I used to put way too much pressure on myself when it came to steps because my previous PT had given me a target of 10,000 a day. And once that number is in your head, it starts to feel like anything less just doesn’t count.
I remember checking my steps constantly throughout the day, thinking about how many I still had left, and sometimes getting to the evening knowing I needed to somehow squeeze in another few thousand. It stopped feeling like normal movement and started feeling like another task I had to tick off. I started to hate it.
What actually worked much better for me was forgetting the 10K target for a while and figuring out what was realistic for me.
Starting low…
I decided to start at around 7,000 steps a day because that felt achievable. I wasn’t trying to become someone who spent half the day walking. I just wanted to move more than I naturally was.
And that made such a difference mentally because I could actually hit the goal without having to think about it all day.
After a while, I noticed I was reaching 7,000 every day really easily. I wasn’t checking my watch every hour, I wasn’t pacing around the house at night, and I wasn’t having to make a huge effort to get there. That was when I knew it was time to increase it.
