I was wondering how much walking I do, so I decided to look into pedometers. I soon found that there’s a fad that recommends 10,000 steps a day for health. Whatever. I just wanted to know how many steps I took. So I bought a Accusplit Eagle 120 Digiwalker Pedometer, which I’ve been wearing the past two days. Looks like I’m doing about 7,500 steps per day.
Yer gonna die.
-the preceeding public health nag brought to you by yer pal, Denis 
How do you feel about sharing a fad with Donald Rumsfeld?
I wore one of those for a few days! Turned out I take around 15000 steps a day. I’m still horribly unfit, though.
:eek:
Well… I can’t help walking. I just wanted to find out how much I did. Rump-smelled is doing it on purpose. 
How far is that?
Well, if it were me, 7,500 steps would probably work out at around 4-5km (about 3 miles). That assumes a stride length of about 45-65cm (18-26 inches).
Does that sound about right? I’m just a hair under 6 feet tall, and i’m assuming a normla walking pace, not dawdling but not striding out either.
As for my own stepping, my rather sedentary lifestyle (grad student, researching and writing dissertation) means that some days i probably barely get above 1,000 steps. To counter that tendency, i play softball a couple of times a week, and i run 5 miles (8km) about 4-6 times a week.
Also, not having a car means that a trip to the store requires walking. And just going to the library, which i do quite frequently, takes a bit of walking too.
They say a mile is equal to about 2000 steps.
I read the same “10,000 steps” advice and measured my steps, too. To be especially accurate, I walked the track at the high school to calibrate the pedometer.
I walk between 12,000 and 16,000 steps a day, up to 8 miles, and ‘walked off’ (lost) 2 pedometers!
Awhile ago, many of my co-workers started buying Special K cereal because you got a free pedometer in the box. We all liked to walk around outside the building at breaks and lunch, anyway to stretch our legs and chat, so having a gadget to measure our steps was a very cool thing.
Shortly, we realized that we could just stand still and bounce up and down slightly and still accumulate steps! Hilarity ensued as about a dozen laughing women stood in one spot doing a stupid little dance to try to get to 100 first. These are all grown women, mind you. We did get the health benefits of one good laugh a day!
I would imagine that the electronic ones are far more accurate. I’m going to check out the Accusplit Eagle. I’d really like to know how far I actually do walk in a day. My job requires steel toed shoes and if it’s nice out, I spend at least 20 minutes outside walking as well as my usual daily tasks inside.
12,000 steps pussyfooting iaround the house and/or office isn’t the kind of walking it takes to take it off.
Walking trails or outdoors at a moderately fast pace is required to take off the averdupois!
True. But I was only curious about the number; not fitness.