Walking 10,000 steps a day in 2025 is still one of the most common fitness goals. But while it’s a good way to stay active, research suggests the number itself isn’t magic. Studies show that walking 7,000 to 8,000 steps daily already gives great health benefits.
Still, the idea of having a clear, round goal helps people stay motivated, and that’s a good thing. But if you really want to improve your health—like losing weight, lowering blood pressure, or managing blood sugar—how you move is just as important as how much.
A 2024 study published in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports says it’s not just about counting steps.
The intensity of your activity—the speed or effort—also plays a big role in lowering five key risk factors linked to metabolic syndrome; high waist size, high triglycerides (a type of fat in your blood), low HDL (the “good” cholesterol), high blood pressure, and high blood sugar
Dr. Elroy Aguiar, who led the study, explains “the analysis says you can get away with just doing a higher volume of exercise, but you’re better off doing a higher volume and a higher intensity of exercise in combination
A Little More Effort, Big Health Gains
One don’t need to do intense workouts or run long distances to see results. Just adding 30 minutes of brisk walking or light jogging to your day can make a big difference.
Even shorter bursts of intense movement help. One of the study’s surprising findings was that just one minute of higher-intensity movement per day—like a fast walk—can reduce your risk for health problems.
Read Also: How to get rid of stubborn belly fat
So, if most of your steps are at a regular pace, that’s okay. Just try to speed up for a minute or two while walking to the store, chasing the bus, or running errands.
Why It Matters
Improving how you move every day can help reduce dangerous belly fat (called visceral fat) that sits around your organs. This type of fat messes with how your body works and raises your risk of serious health problems.
Exercise helps burn that fat. Even better, it can lower your blood pressure for up to 24 hours and reduce your blood sugar for up to 48 hours—just from one brisk walk.
While eating better is still key to weight loss, exercise alone can help lower many health risks, especially for people who are overweight or at risk of metabolic syndrome.
What You Can Do
The World Health Organization (WHO) says adults should aim for 150 minutes of moderate exercise (like brisk walking) per week, or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise (like jogging), or a mix of both.
But you don’t need to do it all at once. You can break it up throughout your day. And even simple, everyday movement—like walking to your car or speeding up on your way to the bathroom—can count.
“All movement helps,” says Dr. Aguiar. “The new WHO messaging says that all movement counts, so if that means walking a little bit more quickly to your car or the train station, just to elevate your heart rate and your metabolic rate a little bit for brief periods you can accumulate throughout the day, those things count in terms of exercise.
“And they’re incidental. We all walk, to some degree; from your office to the bathroom or to a local cafe. If you can focus on walking a little bit faster than you normally do, that’s going to be beneficial for a lot of these risk factors, especially the blood glucose and blood pressure side of things.”
