According to research carried out by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, weight gain has been a big challenge to over 30% of the world's population. It is associated with many negative health conditions like high blood pressure and obesity. Despite many people being aware of this fact, they are not able to do regular physical or aerobic exercises to burn the extra calories due to a variety of reasons.

However, walking is also one of the most important things you can do while trying to achieve the recommendation of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention to lose weight. And for those who are aware of this strategy of losing weight, they might wonder how many steps per day are appropriate to take. This is what we shall be addressing next.

How Many Steps Are Ideal for Weight Loss?

1. The 10,000 steps

The 10,000 steps ideology originated in Tokyo, Japan just after the Olympics when people started buying mango-Kei meters after intensive marketing of the pedometer in 1964. These were meant to help people know how many steps in a day they can make. Research has also proved that 10,000 steps are ideal to lose weight but still leaves room for improvement. To lose weight, a person needs to use an extra 3500 calories per week.

10,000 steps help to burn an average of 500 calories per day. The number of calories required to lose weight is also dependent on age. According to pilot research carried out on children and youth, the results showed that children might not lose weight doing 10,000 steps per week. As such, 10,000 steps is not a magical number.

Depending on the level of activity, a person's lifestyle can be categorized as follows.

• Sedentary: less than 5000 steps
• Low activity: 5000 to 7500 steps
• Somewhat active: 7500 to 9999 steps
• Active: less than 10, 000 steps
• Highly active: 12,500 steps and more

While starting, it is important to keep track of how many steps in a day you can comfortably make. From there, work on the marginal figures of specific extra steps per week until you achieve the target of 10,000 steps.

2. Determinants for steps

A variety of factors determines the numbers of steps you make per day. Some of these include:

• Activity level

This is a measure of how active a person is in respect to daily work. As we mentioned, there are those people who are overall active based on their nature of work while others can be categorized as inactive, like those who work in an office. Age can also determine activity level. As such, younger people are likely to achieve the 10,000 steps mark without much strain compared to seniors.

• Speed

Although walking is a good way to lose weight, not all walking gives the same results. Walking slowly for shorter distances will not help you burn calories. An average person walks at a speed of 20 minutes per mile. You should target doing 15 minutes or less per mile to lose weight. As a rule of thumb, if you are walking to lose weight, you should walk faster than usual and be a bit out of breath.

• Stride Size

The size of the stride determines the number of steps to cover a certain distance. For example, some people might use 1800 steps to cover one mile while others might use 2500 steps to cover the same mile. The average size of a stride is 2.2 feet. Thus, depending on stride, a person might have to settle for a different figure of how many steps to lose weight. To know your stride size, you can take a 10 step walk and after measuring the distance, divide the distance covered by 10. If your stride size is shorter, you should cover a longer distance.

• Ground level

The number of steps can also be affected by the geography of the area you are using for training. Moving up a hill might end up using a lot of steps than when compared to moving downhill or on a flat terrain. However, this is directly proportional to intensity.

Counting the Steps

The main challenge of trying to lose weight by walking lies in knowing the number of steps you take. Fortunately, there are some gadgets and strategies you can use to make this possible. These include:

• Pedometer

This is an electronic device that counts the number of steps by detecting motion in the hips. It's a circuit system that breaks and connects every time a step is made. Thus, the movement connects and reconnects the circuit as movement is made.

• Step count app

Many applications can be installed in an electronic gadget like a Smartphone and help you to achieve the target of how many steps to lose weight by accurately determining distance covered. Some of the applications/programs that you can install on your phone include walking with map my walk and Google fit.

• Fitness tracker

This keeps a record of your activities. The parameters they track include distance covered, calorie consumption, heartbeat, and quality of sleep.

• Baseline estimates

Research estimates that an average person requires 2000 steps to cover one mile. As such, you can determine the number of steps taken by knowing the distance covered in miles. The main challenge with this method is that some people have longer or shorter strides than others. Therefore, this might not be the best method to calculate or count the number of steps.

Additional Tips for Weight Loss

We can agree that the majority of people don't like walking and prefer using a different means of transport for moving from point A to B. Also, determining or even counting how many steps to lose weight is a challenge too. So, in addition to walking, the following are other ways of losing weight. A balanced diet, intermittent fasting, aerobic exercises, enough sleep and stress management are all helpful for weight loss.

Weight Loss Through Walking Is Easy

Walking is an effective way of losing weight, but you should keep track of how many steps per day you are making. It is also a lifestyle you will end up enjoying. You can take your pet or partner to accompany you. Of all the weight loss strategies exercise and intermittent fasting sound good. If you are in doubt on how to do it, consult a professional fitness coach.