Is 10,000 steps a fabricated goal?

Welcome to Walking is Fitness.

This is a podcast of action, providing a little extra motivation to help you keep that fitness promise you made yourself.

Hi, I'm Dave. I started walking for fitness in 2013. I still take an intentional

fitness walk every single day. I'm walking right now and I would love to have you join me

for the next 10 minutes. The weather this morning is interesting, a little funky actually.

I'm walking pre-sunrise and I'm next to an open field that has ground fog.

So in the distance I can see a road and there are street lights along the road.

And between me and the lights is this fog that is getting thicker,

which starts to obscure the lights,

and then it begins to dissipate and the lights become clearer.

I can see them more easily.

At the moment, it seems to be getting a little bit

thicker again. So 10,000 steps. It is the gold standard if you walk for fitness.

It has been as long as I can remember when I got my first Fitbit in 2013. My goal was 10,000 steps a day because, well, that's what everybody does.

And I put that Fitbit on and experienced first day Fitbit shock and realized, oh, this 10,000 step a day thing? Way harder than I imagined.

And if I hadn't been active before getting the Fitbit,

I was actually a runner for five years.

I ran three miles.

It was like, that's got to be 10,000 steps and wasn't even close.

And that could have been really discouraging.

I actually found it challenging.

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