Ok, you're committed. You accepted the challenge to hit that 10,000 step per day quota. Well, you've been doing it for a year now, and now it's 2017. So how are you fairing, physically?
You know in the beginning, you did not hit that goal every day or every week, but you kept at it and after about 6-8 weeks in, you starting hitting that mark and you felt so good about yourself. You kept at it, you even bought yourself a good smart fitness watch, like the Fitbit Blaze Smart Fitness Watch to keep track of not only your daily-weekly activities but also your heart rate. You felt pretty good about yourself. Then it happened, you peaked, you kept hitting your goal of those 10,000 steps, buy you also noticed that the weight you were losing, which was a big part of why you started the program, in the beginning, wasn't dropping off like it used to. You even started cutting back on the food you were consuming. Well at least cutting back on those little rewards, like a small ice cream or yogurt and maybe a drink or two after work with the office gang.
So what's the story? Why are things bottoming out?
Well, any fitness coach knows that you need to change up your fitness regimen from time to time. Your body actually gets used to your routines about every 6-8 weeks. So you need to start shifting things around, exercise wise. You need to change out your walking/jogging routes, add some new hills or it can be as simple as just pushing yourself more. The craze that has been around for a year or two HIIT High-Intensity Workouts usually does the trick. Try starting off as you usually do but after about 15 mins into your routine, push yourself. Go for a solid 5-10 mins of increased speed, along with swinging your arms and leaning forward to get the most out of your walk/now run. After that 10 mins, slow yourself down for 15mins to your regular walking pace. If you can manage it, then do another 5 minutes of intense walking again. If you can't handle that pace so soon, don't worry about it, but make it a goal for yourself to work your way up to adding in that additional 5 minutes of intensity.
When you've reached that new goal, go ahead and add an additional 5 minutes to it, it's better if you combine that 5 minutes together to make it 10.
You see where we're going with this right? In order for you to continue to lose weight and condition your body, you need to add additional milestones to your workout. If you do this on a regular basis, and you will know when you need to, by your body telling you so with how it becomes easy after time to conquer your latest milestone.
So, again, it's not all in the number of steps your doing each day, but rather how you're taking those steps that count. Again, whether it's 10,000, 5,000 or 20,000 steps, it's how you measure the resistance you make for yourself that really counts.