How your job and your neighborhood’s “Walkscore” affects your ability to walk 10,000 steps per day

It makes sense that mail carriers and janitors walk more than lawyers, secretaries and school teachers. And it should come as no surprise that people who walk more have lower body weight, higher HDL cholesterol (the good kind) and lower blood pressure. But where a person lives, how he or she gets to work and what the individual does with leisure time can also greatly affect both the ability to achieve 10,000 steps per day – the standard recommended by health experts – and the health benefits that result.

Why 10,000 steps – and how much is that?

Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, MD first began to tackle the obesity rate in America in 1994, which his successor, Dr. David Satcher, expanded upon in 2001 with his report, “The Surgeon General’s Call to Action to Prevent and Decrease Overweight and Obesity.” The report and the surgeons’ general “Shape Up America!” program provide science-based solutions to obesity and other problems associated with inactivity. The round number, 10,000 steps, may seem arbitrary, but it has many proponents and for most people, it represents an increase over what they are doing currently.

This varies by stride and the length of one’s legs, but 10,000 steps amounts to about five miles. According to a study done on 98 volunteers at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse (John Procari, Ph.D. and Reem Ekhwan, M.A., funded by the American Council on Exercise), people in the following occupations naturally cover these distances in the course of a day’s work (all numbers are averages):

Secretaries: 4,327 steps, about 1.7 miles

Teachers: 4,726 steps, about 1.9 miles

Lawyers: 5,062 steps, about 2.0 miles

Police officers: 5,336 steps, about 2.1 miles

Nurses: 8,648 steps, about 3.4 miles

Construction workers: 9,646 steps, about 3.8 miles

Factory workers: 9,892 steps, about 3.9 miles

Restaurant servers: 10,087 steps, about 4.0 miles

Custodians: 12,991 steps, about 5.2 miles

Mail carriers: 18,904 steps, about 7.5 miles

In the study, the volunteers wore pedometers that were calibrated according to each individual’s length of stride. Actual steps covered were recorded over three days.

Of course, the study didn’t cover their walking outside of their work. Additional steps clearly vary by how one gets to work (walk to public transportation or even a distant parking lot?) and what they do in their leisure time. For example, does the individual exercise in a gym? Do they garden or have other active hobbies, including volunteer work that is physically active? Might they routinely walk children, elderly relatives or a pet? Is it his or her habit to walk to a store instead of going by car?

What is your neighborhood’s Walkscore?

These latter questions, how one spends their leisure hours, are partially answered by an online tool called Walkscore (www.walkscore.com). The site has a simple interface, requesting your home’s street address, which it then correlates to Google Maps API, which identifies the presence and proximity of stores, restaurants, schools, parks, libraries and other walkable destinations. An algorithm is applied to each factor, which then calculates a score for your home.

As real estate agents are learning, a good Walkscore for an address is a great selling point. When a family moves to a new home, they usually want to know the quality of their life will improve along with their significant purchase. What better an image to envision than a trimmer, healthier homeowner on early morning jaunts to pick up a newspaper or cup of coffee, greeting neighbors along the way?

Walkscore acknowledges certain deficiencies in its system, factors that are not accounted for. The website lists variables that can help or hurt how much a person walks:

• Availability of public transportation: If the bus or train stop is close by (<20 minutes of walking), the user likely walks there. Further away and the individual just drives or catches a ride.
• Topography: Just like on a treadmill that has adjusts for elevated grades, hillier terrain positively effects health, but may also dissuade a walker if it’s too difficult.
• Crime and safety factors: If a high street crime rate, poor lighting or inadequately marked street crossings are characteristics of a neighborhood, people living there are less likely to walk (particularly vulnerable people such as children, women and the elderly).
• Freeways and bodies of water: Walkscore does not calculate for impassable areas, making that Starbucks that is asclose as the crow flies but a ten block detour because an Interstate slices between you and your Chai tea (skim no sugar).
• Pedestrian friendly design: Does the area have sidewalks or walking paths? Better yet, are they shaded by trees?
• Weather: How many months of the year does the local climate make for a pleasant walk? (This writer , a resident of Chicago who grew up in the Buffalo, NY area, will argue it’s not about the weather, just clothes).

Launch your own walking program

If you are taking up walking, perhaps to the 10,000 steps level, it’s probably useful to first consider how motivated you are.

This might get you started. A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that women with breast cancer who walked three to five hours per week fared better than those who were sedentary. Specifically, by just walking at a moderate pace they had fewer breast cancer recurrences and lower mortality rate over ten years.

So if walking is associated with longer life and a lower likelihood of cancer recurrence, does it not seem probable that other health benefits come from walking as well? Author Mark Fenton wrote in “The Complete Book of Walking” that self-esteem, self-confidence reduced stress and improved sleep can result from regular walking. “Your brain and soul may be the pieces of your anatomy that benefit most from walking,” he concludes.

Here are suggestions on getting started:

1. Measure how much you walk already in your everyday life. Pedometers are available in department and sports stores, generally selling for under $30. The less expensive pedometers are usually the simplest to operate. Or, just start counting and keep a running tab: for example, if you walk to a friend’s house three times a week or walk your dog everyday, count the steps involved.
2. Ask yourself if you can cut out just one errand done by car and turn it into something you do on foot. If it requires carrying some things, be aware that added weight translates into added health benefits.
3. While it can be invigorating to launch into a full-blown, walk-far-everyday program, it might work better for some people to approach it gradually. Substitute walking to one destination just one day a week. Then add other walking occasions where it starts to make sense, and when time allows.
4. Think you’re too busy to walk? Factor in the time required to park, get gas and traffic. Walking might win out on that, or at least come close. There’s an environmental benefit to consider as well: short car trips are the most polluting.
5. Get appropriate comfortable shoes – but that doesn’t have to mean unstylish. Walk the malls and main streets to find footwear that makes you feel as good about how you look as how you feel when walking.

Still think you’re too busy to walk? Consider the time in years that a sedentary life can take away from you. Sound cardiovascular and mental health often makes the difference between an unhealthy and abbreviated existence versus living well and long.

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Russ Klettke is an ACE (American Council on Exercise) certified fitness trainer and also the author of “A Guy’s Gotta Eat, the regular guy’s guide to eating smart” (Marlow & Co., 2004, with Deanna Conte, MS RD LD), available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com and more than 70 public library systems in the U.S., Canada and Europe. See other articles by this writer on practical approaches to fitness and nutrition for busy people.