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Speaker 1: Hello, How I Work listener. My latest book, The Health

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Speaker 1: Habit is coming out on January nine, but you can

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Speaker 1: pre order it now wherever you buy books. If you're

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Speaker 1: stuck in a cycle of unhealthy habits, then The Health

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Speaker 1: Habit will help you design a personalized, science backed plan

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Speaker 1: to change your habits for good. My name is doctor

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Speaker 1: Amantha Imber. I'm an organizational psychologist and the founder of

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Speaker 1: behavior change consultancy Inventium. And this is How I Work,

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Speaker 1: a show about how to help you get so much

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Speaker 1: more out of the hours in your day. For the

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Speaker 1: next few weeks, I'm sharing a few extracts from my

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Speaker 1: new book, The Health Habit on How I Work. Today's

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Speaker 1: extract is all about why you need to ignore the

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Speaker 1: goal of doing ten thousand steps per day and how

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Speaker 1: many you need to do instead. Back in nineteen sixty five,

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Speaker 1: a Tokyo based pedometer manufacturer came up with the idea

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Speaker 1: to market a pedometer called manpokai, which is Japanese for

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Speaker 1: ten thousand steps meter. The name was purely your marketing tool,

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Speaker 1: since the Japanese character for ten thousand looks a bit

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Speaker 1: like a man walking. Is there any science behind the

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Speaker 1: magic number of ten thousand steps per day that anyone

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Speaker 1: with the pedometer feature on their smartwatch strives for. Turns out,

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Speaker 1: the answer is no. Thankfully, there is science behind how

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Speaker 1: many steps you should actually walk per day to improve

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Speaker 1: your health and decrease your risk of premature death. Because

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Speaker 1: it's best to base health habits on science, not spin doctors.

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Speaker 1: A group of researchers across the United States recently set

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Speaker 1: out to investigate the ideal number of steps per day

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Speaker 1: required to reduce the risk of premature death. The study,

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Speaker 1: led by Amanda Pullock, an assistant professor of kinesiology at

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Speaker 1: the University of Massachusetts Amherst, followed more than two thousand

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Speaker 1: adults aged between thirty eight and fifty for two years.

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Speaker 1: Participants wore an accelerometer, which is a device that measures

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Speaker 1: the vibration or acceleration of motion, and researchers checked back

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Speaker 1: in with them ten years later. It turns out that

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Speaker 1: ten thousand steps per day wasn't the magic number that

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Speaker 1: Japanese marketers would have us believe. Pallock and her colleagues

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Speaker 1: found that those who walked just seven thousand or more

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Speaker 1: steps per day compared with those who walked less, had

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Speaker 1: a fifty percent to seventy percent lower risk of mortality.

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Speaker 1: Doctor I Minley, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School,

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Speaker 1: was also interested in whether the ten thousand steps idea

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Speaker 1: was simply a myth. She led a study involving more

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Speaker 1: than sixteen thousand older women and measured the number of

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Speaker 1: steps they took for one week. Four years later, she

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Speaker 1: then followed up with these women to see what happened

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Speaker 1: to their health. Compared to sedentary women who averaged twenty

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Speaker 1: seven hundred steps per day, those who averaged four four

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Speaker 1: hundred daily steps had a forty one percent reduction in mortality,

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Speaker 1: a big result for fewer than two thousand additional daily steps.

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Speaker 1: But what is particularly interesting is that Lee found that

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Speaker 1: there was a magic number where after hitting that step

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Speaker 1: count increased mortality rates started to level off. That number

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Speaker 1: was seventy five hundred steps per day. Lee discovered that

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Speaker 1: walking ten thousand steps compared to seven thousan five hundred

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Speaker 1: steps a day didn't lead to a significant difference when

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Speaker 1: it came to the chance of premature death. Another study

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Speaker 1: that examined the impact of steps per day on mortality

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Speaker 1: recruited nearly five adults living in the United States aged

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Speaker 1: over forty, with a mean age of fifty seven years old.

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Speaker 1: Participants wore an accelerometer for six days and were followed

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Speaker 1: up a decade later. There were some stark differences when

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Speaker 1: the researchers compared those who walked fewer than four thousand

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Speaker 1: steps per day against those who walked eight thousand to

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Speaker 1: twelve thousand steps per day compared to those who walked

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Speaker 1: more than eight thousand steps per day. Those who walked

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Speaker 1: less than four thousand steps daily were seven times more

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Speaker 1: likely to have passed away at the ten year mark.

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Speaker 1: In addition, they were ten times more likely to have

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Speaker 1: died from heart disease. Interestingly, walking at a fast versus

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Speaker 1: a leisurely pace yielded no significant impact on mortality, meaning

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Speaker 1: that even if you dawed all for your eight thousand steps,

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Speaker 1: you'll be doing yourself and your health a massive favor.

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Speaker 1: Now I must confess I used to be at ten

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Speaker 1: thousand steps a day kind of gal. More often than

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Speaker 1: not I would hit this goal, despite having moved my

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Speaker 1: office to my home back in March twenty twenty and

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Speaker 1: reduced my daily commute to an arduous twenty steps from

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Speaker 1: my bedroom to my study back when I used to

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Speaker 1: catch the train into Melbourne City Centre to go to work,

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Speaker 1: I would easily clock up four thousand to five thousand

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Speaker 1: steps a day without even trying. I've reached this number

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Speaker 1: from the incidental exercise of walking to the railway station,

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Speaker 1: walking to the office from the station, walking to get

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Speaker 1: a coffee or grab some lunch, and walking around the

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Speaker 1: office to chat to my teammates. Since shifting to working

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Speaker 1: from home one hundred percent of the time, I've had

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Speaker 1: to be more deliberate in how I incorporate movement in

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Speaker 1: my day. One of the strategies I've put in place

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Speaker 1: to achieve this was my phone rule. If I have

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Speaker 1: a phone meeting or impromptu chat where I don't need

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Speaker 1: to write notes or be at my computer, I walk.

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Speaker 1: If the weather is nasty, I do laps of my

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Speaker 1: living room, and if the weather is good, I'll do

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Speaker 1: laps of my block. My Monday afternoons often have a

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Speaker 1: lot of meetings with various members of my team. I

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Speaker 1: find that on those days I'll easily clock over ten

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Speaker 1: thousand steps without deliberately carving out time for exercise. And

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Speaker 1: before researching this chapter, I used to mentally beat myself

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Speaker 1: up if I didn't hit ten thousand daily steps, but

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Speaker 1: now I can end the day feeling like a winner

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Speaker 1: if I only clock up seven thousand, five hundred. If

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Speaker 1: you found today's episode useful, then I guarantee you will

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Speaker 1: love my new book, The Health Habit. Search for The

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Speaker 1: Health Habit wherever you get your books, and pre order

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Speaker 1: your coffee today. Thank you for sharing part of your

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Speaker 1: day with me by listening to How I Work. If

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Speaker 1: you're keen for more tips on how to work better,

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Speaker 1: connect with me via LinkedIn or Instagram. I'm very easy

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Speaker 1: to find. Just search for Amantha Imba. How I Work

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Speaker 1: was recorded on the traditional land of the Warrangery people,

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Speaker 1: part of the cool And Nation. I am so grateful

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Speaker 1: for being able to work and live on this beautiful land,

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Speaker 1: and I want to pay my respects to elders, past,

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Speaker 1: present and emerging. How I Work is produced by Inventium

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Speaker 1: with production support from Dead Set Studios. And thank you

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Speaker 1: to Martin Nimba who did the audio mix and makes

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Speaker 1: everything sound better than it would have otherwise.