10,000 Steps + 2,000 Calories = Health

Okay this will be my last blog post on walking for a while. But I found the approach described in this pair of articles so simple and sensical that I couldn’t resist.

I have previously discussed that the 10,000 step number is just a myth, but what if one where to combine that goal with a generous 2,000 calorie diet? Well at least for the anecdotal trial described by Graham Isador in GQ, it works for losing significant amounts of weight without much effort beyond carving out the time to do 2,000 steps. Jessica Stillman in Inc. expands on this article (she also has numerous additional articles on the benefits of walking in Inc. - just type her name into the search function at www.inc.com).

The point is with a limited amount of exercise, being consistent, and reducing your caloric intake will cause you to lose weight and obtain significant health benefits. The calorie number would certainly have to be reduced for those of you under 200 pounds and female. I have a simple rule for determining caloric intake - if you aren’t losing weight, then you are eating too much.

This quote from the articles pretty much says it all:

"I think walking is probably the single most underutilized tool in health and wellness," says nutrition coach and personal trainer Jeremy Fernandes. According to Fernandes, the reason we rarely hear about walking as a major fitness tool—in the same conversations as stuff like yoga or expensive spinning bikes—is that people aren’t emotionally prepared for fitness to be easy. “Most people want to believe that working out and fat loss needs to be hard. If you need impossibly crushing workouts to get in better shape, then you’re not responsible when you fail,” he says. "But a basic program performed consistently—even a half-assed effort done consistently—can bring you a really long way, much further than going hardcore once in a while."

Happy walking.

Dr Jeff