I used to regularly walk an average of about 11,000 steps per day. This was before the pandemic. I had a Fitbit. Part of that average came from physically going to work at the University of Minnesota. I’d drive to work, and to avoid paying $5 for parking, I’d try to find a spot on the street at one of the few public research universities in America centered within a large urban area.
Prior to 2020, more than 60,000 students and 25,000 faculty and staff were on campus each day. Parking was like one of those scratch lottery tickets. You’d spend all this time scratching the stupid foil off, searching for a trio of 7s or 5 ducks and a 3-legged rabbit or something, and in the end you’d just end up with little specks of waxy gray foil stuck to your pants with no place to park (no analogy is perfect).
So I would drive around for about 5 minutes or so searching, and if I found one it was usually about a half-mile away from my office. So that’s about 1,200 steps or so, each way (also, about once a week I would forget where I parked, and that could add upwards of another 1,000 steps). Otherwise, I’d submit to the cheap $5 lot, which was still about 800 steps from my office.
I’d also usually go to the gym over lunch for a quick workout, which would easily add another 3,000 steps between the walk to the gym and the workout. The gym was huge, five stories, with the building footprint about the size of a football field. Just going to the locker room and then to the weight room was a workout in itself, and after doing only that, if you wanted, you could just sit in the steam room and call it quits.
Too stark a mortal reminder
Truthfully, I never liked going to that gym. As someone who used to have the hair and physique of an athlete, it has been difficult to face the reality of aging, and with mirrors everywhere, that reality was blindingly reflected in the gym. It was impossible not to notice yourself, not to notice the contrast of your body with the bodies of the young students (and the contrast of your current body with the memory of your former body that still lingers—if not prevails—in your mind’s eye), their whole limber lives ahead of them, their stupid glowing skin and metabolisms that yet resist weight gain rather than welcome it with the yawning mouths of we, the aged and better budgeted, for whom food—especially cheese priced by the ounce—has become one of life’s primary pleasures.
Exercise in your late 40s kind of feels like that Greek myth of Sisyphus story, where you keep pushing this boulder up the hill, thinking maybe you’ll get stronger for doing it over and over again, but instead you twist your ankle, or you pull something in your lower back, and the boulder rolls right over you and back down the hill and you’re in worse shape than when you started, even though maybe you got a lot of steps in.
The point I was trying to make though, is that when I first started working from home I was shocked at my step count. Without physically going to work, my daily average, even with a mile long walk around the neighborhood, would dip to 4-5,000 steps per day. I was basically a potato with shoes.
But recently I came across some new information that has me feeling better about myself: on average, Americans walk 3,000 to 4,000 steps a day. In 2024, I averaged a little over 5,000 steps per day (I no longer have a smartwatch, but my phone does a reasonable job counting my steps).
I found that info in a new study from the University of Minnesota School of Public Health that showed that physical activity levels are a better predictor of mortality than obesity, diabetes, smoking, and even heart disease. In fact, it said, (somewhat condescendingly, I thought): “Of all physical activity measures, total steps during the most active 10 hours throughout the day are the strongest predictors of mortality. The message here is clear: moving more will benefit your long-term health.”
I already knew I needed to get moving again, so my goal is to average 8,000 steps per day for all of 2025. So far I’m just maintaining that average at 8,050 steps or so. One day on the couch and I’m under, back at the gym the next to push the boulder.
But lately I developed plantar fasciitis. If you’ve never had it, it occasionally feels like someone is jabbing a knife into your heel. I’d always heard it was something people who ran or otherwise exercised a lot got. But I’m just walking, and not really even that much—twice the average American, sure—but have you seen us, the average American? We are not exactly the stuff of Greek legend.
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