Martin Lewis: In 2024 I averaged 24,703 steps a day (burning 3,850 calories) – here's how…
Put on your walking shoes, rub some balm into your calves, and massage your toes (not necessarily in that order) as it's time for my annual steps blog. While a total of 9,041,317 steps is a decent number, it's still slightly frustrating as it means I just missed my 25,000 daily steps target in 2024. I'd even made it in 2023, my Steppus Horribilis (as on 2 August 2023 I missed my 10,000 daily steps target for the first time in seven years due to food poisoning).
This is my ninth annual steps blog, written as a permanent record both for me, and because I know many people who've read past versions have taken up and enjoyed their own step challenges. Anyone who caught me on the Taskmaster New Year Special will already know about my steps obsession (as well as those who've read past blogs).
Step-philia invokes an interesting reaction: some people totally get it and confess their own 'walking round the living room at the end of the day' habit if they've not hit target. Others just look askance as if you've strolled (well purposely strode) in from another planet. Either way I'm happy with being part of the quantified-self trend, so let's do it…
How my 2024 steps compare
I got my first fitness tracker in 2015, and it had an instant impact on me. As I blogged my 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 steps, I can easily chart my progression. I've not included the calorie count as I think it's very loose, but this year it says I apparently averaged 3,850 calories burnt a day.
Fitness tracker stats comparison
Steps | Kilometres (1) | |||
Total | Daily average | Total | Daily average | |
Annual | 2024: 9,041,317 2023: 9,178,663 2022: 8,989,908 2021: 9,284,614 2020: 8,889,800 2019: 8,877,851 |
2024: 24,703 2023: 25,142 2022: 24,630 2021: 25,437 2019: 24,322 2018: 23,512 2017: 25,420 |
2024: 8,128 2023: 8,356 2022: 8,231 2021: 8,518 2019: 8,076 2018: 7,866 |
2024: 22.2 2023: 22.89 2022: 22.55 2021: 23.34 2019: 22.1 |
Best calendar month | 2024: 812,716 2023: 809,833 2022: 809,370 (Apr) 2021: 837,580 2019: 848,283 2018: 742,185 |
2024: 26,217 2023: 26,124 |
2024: 735.3 2023: 732.6 |
2024: 23.7 2023: 23.6 |
Best day | 2024: 36,332 2023: 40,685 2022: 40,682 2021: 39,120 2019: 44,166 2018: 36,874 |
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2024: 32.3 2023: 36.5 |
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(1) These aren't necessarily the same 'best' week or month as for steps. Bigger kilometre weeks tend to be those when I've run more. But you do fewer steps running a kilometre than walking, so it doesn't always equate.
Since 2015, I've walked/run the equivalent of just under two times round the world (and yet I'm still not getting anywhere!).
This year's steps were my fourth highest of the last 10. Yet it had my second best ever monthly steps, at over 800,000 in 30-day May, and one of my worst ever 'best steps day' totals. All in all, this indicates I'm being far more consistent with my stepping rather than peaks and troughs.
I admit it is an obsession, but it is a deliberate one…
In the past I've written "I can and sometimes do feel like stopping" – yet the health benefits over the last few years have been so positive, I don't want to let it go. Mrs MSE said to me "you're FREE" after my one-day 10,000 target miss last year, but I don't want that freedom; I worry if I let go of it, it'll never come back.
My steps are all built based on self-imposed rules. The sacrosanct one is to never miss the 10,000 a day buzz. But I have softer goals too: I aim for 25,000 steps a day, but try not to miss 20,000 (I miss it about 30 times a year). I also go for a minimum 160,000-step week, and 750,000-step month (except February).
To help me hit these targets, while I used to run a lot, these days, to protect my knees, I'm fortunate enough to have a home elliptical (cross-trainer).
I do cardio about 360 days a year, usually first thing in the morning, and normally for about 40 minutes. That's slightly less than I used to (I just couldn't find the time). The big advantage of the elliptical is I can read the papers, my emails and key documents, so little work time is lost, which means I'm normally on 7,000 steps or more before I do owt else. Yet that's still less than a third of my total steps.
