I sat on my gray couch in my California home, surrounded by plain white walls and a fiddle-leaf fig plant. Before turning on Netflix, I grabbed my phone, clicked on the heart icon, and checked my step count for the day.
On an ideal day, I'd have at least 10,000 steps — the alleged holy grail number I needed to lower my mortality risk and improve my heart health. But on a more realistic day, as a health journalist working from home, I averaged between 3,000 and 4,000 steps.
Most of my walking happened in a parking lot, walking from my car to a store, or on a neighborhood walk after work. Tracking my steps wasn't exactly an obsession, but it did serve as a barometer for how productive I felt each day.
More than 10,000 steps, and I felt accomplished. Fewer than that, and I had a nagging sense that I didn't do enough.
My family moved to Florence
In September 2024, I traded my suburban life for an urban one in Florence, Italy. My husband, toddler, and I moved when I was 18 weeks pregnant. Not only did my gelato intake increase, but so did the number of steps I took each day.
I went from an average of 3,500 steps a day to 8,000. More days than not, I'd easily reach 10,000 without trying too hard. Some days, I'd even clock in between 15,000 and 20,000 steps.
From dropping my daughter off at school to running errands to meeting a friend for a cappuccino, my feet became my main mode of transportation. I was walking so much that I stopped going to group exercise classes. Every day felt productive, movement-wise.
But after weeks of reaching exceptional step counts, I started to question the point of tracking. Why was I living as if the value of each day hinged on the number of steps I took? This was the beginning of how living in Italy changed how I thought about movement: it isn't something that has to be constantly tracked and optimized. It can just be enjoyed.
Do we need to walk 10,000 steps?
The idea that you have to walk 10,000 steps a day to be healthy comes from a 1965 Japanese marketing campaign made for the first consumer pedometer. The device was called Manpo-kei, which translates to "10,000 steps meter." The name itself was a marketing tool. At the time, no scientific studies had looked at the health benefits of 10,000 steps.
Since then, scientists have examined the correlation between step count and health. It may not come as a surprise that 10,000 isn't absolutely needed to have a positive impact on one's health. A 2019 study found that women who walked 4,400 steps a day had significantly lower mortality rates compared to those who averaged 2,700 steps a day. Notably, women in the study had a median age of 72 years. A 2025 analysis found that significant reductions in chronic disease risk occurred between 5,000 and 7,000 steps per day.
Daniel Lieberman, a professor of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University, told me there is not one number of steps that can be prescribed to everyone to guarantee a specific health outcome. "The effect of 10,000 steps on you might be different from me," he said.
If people enjoy reaching their 10,000-step goal each day, it's not a problem to live with it. But for some people, it can turn what should be a pleasure — walking — into a burden. Jonathan Alpert, a psychotherapist in New York, said he's seen patients become anxious because they only got 7,500 steps in a day.
"For some people, counting steps or monitoring sleep encourages healthier habits," Alpert said. "For others, it turns into a form of self-surveillance where every number starts to feel like a judgment."
America's cultural obsession with tracking health metrics reflects something deeper about our collective psyche. One where people are constantly seeking external validation to understand themselves internally, Alpert said. It's also a way for people to feel like they have more control in an unpredictable world.
"Health data can create the feeling that if we just track enough information, we can perfect ourselves and eliminate risk," Alpert said. "But human beings aren't spreadsheets, and not everything important can be measured."
Walking for the sake of walking, without the pressure of having to track the number of steps, comes with its own health benefits. It can be "calming, restorative, and even meditative," he said. "It allows people to be present rather than constantly evaluating their performance."
I don't track my steps anymore
Tracking the number of steps I take is no longer part of my daily routine. In fact, I go weeks without clicking on the little heart icon on my phone.
When I walk around Florence, I try not to check my phone at all. Instead, I look up. There's something grounding about admiring the same architecture that humans marveled at hundreds of years ago, and walking to the tune of the church bells that once kept time. It's a moment for me to get lost in my own thoughts while moving my body, which is better for my health than judging myself for not reaching yet another artificial health metric.
