SPEAKER_01 0:14

Welcome to Practically Fit, Real Fitness Over 40. I'm Alex Johnson. And I'm Jen Chamberlain. And today we're going to talk about that ubiquitous magic number, 10,000 steps a day. Oh yeah. And uh Jen, we thought this was a another timely topic heading into the holidays. Uh many of you may be gifting or receiving a gift of a wearable fitness tracker, like a smartwatch or a Fitbit or any of the any of the other numerous knockoffs out there on the market. I mean, Jen, what's your wearable of choice?

SPEAKER_00 0:47

I just wear a humble Fitbit, actually. Um I actually just recently upgraded to a charge five Fitbit for the five.

SPEAKER_01 0:54

Oh you don't want the charge four. You have to charge four is crap.

SPEAKER_00 0:59

No, I had the charge three and it kind of was crap, honestly, because the screen was almost impossible to read in daylight, which I mean that's kind of one of the main uses of a smartwatch is reading it while you're outdoors exercising. So it seemed to be important. Yeah, it was really important. So I upgraded for that reason. I thought about getting something more expensive, but I find that you know it does what I need it to do and not too much, which I I can easily get overwhelmed with data, so it's just enough.

SPEAKER_01 1:26

All right. Well, I wear a Garmin Vinu, I guess it's Vinue Garmin Vinu too, so it's good for all-around activity tracking. I really like it. It has a very colorful screen, so I don't have any problems seeing it when I'm outside doing a run or a ride or anything like that.

SPEAKER_00 1:43

So um not that we're recommending you love data too, uh, more than I do.

SPEAKER_01 1:48

So yeah, and not that I'm recommending the product or anything, but it's fine, it's good. Yeah, it does some of the other garments have like even more features, like my wife's watch is always doing this coaching stuff, and I this one doesn't do that. So I like it's it's kind of in the middle in terms of features, which I like.

SPEAKER_00 2:03

So nice.

SPEAKER_01 2:04

Anyway, so that there's wearable chat, but that's really important. That's that's an important part of this episode because we're going to talk about this 10,000 steps number that you see marketed everywhere. So, where does this number come from? Is it reachable for most people? Is it actually the right number? What are the benefits of taking 10,000 steps? And also, what does all this step tracking do to your psyche? Jen and I have been investigating, and I gotta say, there is a lot of research out there on this topic, and a lot of it is very recent. So we looked at a ton of studies, buckle up. This may be the most scientific fun we've had on an episode. And this, again, this really makes sense. Wearables are exploding in popularity in the past several years. People are tracking every step, every breath, and there is an increase in research around the topic. I mean, just to give you um an idea of the size of this wearables market, I looked up some data, and this comes from a company called Research and Markets, super exciting company name, but they put out a press release, so there you go. Uh the market size for wearables in 40 or in 2021 was $49.3 billion. So that was last year. So I I haven't found a number for this year, but they were forecasting moving forward that this market would reach $110.8 billion by 2027. So people are embracing this technology, which includes health trackers. Jen, we're not the only ones wearing these devices. I would guess a lot of our listeners are as well.

SPEAKER_00 3:36

Absolutely. That's right. So fitness trackers are absolutely ubiquitous. As it turns out, according to multiple sources that we found, the 10,000 steps number actually dates back to an early fitness tracking device in Japan in the 1960s. So Fitbit is clearly not the first company to push this 10,000 steps goal, right? Wow, all the way back to the 1960s. Yeah, that really surprised me. And you guessed it, it started with a marketing campaign, of course, right? And it was right before the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games. Brilliant, like tie-in there, I would say. So a company called Yamasa was marketing a pedometer called Manpo K, Man meaning 10,000, Po meaning steps, and K meaning meter. It was hugely successful, and the number just seems to have stuck. So as David Bassett from the University of Tennessee told the UK Guardian newspaper, they, Yamasa, just felt that was a number that was indicative of an active lifestyle and should be healthy. So 10,000 steps just sounded good then and wasn't based on any science.

