot so i encourage you to give it a try and let me know how you do and if you have some great success please leave something in the comments i would love to hear about how it changed your life or how it impacted your life in a positive way and like with any other exercise program you need to check with your doctor first before starting something new hey thanks for watching but one more quick thing before you click off the video i know not everybody has a fitbit or an apple watch for tracking their steps but you can download an app that will do pretty much the same thing but regardless i just hope that everybody can be as active as possible and keep a healthy lifestyle going now i wouldn't mind at all if you like and subscribe to the video it really helps grow my channel but either way hope to see you again in the future thanks and we'll see you out on the trail you

Channel: Jon Allen Outside

Views: 72,634

Keywords: 10k steps, exercise, backpacking, hiking, weight loss

Id: 0X-_UXpczVg

Length: 9min 53sec (593 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 13 2022