I walked 10k steps a day for 30 days
Yeah, it's actually 31. I had no plans of doing this experiment until Jan 8th when I saw I'd had eight continuous days of walking 10k steps and maybe I can do it for the remaining month. The idea partly comes from a Matt D'Avella video where he eloquently documents his experiment. For me, the thought of walking so many steps was not alien as I've liked walking and averaged about 5k for some time now.
The biggest constraint apart from just getting yourself out of the house in this cold is of course -- Time. I substituted my commute with 30 mins of walking to and fro my workplace. Morning walks and Incidental Activity spread throughout the day were equally helpful. Sometimes, I found myself a few hundred or a thousand steps short at 11PM and I was out there walking around the neighbourhood for the sake of my resolve.
My Takeaways: The first takeaway of this experiment was me figuring out my walking speed and number of steps I walk in a minute, 10 mins and half an hour (It is around 1.1k steps per 10 mins). I also figured that my skin and musculoskeletal structure did not show any aversion to this amount of walking, which varies from person to person. I did not feel too exhausted but clearly more active and flexible as a result. My glucose levels were normal because of immediate walks after every meal, and at the end of the day the lightness was something I had not experienced before.
Results: Throughout this experiment, I also had a balanced diet and avoided ultra-processed food and sugar. I have been doing home workouts for a while, and continued during this period as well. This clearly affected my caloric burn and fat percentage, and the result was a significant weight loss of about 2.4 kilos. I can feel the reduced belly fat and enhanced calf muscles which was not the goal but definitely feels good to see visible progress.
Will I continue this? Well, this was much easier in January because of the cold weather, but moving forward, I cannot walk after every meal because of time and weather constraints. Nevertheless, 7k seems like a sweet spot for the rest of the year coupled with increased physical activity. This brings me to an idea that I can do more 30-day challenges in the coming months, which I'll document here as well.