SPEAKER_01 4:36

Yeah, wow. It this goes back to kind of what we've talked about previously with toxic fitness culture and how everything can be traced back to marketing, right? Like everything. These new tactics, marketing tactics we see now, aren't so new. And this one dates all the way back to a pedometer in 1964. Yeah, so I'd always wondered about my uh about that number myself personally. And you and I were talking about this last week in the lead up to the episode in the context of our own lives. I personally, I'm an active person, and I find it challenging to reach 10,000 steps on a daily basis, you know, and I try to do some form of cardio every day, even if it's an active rest day, as we talked about previously on the podcast, and I'm going for a nice walk. Uh so in discussing with this this with you, I think we kind of came up with this idea that part of it is about where you live, right? Like what's the culture around transportation? Um, so let's talk about this a little more. Um, I live in Dallas. You used to live here, you've moved to San Francisco, and as you know, here we're very much a driving culture. Yeah, it's we do have public transport, uh, but it's sometimes hard to use. Um, even walking to get around is difficult. Um, it's a very large city, it's over seven million now, but very spread out. Uh so the transportation system just doesn't have the connectivity of a place like New York City or even a DC, right?

SPEAKER_00 5:57

Like it's just there's neighborhoods there without sidewalks. Right, right. Mind-boggling.

SPEAKER_01 6:02

It's not walkable. And you know, in the suburbs, we have sidewalks and stuff like that. But even so, like, there's not, you know, if you want to walk somewhere, it could be, you know, a pretty, pretty long walk to get somewhere that you want to go. So um, with that in mind, I was thinking, like, what is my average number of steps a day? And so I went and looked at this month for for an average because this is um pretty indicative of where I was prior to my leg injury over the summer as well. And so I'm averaging about 6,800 steps daily this past month. Um, and I look back before the injury earlier in the year, my high month was around 8,200. So again, I'm active, I ride my bike a lot, I run, I go for walks, but I also drive everywhere in my car. So, Jen, you live in a walkable city where there's a bit of a different culture around transportation. What's your average?

SPEAKER_00 6:53

I actually do average a little over 10,000 steps a day, believe it or not, it's like 10,100. Um, and I this all has to do with where I live. But before I talk about that, I want to take a brief detour and talk about this obsession I had with the 10,000, with a 10,000 step per day step streak back when I first got my Fitbit. Okay. So this was during the depths of the pandemic. I had uh gotten I got the Fitbit when I was living with my sister for a while in Colorado. And when I was there, it was easy to get my steps in every day because I have an eight-year-old nephew and we'd run to the we'd run around, we'd go to the playground, do a lot of active things. Well, I came back to Dallas to my apartment. I was working full-time from home, but I was absolutely utterly obsessed with keeping this streak alive. Okay. I mean, I think I'd gotten to something like 230 days. Oh, but I was having such a hard time, Alex, because I was living in Dallas, right? And I was also working from home. So I one night I was desperate to get my steps in. So I um went on YouTube and I looked up like a 5,000-step workout or something like that. Found this channel. This guy named Rick Bullard, get fit with Rick, is his channel. And he exclusively does these workouts on YouTube that are a specific number of steps, anywhere from like 2,500 to 7,500. He's a former dance um choreographer. So it's this kind of like choreograph, step walking, dancing thing. It's just distracting enough that you forget what you're doing and you can easily like reach this goal without being bored to tears. And uh he also has just like a really positive attitude. So I got kind of hooked on it for a while.

SPEAKER_01 8:30

So this is just I hadn't heard about this. This is the first time hearing of this.

SPEAKER_00 8:34

Yeah, yeah. Rick Bullard got me through the pandemic.

SPEAKER_01 8:36

I can't imagine why you wouldn't have told me about this. Uh or anyone.

SPEAKER_00 8:41

Yeah.

unknown 8:42

No.

SPEAKER_01 8:43

So people are just doing these these workouts to get 10,000 steps.

SPEAKER_02 8:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:48

Wow. I mean, that's a very niche area fitness. Congrats to Rick for figuring that out.

SPEAKER_02 8:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:53

Uh but m kind of going back to the the point here, you're barely making 10,000 steps in a city where you pretty much walk every day. It's rare for you to get in your car unless you're going out of the general San Francisco vicinity, like to Oakland or something, right? And even then you might ride transport. So yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 9:11

I take my car out maybe two or three times a week max. Uh so I walk everywhere. I use public transit. You know, in many ways, San Francisco is much more like a European city. People walk a lot. Uh, we have a really excellent public transit system. I think people here like to complain about it, but compared to Dallas, it's uh world class.

SPEAKER_01 9:30

Yeah, so so basically you're barely making it in a city like that. I'm not making it in my city unless I go to an extraordinary effort on top of my normal exercise. So let's talk about what the research says, Jen. What's the verdict? Is 10,000 steps a generally reachable goal for people in their daily routine?

