Martin Lewis: I averaged 24,300 steps a day (burning 3,910 calories) in 2020 – here's how...

If I’m talking, I’m walking.

My 2020 step stats

I'm a numbers person and ferociously competitive, so 'quantified self' tech is a perfect motivator for me as it hits my psyche square on. It won't necessarily do that for everyone. As soon as I got a tracker, I started walking more, and this self-monitoring is the driver.

I wear the tracker for running and walking and have a separate running graph, using a GPS watch for accuracy. That shows I smashed the pants off my 'km a year' run (and some cross-training) personal-best this year, hitting 3,100 km (50 km+ a week), over 900 km higher than last year, my prior best. This was due to lockdown as I felt I needed to hit the streets/treadmill to get my runs in, as much for my mental health as for owt else.

I did run in pre-tracker years, but nowhere near as far. And back then I would graph my times to see if I got quicker. Yet with speed as my key performance indicator, as progression isn't linear, if I'd start a run and realise it wasn't a fast day, it was demotivating and I'd sometimes stop.

I still record times, but have switched to an annual distance target (first year was 600 km, the next 1,000 km, then 2,000, now 3,000) which means every run, even a slow one, feeds the graph.

However, even with all this running, by far the bulk of the distance is done walking. My mentality is to try to avoid any other form of transport unless there's a good reason, eg, it's over 10 km away (or over three if I'm with mini MSE), or needing to carry golf clubs.

I'm substantially lighter than when I started stepping – no surprise, as according to my fitness tracker I'm burning 3,500-4,000 calories a day. I'm not sure how real that number is, but certainly I burn much more than I used to.

My core strength has increased, and a lot of my repetitive strain injury and back pain has gone (I'd never put this together until I mentioned it to a physio and he asked if I now walked more, as apparently it's a great help for backs).

It's also been very good for stress levels. Not just the running, which is as much for my mental as physical health, but also, pre-Covid, the walking – for the few minutes off the phone when I'm walking, a little bit of me-time in a day is useful.

I do worry about my knees – they're holding up pretty well right now, but I know that may be an issue one day. One other fitness problem of step-obsession is it means I tend to be put off exercise which gets me no steps. So over the last couple of years I've started a weight training graph too.

That saw me do 149 sessions this year (down from 153 last year, but probably better quality) and hit my bench press target of 90 kg (and yes that's graphed too, obvs).