Recently a friend told me that her father walks 10,000 steps daily. I was impressed because, according to my own fitness tracker, I usually average more like 7,000. Sure, I do get a lot of other exercise, but the conversation made me wonder if I should be walking more. Honestly, I felt kind of ashamed about it. If a septuagenarian can manage to hit the magic number, why can’t I? Do I even need to? I asked experts to help me decode the mystery of why 10,000 steps a day is ideal.
First of all, you should know that the 10,000 steps goal was not created by doctors scrupulously dedicated to human health. The 10,000 step milestone, arguably made famous by FitBit, was actually created as a marketing ploy in the 1960s by a Japanese company Yamasa. Yamasa released the first step tracker 1964 and called it Manpo-kei, which translates to, “10,000 step meter.”
