Taking Steps to Better Health

Clearly, vacation was a good workout. That observation was confirmed by Dr. Schriner, who recently returned from a trip to Italy. Despite plenty of pasta, he said, neither he nor his wife gained a pound—largely because they had to walk everywhere.

Now that we knew that we could walk far more than the recommended 10,000 steps, we decided to test out our normal routines. Both of us think of ourselves as active women—working and running our households. Normally, we’re pretty tired at the end of the day. If a vacation day meant more than 20,000 steps each, surely our normal routine would produce at least that—if not more. Barbara lives in New York City and gets around by walking and taking public transportation. Pat lives in Washington, D.C., where she uses the subway, walks and drives.

Barbara: “Back at work, I tested out the pedometer on a typical day. That means walking two blocks to the bus stop, which drops me off about a block from the office. During lunchtime, I generally run errands in the office neighborhood on foot. Our offices also require some walking, especially up and down three flights of stairs several times a day to reach various departments. After work, I do more errands on the way home and then get back on the bus. I kept the pedometer on all evening as I did various chores at home: laundry, folding clothes, making dinner. At the end of the day, I felt sure I would reach at least 10,000. I certainly felt more tired than I had in London. But when I flipped my pedometer open, it showed only a feeble 6,167.”

Pat: “On a typical workday, I got up and made a combination of lunches and breakfasts for my three kids and helped them get out the door (signing permission slips, finding shoes, etc.). After getting dressed myself, I walked to the subway stop near my home (about seven minutes away), took the subway downtown and walked to my office (about another seven minutes). Halfway through my workday, I walked to my lunch appointment and back to the office. After work, I ran a few errands on foot before taking the subway home again. I made dinner and had a quiet evening at home. Total for the day: 13,754.”

Over the next week or so, we continued to test our home routines. Barbara came up with an average of 6,000 to 7,000 steps a day; Pat was generally above 10,000 if she went to the office but only at about 5,000 to 6,000 if she stayed home.

So what did we learn from our experience? We’re not as active as we would like to be, and now we have a way to measure what we’re doing. The pedometers we used were small and innocuous; we could easily wear them with almost anything and no one would notice. So there’s no excuse for not paying attention. We interviewed a few people who’ve used pedometers for longer periods of time and they all said that they’re especially useful for figuring out ways to get more activity into your life. After a while, you get a better sense of just what it means to walk 10,000 steps a day—or, hopefully, more. Some exercise experts, including Dr. Schriner, think 10,000 steps isn’t enough but as he put it, “it would be 10,000 steps in the right direction.”