Fit Minus FitBit

"[One pound of body fat equals 3,500 calories] so depending on your weight and workout intensity, you could lose about one pound per week simply by completing an extra 10,000 steps each day." 
"[Ten thousand daily steps should be able] to reduce your risk for disease and help you lead a longer healthier life."
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"There's no real evidence that the 10,000 steps threshold actually means anything."
"It just seems to have caught on. We human beings like nice round numbers. But there's nothing essentially magical about it. It doesn't mean you're going to have negative health outcomes if you don't hit it, or that if you go beyond it you'll be better off."
"People look at a plate of food and think that has 200 or 400 calories and it ends up having 800 calories. Or if you ask people, 'How many calories did you just burn on your half-hour walk', they'll say, 'Oh, I probably burned, like, 2,000 calories' when it's probably closer to 300."
"I don't think we need to overly obsess about an actual threshold number."
Christopher Labos, cardiologist, epidemiologist, Montreal

"It [the Fitbit device] does a really good job at tracking and monitoring patterns of behaviour."
"So, I wear my Fitbit, and I notice that today I had fewer steps than I did yesterday. That's probably an accurate indication that I did fewer steps."
Lynne Feehan, clinical associate professor, department of physical therapy University of British Columbia

"It's not like I'd tell anybody who is taking 10,000, 11,000 or 12,000 [steps] to slow down to 7,500."
"Keep doing what you're doing -- awesome, but get at least 7,500."
"If you were to take 10,000 or 12,000 steps a day I know for sure you are doing purposely fast walking, because you just can't rack up those numbers going back and forth to the bathroom."
"This is the kind of pace which you naturally ascend to when you’re doing purposeful walking. But this is just the beginning of this area of research: looking at how healthy people are not just by how many steps they’ve taken, but the rate at which they’ve done it."
Catrine Tudor-Locke, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Most people who count how many steps they walk every day are focused on the goal of 10,000, but Dr. Catrine Tudor-Locke says there is nothing magical about that number. (Shutterstock)

According to Ms. Tudor-Locke, people should walk at a pace of 100 steps per minute, but according to Leigh Vanderloo, an exercise scientist at ParticipACTION, step counting is too narrow a gauge. Swimming, rowing or other 'non-step activity is left out of the equation. Recommendations are, as well, that adults have at least two days of strength training activities on a weekly basis. And then there's Dr. Labos's common-sense observation that people would be further ahead simply by abstaining, refusing to eat extra calories to begin with, rather than trying to burn them off as penance.

Exercise for the sake of exercising makes good sense, rather than focusing on body-worn motion sensors. When people start from "zero to something" theirs is the benefit. As for the obsession with 10,000 steps as a meaningful commitment to exercise and losing weight in the process, it all started when a marketing campaign that began in the 1960s arose in Japan when a Japanese company produced a commercial pedometer called Man-po-Kei (kei meaning meter and manpo, 10,000 steps).
An advert for the original manpo-kei or ‘10,000-step meter’.

Academic Dr. Joshiro Hatano, concerned with rising rates of obesity, discovered that the average Japanese took between, 3,500 and 5,000 steps daily and calculated that if that number were to be increased to ten thousand steps a reduction in blood pressure and glucose levels would be attained, thus lowering the risk of cardiovascular disease. Following that, in the mid-1990s the first English-language scientific article saw publication with 24 obese Japanese with Type 2 diabetes.

People, the article pointed out, who walked at least 10,000 steps on a flat field daily realized greater weight loss and improved insulin sensitivity than others were able to achieve with diet alone. It took Fitbit to bring the concept to a popular revolution in exercise, fitness and weight loss, with its default goal of 10,000 daily steps; a rough equivalent, the company claims, to the U.S. Surgeon General's (and Canadian physical activity) recommendations to acquire 30 physical activity minutes daily; alternately at least 150 minutes per week.

Dr. Labos broke the issue down in a recent article published for McGill University's Office for Science and Society when he wrote that an otherwise-healthy individual who fails to exercise regularly might take 6,000 to 7,000 steps a day, and a 30-minute walk would serve to add another 3,000 to 4,000 steps, stride-dependent. A study published early in 2018 by researchers at University of British Columbia concluded that Fitbit devices overestimate steps in "free-living"; i.e. outside a lab.

A woman counts her steps. Photograph: LittleCityLifestylePhotography/Getty Images/iStockphoto

In real world settings the tendency for the device is to capture movement such as arm swinging motions, counting that as a step when in fact it is not. The devices are most likely to provide accurate measures of steps when worn on the torso "while walking at normal or self-paced walking speeds", the researchers concluded.  According to lead author Lynne Feehan, 10,000 steps has become a popular metric since it corresponds with people who commit to meeting physical activity guidelines.

A study produced in 2017 involved 111 postal workers in Glasgow, both male and female that suggested 15,000 steps daily could represent the ideal. Those who walked on average 15,000 steps or more daily -- or who spend over seven hours a day upright -- according to the researchers, had less abdominal fat, lower BMIs and improved blood sugar and cholesterol levels as compared to postal workers who sat more.

A 2010 literature review commissioned by the Public Health Agency of Canada concluded that 7,000 to 8,000 steps a day met public health guidelines for a minimal amount of recommended MVPA -- moderate to vigorous physical activity.