SPEAKER_00 9:48

Well, as we just talked about, research has shown that it might be challenging to reach this goal in your everyday life. We found a scholarly review of various research on the subject called Daily Step Goal of 10,000 steps, a literature review.

SPEAKER_01 10:02

That is the first of many titles you're about to hear on this podcast, I can tell you.

SPEAKER_00 10:06

Short and straightforward. I like that one. So this study looked at whether or not you can reach this goal with general daily activities. And the answer is probably not. For many people, there's a daily deficit of approximately 4,000 steps, most from 3,000 to 6,000. That's the range, which must be gained from other more rigorous activities. So you aren't going to just reach this goal in your daily routine. You have to add on.

SPEAKER_01 10:31

So that makes sense. Uh you know, we're we're struggling to to, well, I'm struggling to reach it. Uh you're barely reaching it in San Francisco. Um, and I I wonder too, you know, with your average and everything, some days you're doing really long runs, and that counts. So if you weren't doing those rigorous activities, as they mentioned in the study, there might be days when you don't hit that, even living in a nearly European-style uh city. So this really got me thinking: how does step count vary across not only parts of the US but other countries? And thanks to a 2017 study called Large Scale Physical Activity Data, Reveal Worldwide Active Inequality, we were able to find out. And by the way, we tell you the names of these studies, so you know this is legit stuff. We're not just pulling this out of our rear, so to speak. These are real, these are real studies, uh, as exciting as the titles sound. And speaking of, I love the way that this study started with its first sentence. It says, quote, to be able to curb the global pandemic of physical inactivity and the associated 5.3 million deaths per year, we need to understand the basic principles that govern physical activity. So this is keep in mind this was written in 2017 prior to the COVID pandemic, but they were calling basically people's inactivity a large-scale uh global pandemics. Wow. Yeah, that uh amazing. And they go on to say, quote, we find inequality in how activity is distributed within countries, and that this inequality is a better predictor of obesity prevalence in the population than average activity volume. Aspects of the built environment, such as the walk walkability of a city, are associated with lower activity inequality. So, in more walkable cities, activity is greater throughout the day and throughout the week across age, gender, body mass index, uh, with the greatest increases found for females. So interesting. Basically, yes, Jen, living in a more walkable place like San Francisco is connected to how you might reach a 10,000-step goal. Your experience is different than mine in Texas. I have to work harder. And it's literally in the data. They have a chart that compares, again, what they call activity inequality across cities in the U.S. So some of the more active cities, New York, Boston, Arlington, Virginia, DC metro area, which again is very walkable, Chicago, and yes, San Francisco. Oh, yes. Some of the less active and thus, based on the study, more likely to have obesity. Jen, can you guess?

SPEAKER_00 13:02

Oh, I'm gonna go with, you know, I think Dallas is up there, but I think Houston's gonna be on the list.

SPEAKER_01 13:07

Yeah, so let's just let's just some of the cities, uh, let's see if you see a trend here. Arlington, Texas, Houston, Texas, San Antonio, Texas. Yes, Texas is well represented. I presume Dallas is in there, it just wasn't called out in the data points. Um, also places like Memphis, Tennessee, Tucson, Arizona, Cleveland, Ohio, and San Diego, um, which may not be again, maybe more of a driving city than say San Francisco or even LA, because LA was kind of um in the middle, I noticed.

SPEAKER_00 13:34

Um quick side note before we go on. I actually lived in Arlington, Texas for a couple years when I was in college. It is the biggest city in the country, I believe, without public transportation. And I didn't have a car when I lived there. That was incredibly challenging, let me just say.

SPEAKER_01 13:50

Yeah, exactly. It's a it's a massive suburb, basically right in the middle of Dallas and Fort Worth. And yeah, I don't think it's very walkable. Uh no. So uh they also looked at in the study at activity inequality across countries, and so they actually had step count data. So just to give you a sense, the countries with some of the highest average steps per day. Uh Hong Kong, 6,880, China, 6,189, United Kingdom, 5,444, Germany and France, there just a little bit below the UK, and it goes down Australia, Canada, and then the US about 4,774. So uh maybe not as great as a difference than you might expect, but so there's basically like a 2,000-step difference between the US and Hong Kong, which appears to be one of the places where people are more active and walking around. Indonesia was at the bottom of this data that I saw with 3,500.

SPEAKER_00 14:48

So interesting.

