Why Walking Is a Total Game Changer

While the term “hot girl walk” isn’t necessarily trending anymore, the practice hasn’t gone anywhere. People are still walking and loving it. And while there’s no doubt that taking a nice walk while blasting your favorite playlist or podcast can feel amazing, you may wonder if walking can actually impact your health. Also, should you really be aiming to hit that “10,000 steps a day” number? And isn’t that kind of a lot — how many miles is 10,000 steps, anyway?

The truth is, even small lifestyle changes, such as taking a few more steps per day or walking a little more each week, has the potential to have a big impact on your health. If that sounds hyperbolic, consider this: physical inactivity is a leading modifiable risk factor for death, according to the World Health Organization. Too little movement and too much sitting can lead to profoundly detrimental health consequences, including an increased risk of chronic diseases, such as diabetes, colon cancer, and cardiovascular disease.

Any movement, from walking or running to resistance training or yoga, can positively affect your long-term future health. And for most people, walking is a fantastic place to start. “Walking is a great exercise not only for physical but also mental health. It provides repeated resistance to the muscles and bones of the lower body which helps them to stay strong,” says Megan Stuteville, an American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) certified personal trainer at Female Fight Club Columbus. “Joint mobility improves at the hips, knees, and ankles, and it can increase your total daily energy expenditure.”

But how far do you have to walk per day to reap the benefits? To know that, it can be helpful to know how many steps are in a mile, and how many steps we really need to take per day for optimal health.

Experts Featured in This Article

Megan Stuteville, MS, ACSM-CPT, is an American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) certified personal trainer at Female Fight Club Columbus. She is also a graduate of George Washington University, with a Master of Science (MS) in Exercise Science, and was a collegiate tennis player for Otterbein University.

How Much Should You Walk a Day?

Taking a step back, the American College of Sports Medicine guidelines for physical activity recommend at least 30 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity five days per week, 20 minutes of vigorous activity three days a week, or a combination of both. But we also often hear that we should aim to take at least 10,000 steps per day.

While the 10,000 steps a day number is a good guidepost — and one used by the American College of Sports Medicine — that doesn’t mean walking less is useless. In fact, the concept of 10,000 steps a day may have originated from a Japanese marketing campaign from the 1960s, rather than a scientific study, according to Harvard Health. So how many steps should you walk? Research from National Institutes of Health found that 8,000 steps could lead to potential health benefits; people who walked that far daily (about four miles total) had a 50 percent lower risk of death than those who walked 4,000 steps. That said, walking more could be even more protective, as the researchers noted that those who performed 12,000 steps per day actually had a sixty-five percent lower risk of dying from any cause (e.g., heart disease or cancer).

A different study of 3,101 people published in the JAMA Network Open also pointed to that 8,000 steps a day number as being significant. Researchers found that the participants who took at least 8,000 steps one to two days per week had a lower all-cause mortality risk rate than those who didn’t. But with this study, researchers tracked the participants over time, and what they found was intriguing. Over the course of ten years, the participants who performed at least 8,000 steps per week actually had a decreased risk of all-cause and cardiovascular-related deaths.

How Many Steps Are In a Mile?

It can be hard to visualize exactly how far 8,000 or 10,000 or 12,000 steps is. So in case you were wondering: there are roughly 2,000 steps in a mile (give or take, depending on your height and stride length). So 10,000 steps is equivalent to approximately five miles, according to the “Starting a Walking Program” guide from ACSM, and 8,000 steps is the equivalent to about four miles.

If that still seems steep, remember that this is the total number of steps taken daily. And you’d be surprised by how many steps you can accrue while doing things like checking the mail, grocery shopping, or walking the dog.

Benefits of Walking

If you’d rather walk by time than distance or steps, Stuteville says that “benefits of walking can be seen from as little as ten to 20 minutes per day.” She adds that those upsides may include:

Regardless of your baseline, fixating on specific numbers, whether that’s 8,000 steps a week or 10,000 or more per day, isn’t necessary. After all, there are plenty of activities you may enjoy that won’t necessarily register on a step counter. And obsessing over one particular metric of wellness — including steps taken or active minutes logged — can be detrimental to your mental well-being.

Instead, if you’re looking to increase the time you spend moving each day, focus on finding ways to incorporate physical activity into your typical routine. If you take an escalator or elevator every day, could you try adding in a few flights of stairs? Or, if you have your go-to parking spot, could you switch things up and park a little farther away? Focusing on building on the things you’re already doing each day has the added advantage of helping you get around one of the most common barriers people site to getting enough physical activity: lack of time.

Wherever you’re at with your fitness journey, walking — including all its different iterations — is a straightforward way to start adding up more movement throughout your week. It just simply comes down to taking that first step.

Jade Esmeralda, MS, CSCS, is a Staff Writer, Health & Fitness. A life-long martial artist and dancer, Jade has a strong passion for strength & conditioning, sports science, and human performance. She graduated with a Master of Science degree in Exercise Science and Strength and Conditioning from George Washington University.