I’ve been trying to walk more.
I’m old. I can’t swim and I don’t like lifting weights. So I’m trying to walk more. Apparently, 10,000 steps a day is the gold standard for healthy living.
That sounds reasonable until you’re 6-foot-3 and live in northeast Louisiana.
Personally, I feel like if you have to drive to the walking trail, you’re doing it wrong. I have a friend who likes to drive out to the woods to walk. That just feels like eating a bag of Snickers bars to start your diet. But that’s just me.
For me, a mile is roughly 1,500 steps. I paced it out. That means 10,000 steps works out to about seven miles a day.
Seven. Miles. To hit that number, I’d need to walk from my office down U.S. 425 to Brown Realty and back and then walk another mile. Or I could walk to the COA or the courthouse and back 10 times a day. They’re both about 500 steps from my desk. Again, I paced it off.
To walk 10,000 steps, I’d have to stroll down U.S. 80 to Holly Ridge and hope my fitness journey doesn’t end with me becoming a hood ornament on an 18-wheeler.
That’s about two and a half hours of walking every day. There are people doing it.
Who are these people? Mailmen? Kindergarten teachers? Construction workers? The last time I got 10,000 steps in a day, I was hauling shingles up a ladder for my dad.
To make it worse, my wife is 5’3”. She gets about 30 percent more steps than I do walking the exact same distance. When we walk together, it looks like a scene from a horror movie. Her little legs are pumping like Marvin the Martian and I’m just loping along behind her like Michael Myers, waiting on her to trip over a stick.
In her defense, sticks look really big to short people. They’re basically like tree trunks. That’s why short women are so feisty. Their whole life is a struggle normal-sized people will never understand. It’s the same reason chihuahuas are so vicious.
The 10,000-step goal isn’t even scientific. It came from a marketing campaign.
Back in 1965, a Japanese company introduced a pedometer called the Manpo-kei, which translates to “10,000 steps meter.” The number was catchy, easy to remember and apparently sticky enough to follow us around for the next 60 years.
This lie has been peddled almost as long as I’ve been alive. A Harvard study later found health benefits improved significantly well before 10,000 steps, with mortality benefits leveling off around 7,500 steps a day.
Seven thousand five hundred.
Are you kidding me? That’s still more than 14 walks a day to the courthouse. Rayville’s only a mile long. There are just so many times I can walk to Popeyes in a day.
I’m not saying people shouldn’t move more. I’m just saying the same number does not mean the same thing for everybody. I will never win a Fitbit challenge because I was born with long legs.
For some people, 10,000 steps is a day’s work and a trip to Walmart. For me, it’s an expedition involving traffic assessment and wondering whether my obituary should mention that I died trying to make a phone app shut up.
I’m going back to weight lifting. So if you stop by my office and I’m sitting at my desk drinking a Coke, don’t bother me. I’m working out.
I’ve got to get in those 12-ounce curls.
Darryl Riser is editor of the Richland Beacon-News.
