Health: How to Fit in 10,000 Steps a Day

Collection of photos from the walk from the first day of the challenge at Polesden Lacey

The answer is...not very easily! I signed up for a 10,000 steps a day challenge in July to raise money and awareness of the UK Sepsis Trust. This was close to my heart given that sepsis nearly saw me off in 2014. 

I do consider myself fairly active and enjoy walking but as I work from home most of the time, I knew that this was going to be quite difficult for me to achieve.

I spent the last week in June doing some planning. I mean, how long was this going to take me each day, and how far is it? The answers to those are: approximately 1.5 hours walking and about 8km depending on your pace and stride length.

Building a Collection of Walks

If you are trying to shoehorn a walk in after a busy working day, it is really useful to have a repository of walks stashed away with their time and steps so you know will achieve your steps for the day. My husband and I built up quite a stack of these local walks during lockdown with affectionate names such as Fruit Loop (involves a stop at a farm fridge for strawberries and raspberries) or the Swan Figure of Eight. 

This way, you know that if you have 4,000 steps to do, you can achieve that by selecting one of your walks rather than walking at random. Although, let's face it, walking at random sometimes brings results too!

Creating a Commute to Work

One of my biggest successes was to start my day with a fake commute on my working from home days. This was a very dull walk up a main road and back that I did most days, especially when the weather wasn't looking very hopeful for a better walk. This gave me 3,000 steps before my day had even really started.

Making the Incidental Steps Count

I know that I am fortunate in having a reasonable sized house, but for this challenge every step counted, so my toilet breaks during my working day were not in the downstairs loo next to my office, but marching on up to the ensuite instead. 

In fact, I had quite an internal battle with myself to break out of my usual efficient mode. For example, if a bottle had just been used in the bathroom, I usually would take that downstairs in my next trip. However, I made separate trips for these small things. It really does add up.

Make Walking Your Primary Mode of Transport

Really think twice before using your car. We now even do our weekly supermarket shop on foot. When our local Lidl opened up nearby earlier this year, I bought a foldable camping trolley which I wheel over each week. It folds neatly in the trolley while you are shopping and saves an unnecessary car journey.

Other more utilitarian tasks that we do on foot are taking the soft plastics for recycling or a bag of clothes to the donation bin. And even with these more routine walks, you can often mix it up a little by going the longer way round or taking one street over. By doing this I discovered a sweet little honesty stand in the middle of a housing estate where a householder sells their cut flowers and home grown vegetables.

Plan in Something Enjoyable Too

Most weekends I planned at least one more enjoyable walk that was a bit further afield, because when you have walked round the estate balancing ponds for three consecutive days in a row, you really do feel you have earned a change of scenery. And I discovered quite early on in the month that you get a lot of steps in when you are dancing!

In summary, I actually achieved 332,000 steps in July, with just two days where I didn't make it to 10,000 in a day. There were times when it wasn't so much fun (i.e. 8pm in the evening when its raining and you have to squeeze in another 2.5k), but on the whole I enjoyed it. I have had a bit of a break this week to do some different exercise (pilates), but do plan to go back to the walking again. 

Got any tips for adding some extra steps into your day - I would love to hear about them.

Love Mrs Jones x