9 Ways to Squeeze in More Steps Every Day

Every day for the past decade, I’ve tried to dethrone the family walking champ: my 67-year-old dad. Despite my youthful advantage—he has more than 30 years on me, as he’s quick to point out—I haven’t logged more steps than him once. I find this to be both mortifying and a point of vicarious pride; his fitness is remarkable. It’s also excellent motivation to find creative ways to finally out-walk him. My dad and I compete using our favorite pedometer app, which displays each day’s steps in a bar graph. (While we both wear Apple Watches, we like the app best for logging the entire day’s steps, and keep our phones on us all the time.) If you’ve barely moved, your results for the day show up in a disapproving red. If you land somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 steps, it’s a milder orange. And once you reach 10,000 steps per day, the graph becomes green and showers your phone screen with confetti as you jump up and down (and maybe forward; more steps). We send each other screenshots at the end of the day, and while I hit 10,000 at least a few times a week, he exceeds 20,000 steps every single day. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Fitness experts say that really, both of us are winning: Striving to increase your step count by any amount is almost always a good thing. “Walking is probably the most basic, most fundamental thing that nearly everybody has the ability to do,” says Dr. Tamanna Singh, co-d...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Exercise & Fitness healthscienceclimate Source Type: news