What happened when I started walking 20000 steps a day

It changed my life (and my business) and I love-hate it.

Let’s get one thing straight right from the get-go. I walk. A lot. But not a single step has me looking like a sleek lululemon mum with a neat ponytail and glowy make-up who looks sickeningly fresh.

My walks are done in fits and bursts through the day in a rag-tag medley of outfits, rarely any make-up, coffee in hand, brow furrowed, podcast in my ears. The only concession I ever make to being ‘a walker’ is wearing properly supportive shoes, but even that’s mainly because at nearly 50 and so flat-footed my feet resemble bread boards slapping on the Barcelona pavements, I have no choice unless I want to hobble home.

Why I started walking 20K steps

This 20000 step obsession started after lockdown ended. Spain had a brutal lockdown in which, for about 12 weeks, we weren’t allowed to leave the house except for buying groceries or medicines - no daily exercise allowance.

When we were allowed out, I was like a caged feral dog who couldn’t stop, wouldn’t stop, walking.

It helps that I live in a city that’s eminently walkable and where there’s a lot of walking built into my day. My kid’s school is a 15 minute walk away so before she turned into the K-pop-loving, jewellery-wearing, tween she is now who takes herself to and from school solo, I’d walk at least 30-60 minutes a day taking her to school. My gym is about 15 minutes away too, so that meant another 30 mins there and back. My GPs surgery, the supermarkets, the big H&M… all about a 15-20 minute walk away. You get the picture. So in an average day, without even trying, I might walk for 1.5 - 2 hours, which is about 10K- 15K steps.

That’s when it occurred to me: if I could manage this with zero thought, surely I could bump it up to 20K? I have no idea why that number was appealing other than we humans like big round numbers.

It also seemed like a deliciously non-athletic way to achieve quite a lot of movement. I have no goals about pace, or distance in one go at all. I don’t care about time of day, or whether I break up a 1 hour walk with a coffee, voicenoting my sister, or reading emails at traffic lights.

There seemed to be no right way to do this - I just did it however I felt like - and I found that incredibly freeing.

What has walking 20K steps given me?

I hate to say it, but it’s changed my life for the better. Now before I go into more detail, I have to be clear that I do not get hung up on consistency.

I don’t make this steps goal A THING. As in, if it’s raining heavily, I might get my steps in on a treadmill on the gym, but I may not. If I am sick, I don’t push myself to walk this much. It’s a goal without self-flagellation (which as a hyper-productive person is a beautiful thing to gift myself).

I only came to this zen approach through experience though, because when I first started, if I didn’t hit 20K by the end of the night, I would pace the hallway in my flat, moving the arm with my Garmin on back and forth as if I were “wanking off a ghost” (to quote Celeste Barber’s brilliant show Wellmania). This seemed counterproductive to me, to say the least.

So if I was going to do this, I had to not be mad about it.

So what has it given me? Well first off, and maybe it’s a kind of ‘yeah, duh!’ moment, but…

1. A LOT of time to think that’s been business-critical

It’s shocking how little time we have to think in lives where the noise of emails, social media, TV, other people around us, the siren call of to-do lists invade our sanity every single second. We’re all kind of used to it now, but it affects us so deeply because we are not evolutionarily designed for so much mental noise.

When I’m walking, I try not to answer too many calls and to keep the email and Whatsapp-checking to a minimum. I often listen to podcasts but there are times, when I am just putting one foot in front of the other, and it’s like taking a lavender-scented bath for my mind (though if you’ve ever walked in Barcelona with it’s high dog to human ratio, you will know the pavements definitely do not smell that fragrant).

As someone running my own business, this is the time where I tend to think about ideas that get no air time at home:

• Exactly what should go into a programme for freelancers that I’m launching

• Whether I want to write another book (and what it might be about)

• Whether I should sign up a writing contract I’d been offered

• How much I’ve been working and how I could slow down

• What my retreat in Spain next year might focus on exactly

The walking is where the details get worked out. I might run ideas past my sister or friends I trust (and the amazing business coach I currently have), but ultimately there are a hundred decisions I have to make that are essentially brainstorming with myself.

There is literally nowhere else that I can think so clearly and connect with my intuition as strongly as when I am out on a walk.

2. It’s made me fitter and I sleep 1000 x better

I’ve come a long way from the PE-dodger I used to be at school, and now lift weights in the gym, do yoga, barre class, mobility work, and swimming. But I’ve realised, very belatedly in life, that walking is the most under-rated exercise. And this is backed up by solid science and health advice.

And walking 20000 steps does feel markedly different to 10000 steps in the effect on my body.

It can (if these things are important to you) make your clothes fit better. And without the joint-crunching, back-aching, pressure on the body from running.

Somehow, even though I don’t power-walk, it’s improved my asthmathic lungs and when I need to, I can break into a sprint for a bus without feeling like I’m having a stroke.

But maybe one of the biggest changes has been in improving my sleep.

Now, I don’t know many grown adults, especially those over 35 who sleep as much or as well as they’d like to.

But at 49 and deep in the terrain of perimenopause and all the accompanying ways in which the hormonal rollercoaster can mess with your sleep, being able to sleep more deeply is something I never take for granted.

There’s an exquisite kind of pleasure from sinking into bed at the end of the day, my muscles gently aching from having walked for miles - the physical exhaustion rather than a mental or emotional one.

A note on the physical exhaustion - if you walk 2000 steps currently and try and do ten times that immediately, your body probably won’t love it - I’d suggest increasing the number slowly, and having epsom salt baths and slathering your feet in magnesium butter at the end of the night (which helps with sleep too).

How the hell do you fit in 3 hours of walking a day?!

I admit that living in a city centre with almost everything I need within walking distance puts me at an advantage because so much walking is built into my day already.

If your life involves waking early and rushing onto the tube to work or to take your kids to school, sitting down for 8 hours, then doing the journey in reverse before you’re pottering around at home and then crashing into bed, having done 4K to 5K steps max, reaching 20K is going to require serious effort.

But maybe you don’t need to worry about 20K. Maybe just reaching 10K or 12K would have a significant impact if you’re doing much less than that on average.

And 20K is kind of a random number I pulled out of the air as it made for a challenge. But it was also achievable for me by making changes like allowing a bit more time to walk somewhere instead of taking the metro. Doing Zoom meetings while walking (if I didn’t need to have my camera on). Getting a walk after dinner while my husband did bedtime with my kid. Meeting friends for a coffee and a walk rather than sitting down in a cafe (given we all sit for far too long in the day as it is).

I have contemplated getting a walking pad (like a mini, cheap version of a treadmill) that I could plonk under my desk, but living in a place with generally temperate weather where it doesn’t rain a lot means I can go out most days of the year. And even when it is cold and windy, I abide by that saying that “there’s no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothes”.

What walking this much has given me is in some ways so profound it feels embarrassing to admit out loud. Spending 3 HOURS a day just walking feels so extravagantly spacious and luxurious in a world where we’ve compressed the amount of time we spend on any given activity. Where we look for 10-minute recipes and 5 minute yoga videos and 60 second sped-up Tik Tok make up tutorials, in a bid to get faster and faster at doing things to cram more and more in the day.

It feels like I’ve clawed back time in the day just for me in a way that no-one else could give me. It has made me feel sane on days where my head feels like a hive of bees are buzzing around in it. And that won’t be something I give up any time soon.