How many steps should I take a day?

10,000 steps a day - is this really the magic number of steps that unlocks better health, keeps disease at bay and adds years to your life? Do you just need to strap on your pedometer and check your daily target? Does walking even count as exercise? We’ll cover all this and more but first, let’s talk about what walking can do for your body.

Did you know that it takes activity from about 200 muscles to take a step forward? That’s close to a third of all the muscles in your body! It’s probably not a surprise that this can come with some major upsides for your body.

Good blood sugar control is essential for health. It cuts the risk of diabetes, heart disease, cancer and dementia. And it turns out that walking after a meal has some beneficial effects on your blood sugar control by helping your body pack glucose away into your muscles¹.

When you eat food, particularly carbohydrate, your blood sugar (glucose) level rises as food is broken down into simple sugars that are then absorbed. In response, the body produces insulin, a hormone that lowers blood sugar levels by stimulating the uptake of glucose from the bloodstream. Muscle clears about 80% of the sugar after a meal and this glucose is stored in the muscle for later use or used immediately for energy production².

Walking helps your muscles take up glucose in three main ways. Firstly, active muscles have more demand for glucose, therefore they take up more from the bloodstream. Secondly, active muscles are more responsive to the effects of insulin which acts to drive glucose into the muscle. And thirdly, active muscles can actually take up glucose even without insulin.

This all means that the body doesn’t need to produce as much insulin to clear the glucose load and the glucose load is cleared from the blood faster.

Walking can also help with weight loss, or more specifically, with fat loss. Overweight and obese adults who combined moderate walking with an energy-restricted diet had greater fat loss and improved insulin sensitivity compared to those who just followed the diet³.

Snacking, particularly on energy dense foods like chocolate, is a major barrier to weight loss. But researchers have shown that just a 15 minute walk can significantly reduce cravings⁴.

Regular walking has been shown to boost your immune system. For example, one study found that walking increases the number of white blood cells that can help fight infections⁵. Regular exercisers were also 30% less likely to get infections and had better recovery.

Walking has a powerful impact on mental health, helping to reduce depression symptoms and improve sleep quality. It stimulates the release of natural feel-good chemicals like endorphins and serotonin, which boost mood and lower stress. Walking is also a great way to boost your energy levels and fight that mid-afternoon slump.

Walking outdoors has been shown to offer more benefits than walking inside⁶. While all exercise supports brain function, being in nature enhances mood, reduces stress, and improves focus more than indoor workouts. Fresh air, sunlight, and natural surroundings create a calming effect. Adding outdoor walks to your routine can make exercise more enjoyable and refreshing.

Ok, so you’re sold on the health benefits of walking but how much walking do you actually need to do? 10,000 steps right? Everyone knows that. But did you know that the 10,000 step “recommendation” actually came from a Japanese marketing campaign for a pedometer in the 1960s⁷? Although there was no science behind the recommendation, plenty has been done since and the results might surprise you.

On average, we take 5,000 steps a day⁸. But even just taking 2,500 steps can cut your risk of dying from heart disease⁹. For every 1000 extra steps, you lower your risk of dying by another 15%. Increasing the step count to 6500 per day may be associated with improvements in blood pressure while going over 8,000 may reduce the risk of obesity, sleep apnoea and depression¹⁰. At 9,800 steps per day the risk of developing dementia is slashed by 50%¹¹.

But the benefits of walking don’t just stop at 10,000 steps. At 11,500 the risk of dying from any cause is 77% lower than it was at 2,500 steps⁹.

Ultimately, there is no magic number of steps a day for health. If you’re doing other forms of aerobic exercise then you might not care about step count at all. Instead of focusing on a set number of steps per day, it’s more beneficial to focus on doing more than you currently do. If you currently do 3,000 steps per day (and this is your only form of exercise) then try to increase to 4,000. And then try for 5,000 and so on. Remember the golden rule: “something is better than nothing and more is better than less.”

You probably know that adults are recommended to do at least 150 minutes of “moderate intensity” exercise a week¹². But does walking count?

Exercise is really any physical activity that challenges your body. This means that different activities will be considered exercise for different people. A 30 minute walk is not exercise for a Tour de France cyclist but it probably is exercise for someone who does no other activity.

But don’t forget that we also need to be doing at least two resistance (strength) training sessions a week and walking isn’t going to tick this box.

Walking has a lot going for it. It’s a good way to ease into the habit of exercising, especially if you're not active. It uses multiple body systems, helping regulate blood sugar, build strength, and improve mental health. What’s more, it’s easy to do, requires no special equipment and can be adjusted to fit your pace and routine.

But the danger of the “10,000 steps a day” guide is that it might be interpreted as meaning that “as long as I do 10,000 steps, I’m doing all the exercise I need”. This is absolutely not the case. The more we can challenge our body the better for our health. The bottom line is that fitter people live longer than less fit people and there’s no apparent “upper limit” to this¹³. You can never be “too fit” if living longer in better health is your goal. Walking, even 10,000 steps a day, just doesn’t cut it when it comes to challenging our body.

Walking is very important as a bridge to doing more challenging forms of exercise. If you do no other exercise at the moment then going for a 5 minute walk a day is a great achievement and will have health benefits. But you can’t stop there. This is just a stepping stone on the way to taking a 30 minute walk a day which, in turn, is just a stepping stone to taking a 30 minute jog, cycle, swim…

But remember one thing: we already said that exercising outside has unique benefits for your mental health. So if your main form of exercise is indoors - on a treadmill, bike or rowing-machine - then walking outside may well have additional benefits. However, maybe you do it with a weighted pack on your back - so-called “rucking” - to get more bang for your buck!