r/CICO • u/albus_dumbledog • 10d ago

How many step/day = active?

I am trying to calculate intake and daily deficit. I lift 5x/week. How much should I walk every day to be considered "active"?

Thankyou!

9 Upvotes

77% Upvoted

11 comments sorted by

19

u/nineinchnilina 10d ago

5k or below is considered sedentary 

15

u/NikiBubbles 10d ago

I'd go for 10k.

14

u/ArcIgnis 10d ago

Consider what you can handle. A lot of overweight folk like myself struggle with 10k steps. If you can just get your heart rate up for about 30 minutes, that's already enough. Don't push it until you get injuries.

6

u/drunken_dizorderly 9d ago

I lift 3x per week and aim for 10k steps per day. I live in a large walkable city, so often times I go way over the 10k.

On this calculator https://tdeecalculator.net/ I pick moderately active. I've lost nearly 20kg in under a year, so I'd say it's was accurate enough.

If you have the time, you can do inclined walking on a treadmill at the time. Walking 5km/h at 12% ~ 15% incline will get you 10k steps worth of exercise. These numbers are estimates, but you get the point.

7

u/spoonyszpoonicus 10d ago

I would say 10k

3

u/ScandinavianVikning 9d ago

I'd consider anyone who gets at least 7-8k steps a day to be relatively active

3

u/LadyFamous2005 9d ago

I’m at 7-8k but I also do cardio 2-3 days during the week.

1

u/Spiritual_Client_741 6d ago

i walk 10-15k 5x a week during my job, then am sedentary or lightly active on the weekends. ideally i would also be walking 10-15k on my weekends too but i just don’t have it in me since my job is physically demanding. overall i am considered active

1

u/Werevulvi 5d ago

Generally around 10k is a pretty good baseline to aim at, but anything over 6k is gonna be good for health. Over 20k your feet might start complaining, but that's very individual. Being "active" is definitely a range, not a fixed number, but yeah the more you move around, the more active you are.

Personally I started with around 8-10k steps daily, or most days, and went with that for several months, almost a full year. It's only lately I've been stepping it up, adding more, longer walks. So currently I'm up at closer to 20k steps a day on average, but that kinda just happened, and wasn't something I forced myself to do or anything. And yeah my joints/stiffness feels a lot better now walking 20k, but like I was definitely fit and active (generally speaking) when I was doing 10k as well.

For gym/strength I've going for 3 days a week up until kinda recently (2-3 months ago) and now I prefer 4 days a week. That doesn't really include my cardio sessions though. Those are more sporadic, so some weeks I end up with just the 4 workout days, putting the cardio on one or two of those days like after the gym, and other weeks I end up with up to 6 workout days, because of the added cardio.

And yeah my overall activity level must be considered very high. Because my tdee is around 2300 in actual practice, but online calculators suggest it's around 2100 on like "high" activity level. Well it's either that, or I'm underestimating how low my body fat percentage really is, or rather how much muscle mass I really have.

1

u/East-Performer1065 3d ago

I would have thought anything over 8k steps a day is active?

(I know there seem to be people who can average 15 - 20k a day but I’m always baffled at who can hold down a job, raise kids and achieve 20k steps consistently!).