SPEAKER_01 14:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:50

Um, so we also have some bonus information from a study from Jenny Craig, the weight loss uh company, I guess. Your occupation can also play a role in this, like no surprise there, but some specific occupations, you know, waiters are averaging 22,778 steps a day. Not surprising because a job uh nurses, 16,390. Retail workers, almost 15,000. My sister works in retail, and when I was living with her, I was always impressed by how many steps a day she got. Closer to 15, actually, for her, was her average. Uh farmer up there as well, 14,000. That kind of makes sense, though. I guess you'd also be, you know, sometimes a behind a tractor. Um stay-at-home parent, 13,800. I wouldn't have any basis for knowing this, except again, like living with my eight-year-old. Exactly. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:40

I was about to say, there's your tie-in. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:42

Yeah. And then down at the very bottom, the office worker at 7,500, around 7,500, and call center associate associate, 6,618. Um, it's interesting, the office worker, the the around 7,500, that's pretty much what I average if I don't, or what I get if I don't do any kind of extra like running or boxing or anything to add on. It's about 7,500.

SPEAKER_01 16:06

Yeah, without without your additional vigorous exercise. So uh and I'm an office worker and I'm a little below that right now, which is concerning. Interesting. But you know, again, you ride a bicycle, it doesn't really count. Oh, that's the account doesn't. So the days when I do that, yeah. So interesting. Um so we've established this.

SPEAKER_00 16:30

It's really hard to reach the 10,000 step goal, right? Right. Yeah, there's so many factors where you live, your occupation, your general level of activity. So is 10,000 steps really the right number?

SPEAKER_01 16:42

Yeah, let's talk about that. Uh how do we know if it would be the right number? Well, there have been several studies that have coupled specific step counts with varying health benefits or health risks. So um we've come up with a summary of these studies. So this is where you're gonna get the rapid fire titles of the studies, but they are super interesting and and very enlightening. So, first one, this is from 2019 association of step volume and intensity with all cause mortality in older women. So this looks at the benefits of step volume compared to all form of forms of mortality for older women, just as the title says. Yeah, I know, very straightforward. Uh, and the finding was that more steps taken per day are associated with lower mortality rates until approximately 7,500 steps, like that office worker. So that study found the benefits in older women taper off around 7,500 steps.

SPEAKER_00 17:40

Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 17:41

Yeah. Um, next study daily steps and all-cause mortality, a meta-analysis of 15 international cohorts. I love it.

SPEAKER_00 17:48

I love a good meta-analysis.

SPEAKER_01 17:50

I love a co international cohort, so this is great. This is from 2022, so you'll notice a lot of these the next uh four studies are very recent. Um it found, quote, progressively decreasing risk of mortality among adults aged 60 years and older with an increasing number of steps per day until 6,000 to 8,000 steps per day. So then it the benefits taper off. And among adults younger than 60 years, until 8,000 to 10,000 steps per day. Our findings suggest mortality benefits, particularly for older adults, can see be seen at levels less than the popular reference of 10,000 steps per day. So those those two kind of look at, you know, with those older core cohorts, maybe you don't need 10,000, maybe 7,500, 8,000, not so bad. Good for your health. Next one, prospective associations of daily step counts with intensity and intensity with cancer and cardiovascular disease incidence and mortality and all cause mortality. I'm interested in this one because I see cardiovascular disease, right? And I have a high blood pressure. So uh 2022 study of 78,500 individuals suggests that up to 10,000 steps per day may be associated with a lower risk of mortality in cancer and cardiovascular disease incidents. It also noted that if you perform your steps at a higher cadence, a aka you walk faster, or run, I suppose. Um, that could be associated with additional risk reduction. So good news there for runners or for people who like to walk fast. Uh two more. Association of daily step count and intensity with incident dementia and 78,430 adults living in the UK. I love that they put the number of adults and where they live in the title of the study. But you know it's a big sample size. So this is from 2022. It found accruing more steps per day was associated with steady declines in dementia incidence risk. Wow. Up to 9,800 steps per day, beyond which the benefits upturned, aka they again abated. So it also noted like kind of if you wanted like the 50%, if you want to do this 50%, like you want to do it halfway, uh the the max maximal observed benefit was 38, 3,800 steps per day. And so, you know, you want to go halfway, at least 3,800. Uh and steps at higher intensity or cadence were associated with lower incidence risk of dementia. So again, walking faster or running a little bit may be good for dementia. And then finally, association of step counts over time with the risk of chronic disease in the All of Us Research Program 2022 study. So it found a daily number of steps above 8,200 help protect from obesity, sleep apnea, acid reflux disease, which again, ugh, I don't like acid reflux, so I need to do at least 8,200 steps a day. And major depressive disorder. Um, it also said no further risk reduction was seen above 8 to 9,000 steps for hypertension and diabetes. So that's a lot of recent studies with a lot of step counts. Jen, what do you see as takeaways here?

