Vitality and the London School of Economics analysed the fitness data of over 1 million members over a 10-year period and found some startling results. The good news is that you don’t need to run marathons for major health and longevity benefits.
Just 2,500 steps a day, three times a week sees significant benefits; 5,000 steps a day, three times a week drastically increases the benefits – and the ‘sweet spot’ is just 7,500 steps a day, three times a week. Make this a habit by completing 7,500 steps a day, three times a week for two years and you can expect to extend your life expectancy by three years if you’re female and 2.5 years if you’re male.
The paper also highlights that it’s never too late to start. The benefits of reduced mortality risk are greatest for those over 65 (52% reduction) whereas those between 45 and 65 experience a mortality risk reduction of 38% and a 27% reduction for those who have yet had an opportunity to have a mid-life crisis.
On top of this, the 7,500 step count threshold results in a drastically reduced chance of developing non-communicable diseases like type 2 diabetes and suffering from Stage 3 or 4 cancer. Whilst not necessarily causal, there is also a correlation between hitting your step count and other good habits like good nutrition and getting enough sleep.
The data shows that if you are able to keep up a step change for 10 weeks, it’s likely to become an enduring habit. Another key piece of advice arising from the study is to start slow and apply “habit laddering*”. For example, an inactive person will have the highest probability of creating a permanent healthy habit if they start with 2,500 steps three to five times a week and then increase the total by no more than 800 steps a week until reaching the 7,500 ‘sweet spot’.
* Someone missed a trick here, it really should be called “Step Laddering”
On that note, regular readers of this blog will know that I like to keep things light and humorous, so the rest of the article is dedicated to some creative (and slightly devious) ways that you can increase your daily step count as well as that of those around you…
Creative Ways to Increase Your Step Count
Drink More
One simple trick is to drink lots of water. Not only does this provide additional health benefits (every cell, tissue and organ in your body needs water to work properly), but it also means that you will be forced to get up and go to the loo a lot more often. If you work in an office with a hot desk environment, make sure that you pick a desk that is far away from the toilets. Bonus points if you triangulate your location by applying Pythagorean mathematical calculations to position your desk at the maximum possible distance from both the water fountain and the bathrooms. This is the also easiest way to ensure you hit your daily step count whilst pregnant.
On a related note, excessive urination is usually seen as a negative effect of drinking beer. We are now able to reframe beer’s diuretic properties in a more positive light. Drinking a “responsible” amount of beer will help to ensure you get more active in the evenings. Frequent walks to and from the bathroom to make room for another beer are part of the core race recovery techniques employed by many marathon runners (including this one). And depending on which beer you drink this virtuous ‘mouth-to-kidney-to-sewer’ cycle is a zero-sum game.
Pick Your Parking Spot Carefully
On the topic of exercise, I’ve seen people going to gym and circling the parking lot several times to get a spot close to the entrance. I’ve never understood this paradox – surely it’s more sensible to pick the parking spot furthest away from the entrance so that you burn a few extra calories and have already started your warm-up before you’ve even swiped your gym card.
The ‘furthest spot from the entrance’ technique can also be applied universally to all shopping trips and excursions. Another bonus is that by parking far away from the entrance, you are less likely have a car next to you, thereby reducing the risk of getting a car door dinging – plus you are less likely to get harassed by a car guard as they tend to congregate in high traffic areas (and should a car guard be energetic enough to follow you all the way back to your car, you are helping him with his health).
Procreate
Perhaps the single most effective way of increasing your daily step count is to have kids. Parents with young children easily smash out several thousand steps before most people have woken up. Parents with teenage kids routinely do laps up and down their house trying to rouse their unawakenable bundle of hormones whilst completing the rest of the morning routine. And if you do need a quick boost to get a few hundred extra steps to hit your goal, then just try to sit down for 5 minutes. Before the second hand completes a single revolution on your watch, you’re guaranteed to be called upon to “Make me toast”, “Wipe my bum” or “Dad, come look at the nice picture I drew on the wall.”
Earn Your Social Media Dopamine Fix
Most of us spend way too much time on our phones and we know it. An effective technique for reducing phone usage, especially during family time when you want to concentrate on the real world in front of you, is to add some friction by leaving your devices in an “out-of-reach” location. Mobile phone addiction is not something that one solves in a day so, if and when you do succumb to the “I’ll just have a quick look” compulsion, at least you get the benefit of having to take some extra steps to get your social media dopamine fix.
An even better approach would be to apply some “temptation bundling” and only scroll through your social media feed while you are walking.
Mental Challenge
Going grocery shopping without a shopping list is a great test of your mental cognition and, speaking from experience, is likely to result in a Strava route map that looks like a Covid-lockdown garden run. This might seem really inefficient but not if your goal is to boost your step count. Another bonus is that the Pick n Pay where I shop (getting 75% off HealthyFoods I might add) normally has tasting stations dotted around the store so I leave the store very well fed after bypassing these tasting stations several times.
Office Escapades
For the final set of tips, let’s go back to the office for those who are back on-site. In most organisations, post-Covid return to the office decrees are a controversial topic with more office time usually being favoured by the execs and more work from home time favoured by just about everyone else. When dealing with unsolvable problems like this, I think it’s best to ask, “What would George Costanza do?” I have no doubt that, on the rare occasions that George actually made it to the office, he would easily hit his step goal by strutting past the exec offices looking busy several times an hour.
For those that are back in the office, I’d suggest booking meeting rooms as far away from your department as possible. Your colleagues might curse you now but they’ll thank you in the long run (or should that be walk).
Working at Vitality Global, you’d think that we’d practice what we preach and incentivise staff to get their step count up – and you’d be right. Recently we did an Easter Walkathon where staff could do a few lunchtime laps of the roof top running track to earn a chocolate Easter bunny. The average Monday step count per staff member in 2024 is 6,335. Walkathon Monday saw the average jump by over 25% to 7,932 steps.
Rewarding people with a chocolate to get the daily staff step average above the 7,500 threshold – well that is truly hitting the ‘sweet spot’. Now, I just have to work on Vitality to add beer and ice-cream incentives to the rewards scheme and I’ll be the fittest I’ve ever been.
Hot Tips from the Hot Stepper
I thought I’d end this article with tips from Ahmed Varachia, a colleague who won our Hot Stepper Award in 2023, completing an incredible 6,787,542 steps – that’s an average of 18,596 per day.
Ahmed ‘walks the talk’, using walks as a way to spend quality time and connect with family and friends. His top tip for increasing your step count is to travel, “Those who have been unlucky to travel with me, know that the best way to see a city is by foot. The smells and local feel are only experienced following in the steps of locals – try it the next time you’re traveling.”
Ahmed’s other top tips to hit your 7,500 steps are:
- Start small, my wife likes to say we run three light poles, then walk three – micro-targets can be powerful (the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step according to the philosopher Lao Tzu).
- Find a companion – sharing and motivating brings consistency (your companion does not even need to be human; pets are our companions too).
- Always take the stairs… it’s kinda fun.
- Take a short hike! Gauteng has some wonderful hiking trails (and I am sure there are good walks wherever you live)!
- Join a parkrun – it’s free and you get points if you’re on Vitality.
Disclaimer
The author has been a salaried employee of Vitality Global, which is part of the Discovery Group, since September 2021. However, this article is written in his personal capacity. He is a long team fan of the Discovery Vitality program with 445 consecutive fitness goals achieved, and is busy paying off his fourth free Apple Watch and second free iPhone with weekly fitness activities.
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