Brian Johnson challenges listeners to hit 100,000 steps per week, roughly double the standard 10,000-step daily goal. Research shows people averaging under 5,650 steps daily see sharp drops in wellbeing: 88% report more depression and 31% lose life satisfaction. He's aiming for the target himself and inviting others to join.
Questions this episode answers
100,000 steps per week.
Approximately 14,285.7 steps per day.
10,000 steps per day; 70,000 steps per week.
18,794 steps (7-day average).
5,649 steps per day (average daily step count cited).
Chapters
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another Optimize plus one. Not too long ago I mentioned the Virtual Optimize Local Zoom group I joined. It was such an epic hangout. I'm still beaming from the download of love and wisdom and self mastery and courage and all the other virtues. Seriously, it very much reminded me of the graduation weekend where I got to hang out with 500 plus for inaugural optimize coaches, which will always be a highlight of my life. There's just something magical about getting together with people who share your values and are playing the same game with the same intense commitment to play it well. And of course, as we've discussed, many times the fastest way to optimize your life isn't the wisdom side of things per se, it's the community side of things. Join a community with super high standards and boom, the best you is more likely to join the party. Now, with COVID 19 taking over the world and creating the need for social distancing, we've pressed pause on our offline Optimize Local initiative. But and I had goosebumps as I typed this. We will be leaning back into that when the time is right. I still can't believe we had optimizers from over 75 countries in 750 cities around the world who raised their hands to get involved. For now, you can join one of those Virtual Optimized Zoom meetups by cruising over to a link we have in the plus one. But that's not quite the point of this plus one. Today I want to chat about one of the little things that came up in our chat. So one of our beloved coaches shared how her fundamentals slipped a bit when Covid hit and she felt it. Then her optimized buddy challenged her to get her step count back up, which used to be something she did. So she restarted her morning walk hikes and it changed her life. Then she wound up walking more and more and pretty soon she was, in her optimized buddy's words, kicking his butt. And he loved it. Now, I can't remember the exact number of steps she said she was getting to, but I do remember the fact that she shared a weekly stat. Now I was struck by the fact that you could have fun measuring your steps by both the day and the week. Of course it's pretty obvious when I say that out loud, but I always thought of my 10,000 plus steps per day and never really thought about it on a weekly basis other than looking at the average daily count over the last week that my soon toe watch shares with me. So 10,000 is our go crush this target for our coaches, which of course is 70,000 steps per week. But what's a target a little beyond that? I thought 100,000 steps per week would be pretty cool. Then I wondered what's 100,000 divided by 7? 14,285.7 Suunto tells me that my current 7 day average number of steps is 18,794, which is a pretty ridiculous and b a reflection of just how much I love walking on our new trail multiple times per day. It's the perfect oscillating reboot. So 100,000. Isn't that a beautiful round number? Want to go to the next level with your step count and movement throughout the day and join me? No pressure speed. Seriously, as I know we all have different constraints in our realities and different things that fire us up. And if you do feel so inspired, I'd love to have you join me. And let's remember this wisdom from Kelly McGonigal's the Joy of Movement and make sure we're on the right side of these stats, she tells us. In the United States, daily physical activity as captured by an accelerometer is correlated with a sense of purpose in life. Real time tracking also shows that people are happier during moments when they are physically active than when they are sedentary. And on days when people are more active than their usual, they report greater satisfaction with their lives. Other experiments in the US and the UK have forced moderately active adults to become sedentary for a period of time, only to watch their well being wither. She says. Regular exercisers who replace physical activity with a sedentary activity for two weeks become more anxious, tired and hostile. When adults are randomly assigned to reduce their daily step count, 88% of them become more depressed 88%. Within one week of becoming more sedentary, they report a 31% decline in life satisfaction. She says the average daily step count required to induce feelings of anxiety, depression and decreased satisfaction with life is 5,649. The typical American takes 4,774 steps across the globe. It's 4,961. So here's to the wisdom of knowing that movement matters and the self mastery to go out and practice our philosophy when it matters most, which is today. Let's go rock Some steps. 100,000 perhaps for the week. Let's do this.