SPEAKER_00 21:12

Wow. So, you know, it seems like from all these studies, anywhere between 7,500 to 10,000 steps can be beneficial for your health. But based on this research, 10,000 is not a magic number. And if you're doing 7,500 to 8,000 steps, you're doing pretty well compared to the rest of the world. That gives me some comfort. Maybe I can let go of this 10,000 step streak at some point.

SPEAKER_01 21:34

You don't need your buddy Rick on YouTube all the time.

SPEAKER_00 21:36

Oh man, I I don't.

SPEAKER_01 21:38

Well, and you know, kind of a couple of additional takeaways. I mean, one that there may be um some variation when it comes to age. So maybe as you get over, say, 60, you can reduce it a little bit and still see some really good benefits because there are a couple of them that looked at older cohorts, right?

SPEAKER_02 21:54

Right.

SPEAKER_01 21:55

Um, so that's kind of an important variation here. Um, and you know, so Again, 10,000 may not be a magic number. It doesn't seem to be bad. Like it's not a bad thing if you're doing it, but it seems like you can get the same benefit, like you said, anywhere between 7,500 to 10,000. Um, I also wonder about, you know, if it matters what you're doing for your steps. We talked about the higher cadence thing. And so some of the the studies kind of go into that, you know, mentioning higher cadence. Uh, but like, what's the difference between say running for 5,000 steps versus walking for 10,000? I think you know what that means. What's that? More research is needed, which is the researcher's favorite conclusion, right?

SPEAKER_00 22:39

So that's right, more research needed.

SPEAKER_01 22:41

And again, most of these were done within uh published in the past year. So very recent research and and uh very fascinating.

SPEAKER_00 22:51

That's fascinating. It really speaks to what we talked about at the beginning of the podcast, which is the rise and increase in tracking in general. You know, I think we'll probably start seeing more studies on like sleep tracking and all the other things that these fitness trackers are tracking. So, you know, speaking of the research, there's also been research done on the impact of all of this health tracking put together, right? So, in terms of both motivation and mental health. Have you read anything about that?

SPEAKER_01 23:19

Yes, I have, Jen. And in fact, I wrote about this in our Practically Fit newsletter back on August 28th, which was before we started the podcast. So, yes, it's a shameless plug. It's a shameless plug. And by the way, that that um newsletter did touch on like some of the different measures. Um there have been studies on sleep tracking, for example. So if you go back and find that on practically. That was really the question I was trying to answer because um I do get sometimes a bit obsessed with the sleep data, and I wondered like how accurate is this? My garment has this thing called a body battery, and sometimes it's like the body battery is really low, but how do I actually feel, right? Like I feel okay. It doesn't seem like it should be 20.

SPEAKER_00 24:04

So uh sounds so ominous. I have a similar one. It's called like readiness indicator or something like that.

SPEAKER_01 24:09

The lowest I've seen it was four after the yeah, it was the flight to after the flight to England over the summer, and I didn't sleep at all and I was miserable. So that's the lowest I've ever seen it. But uh in writing this piece on trackers and just how accurate they are, I discovered that some mental health professionals are worried about how health trackers can impact some of their clients who have anxiety. For example, if you're anxious about your health, and I know you and I have both been there, looking at your heart rate all the time might make you more anxious. Um so you could see how that could be a problem. Um there's also concern about demotivation associated with fitness trackers. If you if you go out and find that article I wrote on August 28th, there's um a nutritional therapist from a Washington Post article quoting her client as saying, quote, if I can't get to 10,000 steps, what's the point in even trying?

SPEAKER_00 24:59

Yeah, and it's not just mental health professionals that are noting these trends. There's been recent research studies done on the impact of trackers on motivation, for example. A recent article called The Hidden Cost of Personal Quantification in the Journal of Consumer Research found that measuring activities can detract from your intrinsic motivation, which that was another topic you wrote about very recently for a priority.

SPEAKER_01 25:20

Good plug there.

SPEAKER_00 25:22

So a quote from this article by drawing attention to output, measurement can make enjoyable activities feel more like work, but which reduces their enjoyment. As a result, measurement can decrease continued engagement in the activity and subjective well-being. And so this um actually I've read some similar articles about running specifically that when you're uh just you know completely tuned into your pace and your split, it really can take away from the the intrinsic enjoyment in running and eventually demotivate you to where you don't really feel like getting out there. So um so there's been some, you know, kind of a push to go technology free occasionally, but and I found that to be very refreshing, uh not all the time, but occasionally just a you know run by feel.

