I was so duped.
Duped because I didn’t even think to look into this one. Of course walking is good for our health, so I never really questioned the 10,000-step count. In my head, 10,000 steps is roughly, give or take, five miles, which for me is roughly 400 to 500 calories, which is roughly around the daily deficit I might give a client who wants to lose about one pound per week.
The math goes like this: 3,500 calories is roughly equivalent to a pound. Five hundred calories, seven times a week, bingo bango, you have yourself a 3,500-calorie deficit. So if you ate around what your body needed and created roughly a 500-calorie deficit each day, theoretically you could be down about a pound by day seven.
The math mathed to me.
And yes, you may have noticed I used the word “roughly” an obnoxious number of times there. Not because I suddenly have an affinity for the word, but because every one of those numbers is an estimate. This is a simple way to explain an incredibly complicated biological process, not a mathematical guarantee. Bodies adapt. Energy expenditure changes. And, as we all know because I have been screaming about it for years, the calorie-burn number on your watch is an estimate too, and an imperfect one at that.
Still, 10,000 steps made sense to me.
And then I found out it was basically made up.
I have mixed feelings about even telling you this because I do not want anyone reading this to triumphantly throw their walking shoes into the closet and announce that “Jen said steps don’t matter.” I absolutely did not. Walking is fantastic for your health, and getting more movement throughout your day is one of the simplest things you can do for your body.
It’s the magical 10,000 number that deserves some explaining.
For that, we have to go back to Japan in the 1960s. Around the time of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, a Japanese company called Yamasa introduced a pedometer called the manpo-kei, which roughly translates to “10,000-step meter.”
And here is where I feel personally betrayed.
Ten thousand steps was not discovered because scientists had determined that the human heart throws a party when step number 10,000 hits. It was a marketing number. A really, really good one apparently, considering we are still chasing it more than 60 years later. The 10,000-step target was not originally based on clinical research establishing it as the magic number required for good health.
Since then, researchers have actually studied this, and thankfully the news is pretty great.
A 2019 study involving nearly 17,000 older women found that women averaging about 4,400 steps per day had significantly lower mortality rates than women averaging about 2,700. The benefits continued as step counts increased and eventually leveled off around 7,500 steps per day in that population.
More recently, a large 2025 systematic review and meta-analysis looked at 57 studies across 35 cohorts. Compared with taking about 2,000 steps per day, 7,000 steps was associated with a 47% lower risk of death from any cause and a 25% lower risk of developing cardiovascular disease. Researchers also found associations with lower risks of cardiovascular death, dementia, type 2 diabetes, depressive symptoms and falls.
Notice what number I haven’t mentioned yet?
Ten thousand.
That does NOT mean 10,000 steps is bad. Please do not take your watch off and spike it into the ground at step 7,001. If you enjoy walking 10,000 steps, fantastic. Walk 12,000. Walk 15,000. Take the dog. Call a friend. Wander around Home Depot for two hours looking for one very specific screw. Movement is good for us.
What I love about this research is what it means for the person who looks at 10,000 steps and thinks, “Well, there is absolutely no way I am doing that.”
You don’t have to.
Your body does not know the difference between 9,842 and 10,000 steps. Your cardiovascular system isn’t sitting there waiting for your watch to vibrate before deciding whether today’s movement counted.
There isn’t a cliff at 10,000.
The health benefits of walking begin well before that number, and generally, moving more than you currently do is where the win is. Research has even found measurable reductions in cardiovascular risk at step counts far below 10,000, with additional benefits accumulating as steps increase.
So maybe the goal was never supposed to be a perfect number flashing on our wrists at 8:47 p.m. while we march circles around the kitchen island trying to get the last 312 steps.
Maybe the better question is much simpler. Did I move my body today? And can I move it a little more tomorrow? Bingo bango.
