How To Take 10,000 Steps A Day

Just about everyone has some kind of wearable technology to measure activity. OK, maybe not everyone, but most people I know.

If you don’t have one there are affordable options that are fairly accurate. Recently rated the number one activity tracker is the one I wear, the Fitbit One. It’s not one of those super trendy trackers you wear on your wrist but it is the most accurate on the market.

So how do you get those 10,000 step in a day?

Get up and get moving.

I hear you moaning and groaning that you sit at a desk all day and don’t get to move around. Well, you might just have to work a little harder to get those steps in at other times of the day.

I spend a lot of time chained to a desk as well, both at home when I work and at my part time job, but I’ve found little things I can do to get a few steps in here and there and those few steps add up at the end of the day.

I do a few things to help myself out. First, when I have to go to the bathroom or fill my water bottle I go to the bathroom in my room, not the one right outside the office door. The other thing I’ve done to help me get up more throughout the day and it’s actually made me more productive, I’ve installed an application on my computer called Time Out (for Mac only).

What Time Out Looks like on my screen.

With Time Out I can customize the timing for little breaks. At the interval I’ve set the screen will be blocked and it will make me take a break. Now there is an override incase your in the middle of something super important when it comes time for that time out but I try not to use them whenever possible. When Time Out tells me it’s time to take five I use that time to get up and walk around. It’s also a good time to clear my head and a lot of times I come up with the solution I’d been trying to find when the time out came.

Outside the office. These are some really simple ones.

Park far away. This will have the added bonus of reducing your chance of getting door dents in a parking lot too. It could be more than 100 extra step just to get to the door and then it’ll be 100 more when you come out.

Take the stairs. Skip the elevator or escalator and opt for the stairs. You’re not only getting some extra steps but you may just get that heart rate up a little too.

Make more than one trip. Instead of carrying twenty pounds of laundry upstairs at once, fold it while you’re enjoying a good show then during the commercial break take a small stack at a time up to put away. Did you know you don’t have to carry ALL of your grocery bags in the house at one time? Grab your bags two at a time and take more than one trip.

Stuck at work all day? Take ten minutes of your lunch break and go for a brisk walk. The added benefit is that it’ll have you feeling energized when you go back to work. Just like I got to the further bathroom when I’m in my home office, if you have more than one bathroom in your office find the furthest one from your desk.

It usually takes me the entire day to get to my 10,000th step, especially on days that I don’t run. I even have days where I need to do a few laps around the house at night just to squeak them in.

Basically be mindful throughout your day and know when you’ve been sitting too long and need to stretch you legs.

What tips do you have for getting those steps in?