I had an article come up on Yahoo.com that caught my attention. The article was “Science Officially Confirmed That The 10,000 Steps Rule Is Outdated. Here’s The New Number To Target.” – Women’s Health. The article states that according to a new meta review published in the Lancelot, the review “officially confirmed that we’ve been calculating our step count wrong.” There are findings, according to this article (my personal opinion – lets you off the hook for trying to reach 10,000 steps a day) says that you can “reap” major health benefits well before the 10,000 steps. They claim that the 10,000 steps was a marketing campaign for a fitness tracker called Manpo-Kei (translated from Japanese meaning “10,000 step meter).
Now, the reason why this caught my attention is because I started to wonder how we as a society could have so much tunnel vision. The tunnel vision is that it is easier to just focus on the number of steps than considering all the other factors that come into play. Let’s avoid talking about workload, daily activity, not only food consumption, but what we are consuming, or other bad habits, like smoking or vaping, to name a few.
Before I get into the other topics, let’s just talk about the steps. It doesn’t take a PhD and tons of research to realize that walking and physical activity is good for you. If you live a sedentary lifestyle, physical activity should really be stressed compared to a construction worker, farmer, athlete, or any other person whose daily life is filled with activity already. Is it really important to count the steps? It is only common sense that if your daily lifestyle does not include additional physical activity, then putting a little physical activity into your daily routine is a good thing.
Something as simple as going for a walk daily through a park can help lower your cortisol levels, which is a stress hormone. Listening to music can help clear the mind and remove oneself from the stress of work. Walking with your significant other can allow you to spend time together, talking or not talking. This is the old days was called “Enjoying someone’s company” or “Spending quality time together.” The step count using a fitness tracker makes it simpler to track progress, but I’m not trying to sell you a fitness tracker. I use a fitness tracker myself, but I don’t focus on the step count. I use it to track other stats such as resting heart rate.
Even an activity like golf and using a cart can provide additional activity and relieve stress (depending on how well you play, I guess). Getting out of the house, getting a little sun, having to get in and out of the cart, and walking to get to your ball’s location have their benefits. It may not seem like a whole bunch of activity, but when compared to sitting on the couch and watching Netflix, a little can be a lot.
Gluttony, defined by the Oxford Languages, is “the excessive indulgence or over-consumption of food, drink, or wealth items, often to the point of waste or harm. In Christian moral tradition, it is considered one of the seven deadly sins. It is associated with a lack of self-control. It is important to understand this because hopefully you will see things in a different light. At Smarter Fitness LLC, I am trying to get this view out there. I can not stress this enough.
Most people don’t eat because they are hungry, or even wait until they are hungry before they start eating. It ends up being for reasons like boredom or satisfying an emotional feeling. Examples of this are having a bad day and raiding the icebox for some ice cream. You are now eating to satisfy an emotional feeling, and of course, the carbohydrates (sugars) trigger your endorphins and make you feel better until you get on the scale the next day. Another example is going to the movies and getting a huge box of popcorn, just because it is the thing to do when you see a movie. Maybe this is you, or maybe it is not. I just want to put this into perspective. What if you look into your daily life? In some way or another, this could be happening every day. Can you see how this could be bad?
I am not saying that doing these things is bad for you. It comes down to moderation. The term “cheat day” is normally used to excuse our indulgences and claim that we will work harder throughout the week. We eat fast food, potato chips, candy, or snacks because of convenience. We have been told that we will not have the energy if we don’t. How much food should we eat?
I want to ask you a couple of questions that will hopefully at least provide for some critical thinking.
Do you eat three or more meals a day? Are you a farmer working in the fields? Are you a coal miner working in the mines? Do you really think that your daily physical activity justifies three meals a day? Early coal miners who worked in the mines would eat breakfast and bring their canteens and lunch boxes to work. They would eat a cooked, healthy dinner when they got home. That is three meals. Probably not the best example because they died from black lung disease, but just looking at the food to workload it makes sense. Same thing with the farmers working the fields. For most people, our lives are nowhere as strenuous, and yet we continue to eat like it is. Living a life where you are not paying attention to the amount of food you eat is what is leading to the huge obesity problem worldwide.
Other factors like the processed and ultra-processed foods that are lacking real nutrients are another that should concern us all. I watch a lot of YouTube videos, and I’m not going to get into the topic of how many commercials I am seeing now. Since I work primarily off donations, my subscription services like Discovery Plus are not ad-free. I saw an ad the other day that, once I tell you about this, you will probably not be able to unsee it. It was an advertisement for a supplement to help you get rid of your stuck poop. I couldn’t believe that this is where we are in 2025. After seeing the advertisement, I thought, instead of buying this supplement, why not just stop eating the food that is giving you constipation? Stop buying the products claiming that your weight issues are based on not having mycobacteria in your stomach and need a probiotic. Isn’t it common sense to determine what factors are destroying your gut flora or microbiota?
Unfortunately, we are not conditioned to critically think anymore. Why not be preemptive, then just buying a product to fix the problem or deficiencies?
Here’s a short story. Hopefully, my brother doesn’t get too embarrassed that I am sharing this. When I was in high school, I went to a vocational school in construction. I got hom,e and my brother told me that there was a problem with our Doughboy pool in the backyard. He told me that when he went to turn off the metal valve, he got a shock (electrical). This didn’t make sense at first because it was connected on both ends by PVC, which is non-conductive. He told me, “I got shocked six times.” Maybe I wasn’t the nicest brother, but my response was, “Then stop touching the valve. Jeez, even cows are smart enough to stop touching the fence after they receive the first shock.” Now, if you are interested in the valve, I determined that the motor was electrifying the water, and he touched it provided the ground. Definitely a learning experience
I am sharing this story because it makes the point that any rational person who does something to cause harm they stop doing it. This is not the case anymore. Watch the advertisements. They are all about fixing a problem. Need to lose weight, don’t stop eating, take Ozempic, deficient in vitamin D, take this product that has 5000mg.
I hope that this article can lead us to better critical thinking. Thinking about what we are eating instead of getting a product or supplement to fix, like a band-aid, the issues.