SPEAKER_01 26:07

Yeah, and you know, I think this is a really interesting concept. I wanted to dig in a little bit on it here. Um I I know recently I've been doing this run streak and it's pretty straightforward. It's it's the run ours world run streak. You start and on Thanksgiving Day and you go all the way through New Year's Day. So it's a pretty long streak. Um and you only have to run a mile every day, which is like a mile is nothing. But actually, there's some days where it's just it feels like work because you're just like, I gotta keep this streak going. You're not really internally motivating yourself, it's this external motivation of the streak. So uh I I think this is a a pretty fascinating concept. And um, I felt this from time to time in my own training when I feel like I'm just trying to do something to hit a goal.

SPEAKER_00 26:57

Yeah, and that's exactly what I was feeling like when I was doing these 10,000 steps during the pandemic. It just felt like a slog, like on top of everything else that was stressing me out. Here at nine o'clock at night, I have to get my you know, 7,500 steps in or whatever. So, you know, it's not just us, there's some evidence that all this fitness tracking could actually make you enjoy exercise less. Uh, just one more study, because you can never have enough research. This is the last one we promised. We promise, yes. Another study from 2017 looked at 13 to 14-year-olds using wearables in the UK and found something similar. The kids were demotivated demotivated after about eight weeks. Based on the qualitative findings in the study that is interviewing them, they found that there was a short-term boost in motivation due to feelings of competition and guilt, which obviously fades over time, which is really interesting. My eight-year-old nephew has a fitness tracker too. I don't know if he's still motivated. I'll have to ask him next time we talk.

SPEAKER_01 27:52

Yeah, I'll have to ask my son. He has an Apple watch as well. But it makes total sense. Um, that fitness trackers really serve as extrinsic external motivators. So, what you really need, as I wrote um on the Practically Fit newsletter a few weeks ago, is intrinsic or internal motivation, meaning you're motivated to exercise for your long-term health and well-being. They found that intrinsic motivation over time will lead you to better success in terms of your overall fitness plan and fitness goals. So you can see how just these trackers are hitting these arbitrary numbers could be external motivators, which is the same as like, oh, I need to make my abs look good or I need to go to the gym because my friend is doing what doing it, which is what happened in that survey with the tweens, right? Right, right, right. Yeah, yeah. So there you have it. That is our treatise on 10,000 steps. A lot of research. And we I think we learned a lot today. We learned that the 10,000 step goal, surprise, surprise, came from marketing. Uh, and we learned that it's really hard for a lot of people to get to 10,000 steps on a daily basis going about their normal routine. And that maybe it's more of a range. Maybe you should really be shooting from anywhere to 7,500 to 10,000 if you want a goal based on the research. Uh, there's nothing really bad about getting to 10,000, it's just a lot of these studies show, you know, kind of the benefit dropping off around that point. Uh, but also we learned there can be a cost to all this fitness tracking when it comes to your motivation and mental health. So, like anything, it seems to be about moderation. Steps can be a great data point, but they shouldn't be your only motivator in terms of exercise.

SPEAKER_00 29:37

Absolutely. I think we probably have about 10,000 words on 10,000 steps today. What do you think, Alex?

SPEAKER_01 29:42

Definitely. It was uh it was a long one.

SPEAKER_00 29:45

Uh but but very worthwhile. So join us next week when we're gonna talk about the perfect topic heading into 2023 and a little more fun unless we'll we'll do some research on this one too, but we're gonna talk about New Year's resolutions. Do they work? Will you follow through with them? Alex, I know you're looking forward to this one.

SPEAKER_01 30:03

Yeah, so I mean, I'll just spoiler alert, I'm not a big fan of New Year's resolutions or you know, New Year, New You, or you know, gotta get to my gym uh membership, gotta get my gym membership going uh in in the in the new year. So we'll talk about all of that next week uh on the podcast, including some data I pulled out for the newsletter this week, which is uh really enlightening when it comes to gym memberships and and working out at home. There's a big debate about that. So we're gonna talk about New Year's resolutions, and I'm excited to share some hot takes.

SPEAKER_00 30:39

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 30:40

Yeah, and don't forget to sign up for the newsletter. I think we plugged it sufficiently today. It's at practically.