Hitting 10,000 steps a day is a popular fitness goal for millions.
But a less time-consuming alternative may be more effective when it comes to losing weight, if new research is to be believed.
For building ‘micro walks’ into your day could help burn more calories than plodding along steadily, a study has suggested.
Italian scientists, who tracked the movements of 10 healthy adults, discovered that walking in 10 to 30-second bouts used up to 60 per cent more energy than covering the same distance in one go.
Results showed that ‘breaking up sedentary time with brief strolls’ could ‘greatly increase energy expended daily and improve health’, the experts claimed.
Francesco Luciano, an expert in physiology at the University of Milan and study lead author said: ‘When we walk for shorter bouts, we use more energy and consume more oxygen to cover the same distance.
‘We found that when starting from rest, a significant amount of oxygen is consumed just to start walking.
‘It’s like having a car that consumes more fuel during the first few kilometres than it does afterwards.’
In the study, researchers monitored the volunteers as they exercised on a stair climber and a treadmill.
The exercises covered three different speeds with bouts lasting from 10 seconds to four minutes.
Scientists then recorded how much oxygen each person consumed and calculated the metabolic demands of each walk.
They found that more energy was needed at the start of each walk, to get going and warm the body up, than later in the exercise when the body was already moving.
Writing in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, they added: ‘The message pertains to our daily lives: whenever possible, we should break up periods of sitting by taking a few steps.’
The World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends adults get at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise a week — or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise.
Sedentary lifestyles in the UK, with Brits spending their workhours deskbound, then sitting in a train or car on their way home to sit down in front of the TV, have been estimated to kill thousands each year.
One 2019 estimate put the annual death toll at 70,000 people a year with the health issues caused costing the NHS £700million each year to treat.
A US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study in 2018 estimated almost one in 10 (8.3 per cent) of adult deaths in the US were caused by physical inactivity.
The WHO puts the annual global death toll from physical inactivity at around 2million per year, making it in the running to be among the top 10 leading causes of global death and disability.
Physical inactivity has been long linked to health problems like cardiovascular disease as well contributing to health problems like obesity, itself linked to an increased risk of type 2 diabetes and some cancers.
Cardiovascular disease is usually associated with the build-up of fatty deposits inside the arteries that can lead to dangerous blockages that can trigger a heart attack or stroke.
Stokes are considered a leading cause of both death and disability in the UK, killing about 38,000 people per year and disabling many more.
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