Forget 10,000 Steps A Day — This Is The Number You Should Focus On Instead

How many steps have you taken today?

Most of us have been confronted by that question at some point in our lives, and many of us use our step count as a metric to gauge how active we are. For years we’ve been told that getting at least 10,000 steps is crucial to maintaining our health, but how did that number get chosen and is it really accurate?

That’s what we — Raj Punjabi and Noah Michelson, hosts of HuffPost’s “Am I Doing It Wrong?” podcast — discussed with Heather Milton, an exercise physiologist at NYU Langone Health in New York, when she stopped by our studio to give us tips and tricks for exercising better.

Listen to the full episode by pressing play:

“We always hear about 10,000 steps, and I actually read that that number is based on this pedometer that was designed in Japan [in the 1960′s],” Michelson said. “The [Japanese character] for 10,000 looks like a person walking, so… it just sort of became known for that.”

Even though that specific figure wasn’t based on medical or scientific research, it has remained the benchmark for our daily step goal for decades.

“There has been more recent literature that looked at [10,000 steps] per day, and how that’s related to 30 minutes of moderate intensity activity per day,” Milton told us. “The idea is if you’re getting the right intensity of that [10,000-step] walk, then you’re getting the CDC and ACSM recommended amount of aerobic exercise per day, because it equates to about 30 minutes of moderate intensity activity.”

However, not all steps are created equal.

“When you’re counting steps, does that mean like I got up and walked to get water and came back? That’s probably not moderate intensity,” she said.

That’s why Milton emphasized that in order for us to get the