My big rule… if I'm talking, I'm walking
If I have a phone call to make, or a meeting that doesn't need a video call, then I do it while walking. Often, this is outdoors – I try to get all my calls arranged in a row, so I can have a long walk.
Each Tuesday for example, I don't get transport to the studio for my show. I do the 75-minute walk to the studio, come rain, frost or snow, and while walking I'm in a Google meet with the team to work through the structure of the show. We usually finish the meet about five minutes before I arrive.
If I can't get outside to walk (very rare), then I walk around and around my office. It's now instinctive that if the phone rings and I'm sitting down, I jump up before I answer it. Even if it's a friend in the evening, I get up from my seat and start walking around the room.
And it's not just about calls, it's about transport too – my mentality is to try to avoid any other form of transport unless there's a good reason, for example:
- It's over 10km away or over 3km if I'm with mini MSE.
- It's very early or very late (or I'm very late).
- I've got golf clubs with me.
For many this will sound bizarre, but I find obeying self-imposed routines can help with health and fitness, so if it keeps me stepping, it's good.
How does this compare with pre-tracker years?
As soon as I got a tracker, I started walking more. As a numbers person, the self-monitoring had a real impact.
An example of this is in my running and cross-training (which I have a separate graph for, of course). I used to do this before I had trackers, but the distances covered then were a fraction of what I do now.
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.
Partly due to the tracker, I switched to an annual distance target which means that every run or now elliptical, even a slow one, feeds the graph. In 2020, I smashed the pants off my run (and cross-training) total doing over 2,000km – doubling the prior 1,000km was the target. And it's increased since. In 2024, I did 3,250km combined run and elliptical (just under my 3,300 record the year before) though as the settings have changed, it doesn't quite calibrate.
The health impact
While my weight varies (I'm writing this just after the Christmas break!), I'm substantially lighter than when I started stepping – no surprise, as according to my fitness tracker, I'm burning 3,500 to 4,000 calories a day. I'm not sure how real that number is, but certainly my energy use is greater.
Some 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).
I tend to think of running as for fitness and my mental health, while walking is for physical health and relaxation – for the few minutes I'm off the phone when walking, a little bit of me-time or listening to an audiobook in a day is useful. Sadly it isn't a cure-all for stress and anxiety, but it helps reduce some of the impact.
The problem with a step obsession is it can stop me doing other things
I tend to be put off by exercise which gets me no steps, such as cycling (I've tried wearing my tracker on my leg, but it isn't great). But I know as an over-50-year-old man, weight and resistance exercises are really important.
So a few years ago I started adding a weight training section to my exercise graph, to encourage me to do it. Sessions are between 15 and 90 minutes. In 2023, I ramped that up and did it on 263 days (21 more than my prior best the year before) and I'm trying to focus more on core stability when I do weights this year (though I still have other targets, and proudly did my first ever single-push 100kg bench press this year).
Are the steps accurate?
Apparently, according to the technology broadcaster @LaraLewington (also known in these blogs as Mrs MSE), step accuracy has improved a lot in recent years. In 2015, she did a film wearing four different trackers for a week, and there were substantial inconsistencies between them. Yet a repeat of that in 2022 (which sadly isn't available online) showed how much things had improved.
Regardless though, accuracy is less important than consistency. I compete with myself based on the same metric: number of steps in a day.
And my fixation hasn't only helped me – when some friends who are linked via an app see my steps, they often up their own steppage (though others have also found it demotivating to be linked to an obsessive). Unsurprisingly, I do get competitive about it.
Best of all though and a reason for keeping writing an annual blog is that each year, many people have been in contact to say that it inspired them to start stepping more – especially the 'never miss your buzz' challenge. I hope a few more people, who are able to, will do so this year.
If you're a stepper too, do let me know how you did last year either via the forum discussion below or on my social feeds on X, Bluesky, Facebook, Threads.