Do you really need 10,000 steps a day?
It turns out this popular fitness goal didn't come from science. Here's what the research actually says about walking and health.
A couple years ago, I bought a step counter off Amazon. Nothing fancy, just a little digital display that I wore strapped to my ankle all day long. I stopped using it after just a few months. To be honest, it made me borderline obsessive. I found myself doing unnecessary laps around my house at night just to hit my goal of 10,000 steps. Within days of taking it off, I felt better.
The lesson here is not that step counters are bad. If using one is helping you stay motivated to move more throughout your day—without contributing to stress, shame, or overwhelm—then by all means, keep tracking.
But after getting rid of mine, I did find myself wondering: Do I even really need 10,000 steps? Where did this number come from?
The more I dug into it, the more I was surprised to learn that the fitness goal most of us treat as gospel isn’t based on decades of research. The number actually has a much stranger origin story.
Where did the 10,000 steps originate?
I always assumed that the 10,000 steps benchmark was a calculation that scientists came to after years of rigorous research.
That’s far from the truth.
It actually just stems from a Japanese marketing campaign.
Leading up to the Tokyo Olympics in 1964, Yamasa launched one of the first commercially available wearable pedometers called the Manpo-kei. While promoting the product, they used the catchphrase, “Let’s walk 10,000 steps a day!” Why 10,000? Well, Manpo-key literally translates to “10,000 steps meter,” and the Japanese kanji character for the number 10,000 (万) just so happens to resemble a person running.
That’s it. That’s literally where the number came from.
(I know. Mind blown.)
The good news: You probably don’t need 10,000 steps.
Wellness culture loves thresholds. Eight glasses of water a day. Eight hours of sleep a night. At least 150 minutes of exercise a week.
But here’s the thing: We know for a fact that our bodies are highly unique. (There’s even a term for this—bioindividuality). A person who’s breastfeeding or living in a hot climate needs to hydrate more than someone who isn’t. A professional athlete or pregnant person needs more sleep than someone who isn’t. In other words, these guidelines are not one-size-fits-all.
Anyway, back to walking. If 10,000 steps feels wildly unrealistic for you on a regular basis, fret not.
It turns out you can reap the health benefits well before you hit 10,000 steps. In fact, in a 2019 study of 17,000 older women, participants’ risk of mortality continued to fall as their step counts increased. More specifically, mortality risk fell by around 15% for every 1,000 additional daily steps women took (above 2,000). Women who took about 4,400 steps a day already had a much lower risk of death than those who took about 2,700 steps.
To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with taking 10,000 steps. But according to the 2019 study, the benefits actually plateaued around 7,500 steps. That means women who took 10,000 steps didn’t see any greater health benefits than those who took 7,500.
A lot of the research has shown that mortality risk plummets somewhere within the 6,000-8,000 step range—particularly in older adults.
The bottom line? The science doesn’t really point to one magic number—but rather, a range that actually depends a bit on your age.
What matters more than step count
I’m generally a proponent of quality over quantity. The same is true with walking.
Getting 10,000 steps isn’t doing you any good if your cortisol is spiking because you tried to squeeze a walk in on your lunch break, and now you’re late for a meeting.
Getting 10,000 steps isn’t doing you any good if you’re forcing yourself through the fatigue because your baby woke up three times last night.
Here’s what to focus on instead.
Your baseline
Are you moving more than you were before? Great. You’re crushing it.
The research is pretty clear: Going from 1,500 steps to 4,500 steps is going to make a way bigger impact on your health than going from 6,000 steps to 10,000.
Intensity
Step count isn’t the whole story. It tells us how much we moved, but not how hard our bodies were working.
A 2017 study involving more than 500,000 people found that slow walkers have a much higher all-cause and cardiovascular mortality risk than brisk walkers. And a 2019 study showed that a faster walking pace is linked to a lower risk of numerous health conditions—regardless of the total time spent walking.
Context
Trust me on this: If you hate walking on the treadmill, you’re not going to do it. No matter how much you believe it may improve your health.
And if walking makes you pace your home at a crazy hour, or feel guilty on busy days—it’s really not worth it.
Find a way of walking that you genuinely enjoy and look forward to—whether that’s taking hikes with the dog on weekends, going shopping or running errands with a friend, or playing yard games with family.
Timing
Remember when “fart walks” were trending on TikTok? There’s actually legit science behind the idea that a brief stroll after you eat helps support digestion. In a 2021 study, participants who took a 10-15 minute walk after each meal experienced an improvement in certain GI symptoms, like gas and bloating.
Not only that, but according to a 2023 review, just a few minutes of post-meal walking improved blood sugar control—especially when performed as soon as possible after eating. Interestingly, the research also suggested that multiple short walks (say, 10 or 15 minutes three times) were more effective than one longer walk (say, for 30 or 45 minutes).
Consistency
A lower step goal you can stick to will always beat a more ambitious one you abandon after two weeks.
So, if having a specific target is useful for you, don’t aim for 10,000 steps if you know that 5,000 is what’s doable for you on most days.
What’s my goal now?
Every once in a while I check my iPhone’s built-in step counter purely out of curiosity. Some days I get 3,000 steps. Some days I get 14,000. I figure it all balances out.
So, I’ve shifted away from a rigid step goal and toward a looser, more sustainable movement goal:
Take an intentional walk most days—even if it’s just for 10-15 minutes. Ideally outdoors after a meal.
Get up once every hour. This could be just to refill my water bottle, step outside to feel the sun on my face, or use the restroom. (In the beginning, when this felt less intuitive, I literally set hourly alarms to remind me to do this.)
TL;DR: The WELL-BENT takeaway
If 10,000 steps feels doable for you, great. Keep going.
But if it’s started to feel like a pass/fail test, you can definitely toss this benchmark out the window—and do so with peace of mind that the 10,000-step goal didn't actually originate from scientific research.
Do you find tracking your steps, sleep, etc. motivating—or does it make you a little obsessive? If you do track your steps, what’s your daily goal? Let me know in the comments.