How many steps a day do I need to walk?

What's the minimum number of steps a day you can get away with? 

What's magical about 10,000 steps a day? Nobody really knows. The best guess is a Japanese pedometer invented in 1965, the name of which translates as 10,000 steps metre. Anyway, it didn't come from science.

Everyone knows it's very bad for you to sit on your backside all day long (or even to have one hour's burst of frenetic exercise then sitting down for the next 23 hours). Movement is good for overall health, for heart disease prevention, muscle mass, osteoporosis, all that stuff. But if it's not 10,000 steps what is it?

The Women's Health Study in 2019 showed that among women aged 45 and older, the women who took 4,400 steps/day had significantly lower mortality than those with 2,700 steps/day. The more steps the women took, the lower the mortality rate until they reached 7,500 steps/day where the benefits levelled off. (Of note too was the speed didn't matter, just the number of steps.)

So, first off it's quite a lot less steps than you might have thought which makes it more manageable.

Working from home can be both a blessing and a curse. You might not have reason to go far for your lunch meal deal but, if you have a lower target of between 4,400 and 7,500 there's a big target to hit there and you can plan mini breaks to get up and do something else for 3 minutes. That barn door to hit gives you more flexibility than some arbitrary round number that's rarely achievable.

And second, pottering counts - you don't have to be lacing up the trainers or doing something fancy.