7k Steps is all you Need....?

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My own personal step goal is 10,000 steps a day.

But NB - I just found out this originated not from rigorous science, but from a 1960s marketing campaign in Japan promoting a pedometer called “manpo-kei,” meaning “10,000-step meter”

While 10K steps appeals to our base-10 bias, a new systematic review recently published in The Lancet suggests that 7,000 daily steps is sufficient to maintain health...

in this review, researchers analyzed 57 global studies, encompassing more than 160,000 adults and discovered that 7K (not 10K) daily steps is correlated with a

  • 47% decreased risk of death from all causes
  • 25% decreased risk of cardiovascular disease
  • 37–47% decreased risk of cancer death
  • 38% decreased risk of dementia
  • 22% decreased risk of depression
  • 14% decreased risk of type 2 diabetes
  • 28% decreased risk of falls in older adults

And the rate of progress in benefits diminishes after 7,000. Beyond this point for most sicknesses, improvements yield diminishing returns—though remaining active at 10,000 steps still offers marginal gains.

Aside from that, small gains—like boosting daily steps from 2,000 to 4,000—paid huge rewards, including a 36% decline in mortality risk

More attainable and less guilt...?

Personally this is great news, 7K for me is a much more natural daily target on my non-run days, that's roughly where I end up on a normal day, without having to get any extra steps in, just for the sake of it.

That said look where I've ended up today.....

20250822_180533.jpg

FINAL THOUGHTS..

Right, I'm off to get my daily total up to 10K, I'm all about that base 10 bias!

cent runningproject walking neoxian dave proofofbrain
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11 comments
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Funny how advertisements can (mis-)shape our world, right?
Anyway, I’m also sticking to the 10k and up for now!

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Funnily enough I read the same or a similar article this morning

I was for a few months now setting a goal of 12 k daily to loose weight but last Dr's visit was told I've done great slow down a but your weight is good so now trying to be around 7k

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(Edited)

I used to know that merely 5,000 steps can provide considerable health advantages :)

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(Edited)

Any extra activity is good if you are generally just sitting around. All these percentages do not mean too much if you don't know your risk for those things. If you have a 2% change of diabetes (guessing) then 14% less will still mean a small number. Some days I don't do many steps, but others I will do 20k and running is a different matter anyway.

People do like round numbers.

I used to walk a lot more then we were in the office every day. COVID changed that.

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Yep, I've known that the '10,000 steps' isn't an magical or meaningful number... but an arbitrary number picked almost at random.

I think it works though, as 10,000 steps is more than what the 'average sedentary person' would usually do, plus '10,000' is a nice round number to aim for.

To be fair, anything that helps motivate more people to be a little more active is a good thing... so if a person averages 3000 steps and manages to increase that average to 4000 steps, then that is still a positive step (pun intended!)

I used to obsess over getting 10,000 each day (to the point where I'd be marching on the spot in my front room before going to bed). Thankfully these days i don't take it as seriously. I average 20k on 'busy days' so if I only do 4000 steps on a sunday*, then thats ok :-)

*unless I notice I'm at 9,600 steps, then I will walk circles in my front room to hit 10k, its all about that number bias!

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I think people shouldn't need to be only focussed on the numbers. Sitting is the new smoking. We sit too much and that is unhealthy.
But making 7000 or 10000 steps at once and sitting the rest of the day isn't healthy either. Especially when you compensate the walking with eating more.

If you have a job where you sit a lot (behind a desk or in a car) make sure you regularly go for short walks. Grab a coffee, walk to a collegue instead of using the chat. Working remotely doesn't have a good impact on this because you don't have any colleagues to go to.
I often set a pomodoro timer when I work at home. Not to be focussed, but to take a 'walk break' every half hour.

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I heard that 10,000 steps was a popular goal in Japan because the character for that number looks a bit like a person walking: 万. Although that looks like an old person with a bad back to me. Funny coincidence - they could have chosen a goal that's too low if 5,000 had sounded nice.

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