So how many steps do I need to walk now?

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 to yourself.

Hi, I'm Dave. I've been walking for fitness since 2013,

averaging about 21,000 steps a day. I'm walking right now and would love to have you join me

for the next 10 minutes. Did you see the headline? It was probably week or two ago. Different media organizations may have framed it

differently, but essentially it was exercise more than the recommended amount if you want to live

longer. I saw that and went, what? First off, let's understand what is meant by recommended amount.

This is the recommendation from the World Health Organization, as well as the CDC in the United States,

and that is 150 to 300 minutes of moderate level physical activity,

or 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous level activity, physical activity.

And this is primarily cardio movement.

So this is not talking about strength training or balance training or flexibility exercises.

It's primarily focused on cardio-based exercise like what you and I are doing right now, walking.

Moderate level physical activity essentially is a brisk walk, three to four miles an hour.

Vigorous level is running.

So if you're running at five miles an hour or faster, that's considered vigorous level.

So we will set that aside because this is not running as fitness.

This is walking as fitness.

So 150 to 300 minutes every week.

And the research, which was actually pretty massive, I think it was 116,000 participants

over three decades. So this was not a little one-off study. This was a pretty massive study.

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