A Japanese company marketing the simple and affordable “manpo-kei,” loosely translated as “10,000 steps meter” popularized the general notion that 10,000 steps a day will shed the weight, but it was actually a Japan walking club during the 1964 Tokyo Olympics that began using a belt meter to count their steps. While no doubt there are health benefits to walking the goal of increasing this activity to shed weight without dietary considerations is rather disappointing.
A longitudinal study of sedentary women demonstrated health benefits of increasing to 10,000 steps per day. A 2001 US study demonstrated that hypertensive women who increased to 9,700 steps per day were able to reduce their blood pressure and weight after 24 weeks of walking.
In 2002, an eight-week study examined the effects of a 10,000 steps a day intervention in overweight, sedentary women with a family history of type 2 diabetes. The women had significant improvements in glucose tolerance, despite not losing weight. One cannot argue with their changes. Based on the above studies our answer to the question of stepping more to lose weight is, no!
This level of steps per day is approximately equivalent to burning 300 and 400 calories, depending on body size, speed, distance, and so on. Walking on a daily basis can help you with some weight loss, but as Man in a Gym writes, “significant weight loss comes when people reduce the amount of food and increase the quality of food they eat”.
Even the popular Step Diet in 2007 reporting you eat whatever you like, as long as you cut back your usual portion size by about 25 percent, observed eating habits as you increased daily stepping.
So should we aim for 10,000 daily steps? Why not? Yes! We are made for movement.This is a can-do activity and not an exercise, that all of us, well, can do! Walking 10,000 steps a day, planned or simply by moving more may seem like a lot to some people, but it is within reach given that many of us already take between 6,000 and 7,000 steps daily.
This concludes our 3-part series on Numbers don’t lie, or do they? It isn’t that the numbers, based on research, a given, lie; they just don’t tell the whole story. What is common throughout the series, and in the research is that dietary considerations play an important role in our health and fitness goals. It isn’t just calories in, calories out, and as we learned in part two we are not eating more than decades ago, and while increased walking helps, the amount and quality of our food plays a vital role.
