Hit 10,000 steps on a Fitbit three days in a row and felt nothing

I saw all those viral posts about how 10,000 steps is some magical health number that changes your energy. So I tried it for a full week using my buddy's old Fitbit. After three days of hitting that exact number, I honestly just felt tired and my knees hurt. Turned out the whole 10k goal was basically made up by a marketing company in the 60s. Anybody else feel like that goal is more hype than science?

2 comments

Log in to join the discussion

Log In

2 Comments

charles8361mo ago

Wait, is the manpo-kei thing actually true though? I looked into it after someone mentioned it and dug up some old articles that said it was more about a 1964 Tokyo Olympics marketing push than just some random company making it up. The idea was to sell pedometers by tying steps to an event everyone was excited about.

2

richard_young801mo ago

Honestly, you're close but the 10,000 steps thing actually goes back to a Japanese pedometer company in the 1960s, not some random marketing agency. They called it "manpo-kei" which literally means 10,000 steps meter and it was just a catchy number they picked. Tbh, the science actually shows that most health benefits level off way before 10,000 steps, like around 6,000 or 7,000 for a lot of people depending on age. Ngl, pushing for that exact number when your body isn't used to it is just gonna make your knees ache and your feet mad. The real magic is just moving more than you did yesterday, not forcing some arbitrary goal from a vintage gadget.

1