How Your Health Changes at 14000 Steps a Day versus 7000 Steps a Day

A lesson on how to meet the healthiest version of yourself

Illustrations by Kaki Okumura

It was 2019 and I was logging in over 12000 steps on average a month. At my highest, I was hitting a daily average of 14,426 steps per day.

I walked to meet all of my basic errands such as laundry, grocery shopping, and picking up mail. I lived in a nice area and would also go jogging nearly every day, so it didn’t feel difficult to meet 10000 steps, and encouraged by my averages and mental monthly streaks, I would continue to try to push that number up past 12000, then 14000.

But then the pandemic hit, and my step count almost halved.

When this happened, I was primarily met with two reactions:

• Anxiety that I would begin to gain weight/lose endurance/become unhealthier by some other measure
• Relief