How I (finally) started getting 10,000 steps a day

I fell short for years, until a surprisingly simple shift suddenly made the habit stick.

I’ve always been drawn to the idea of walking 10,000 steps a day. I imagine the exact number is somewhat arbitrary (surely it can’t be meaningfully better than 9,000 or 11,000?), but in any case, my actual step count fell far short of any of those numbers — especially over the course of four pregnancies in 5.5 years. (More on that here.)

I lift weights with a trainer twice a week and I’d still like to find a pilates (or heated pilates?) studio I really enjoy, but I kept coming back to the same idea: I wanted to shift my baseline. I didn’t want to default to sitting at a desk whenever I wasn’t with our kids — I wanted light, steady movement woven into my whole day.

I bought the most aesthetically pleasing walking pad I could find after my husband raved about his for months, and my saint of a father built me a beautiful standing desk with lattice panels on the sides after I couldn’t find anything remotely attractive online (there is absolutely a business idea here for anyone who wants to run with it!). On paper, the set-up was perfect. In reality, it still took me months to actually use it the way I’d imagined — until a small mindset shift finally made all the difference.

I told myself I wanted to walk 10,000 steps every day for one month. I even made it a goal on my 101 in 1001 list, a remarkably effective goal-setting tool for me over the years. And yet I woke up exactly zero days excited to get walking, until I had an “aha!” moment:

The goal was too big.

I hadn’t literally been writing “get 10,000 steps today” on my daily to do list — until I decided that’s pretty much exactly what I needed to do, but in smaller, more manageable increments.

Instead of “10,000 steps” swirling around in the back of my head, I wrote down 1,000. I started writing these 1,000 step increments directly on my to do list, interspersed with everything else I needed to do that day:

Walk Teddy to kindergarten.

Hit 1,000 steps.

I knew I could cross off both as soon as I got back to my desk.

Answer emails.

Hit 2,000 steps.

Edit photos.

Hit 3,000 steps.

Pediatrician appointment.

Hit 4,000 steps.

Format a blog post.

Hit 5,000 steps.

*AYR early mornings tee // Apple Watch with double leather strap // Lululemon Align 28” navy leggings // APL sneakers

I reliably get another 1,000 steps when I pick Teddy up from school in the afternoon and another 2,000 during the dinner and bedtime routine. I’m not speedwalking by any means, but my days are peppered with movement in a way they really haven’t been since I was in college or living in New York City.

My husband sometimes walks on his walking pad for an hour or two at a time — and I’ve done that a handful of times when I’m really in the groove and barely realize I’m still walking — but most days I’m hitting my 10,000 steps by stacking lots of small walks throughout the day, and for me that’s far less daunting than having one giant two-hour walk hanging over my head.

I’m still batching the steps, just in bite-sized chunks that fit into a real life with kids, work, and plenty of distraction, and that has made all the difference.

Maybe this all sounds painfully obvious to some of you. But I wish I’d figured it out ten years (or at least four pregnancies) ago, so if it unlocks something for even one or two of you, I’ll be glad I shared.

Happy walking 🤍

P.S. For anyone who’s curious: this is my walking pad which syncs with an easy-to-use app on my iPhone, and I track my steps with an Apple Watch and this cute leather strap.