How many steps a day to lose weight?
The short answer
There is no step count that guarantees weight loss, and no study gives one. What the research does show is consistent: walking on its own usually leads to modest weight loss, more walking leads to more, and it works best together with eating less. The useful question is not “how many steps” but “how many more steps than I take now”, and the evidence below answers that.
What the research found
Walking alone, without changing diet. A meta-analysis of pedometer walking programs (Richardson and colleagues, 2008) pooled nine studies with 307 people in programs that added walking and changed nothing about food. On average, people lost about 1.3 kg (2.8 lb) over programs that ran a median of 16 weeks, roughly 0.05 kg a week. Longer programs led to more weight loss than shorter ones. The authors’ conclusion: pedometer walking programs result in a modest amount of weight loss.
How much activity, by the American College of Sports Medicine. The ACSM’s position on physical activity and weight (Donnelly and colleagues, 2009) reviewed the evidence and found:
- 150 to 250 minutes a week of moderate activity, such as brisk walking, helps prevent weight gain, but on its own gives only modest weight loss.
- More than 250 minutes a week has been associated with clinically significant weight loss.
- 150 to 250 minutes a week improves weight loss when it is combined with moderately eating less.
- After weight loss, people who do more than 250 minutes a week keep the weight off better, although the ACSM notes this comes from observational studies, not controlled trials.
That, in steps
At a brisk walking pace of about 100 steps a minute:
| Weekly activity | Minutes a day | Extra steps a day | What the ACSM found |
|---|---|---|---|
| 150 to 250 min a week | about 21-36 | about 2,100-3,600 | Prevents weight gain, modest loss on its own |
| More than 250 a week | 36 and up | 3,600 and up | Associated with clinically significant loss |
The important word is extra. These are steps on top of what you already walk in an ordinary day, because the studies measured the effect of adding activity. If your phone says you average 5,000 steps now, the second row means walking 8,600 or more on most days.
What those steps burn
For an adult of average height walking at a normal pace, from a model of walking energy cost built on height, weight and speed:
| Body weight | 1,000 steps | An extra 30 minutes |
|---|---|---|
| 60 kg (132 lb) | about 27 kcal | about 96 kcal |
| 90 kg (198 lb) | about 40 kcal | about 143 kcal |
Heavier bodies burn more for the same walk. These numbers count only the extra energy the walking takes, not what your body burns anyway. The walking calculator works it out for your own weight and pace.
Why simple calorie maths overpromises
Simple rules that turn every 3,500 calories into a pound of weight assume the body never adapts. Work from the US National Institutes of Health (Hall and colleagues, 2011) shows it does. In their model of how weight responds to a change in energy balance, the response is slow, with weight taking around a year to make half of its eventual change. So the calories in the table above are real, but they do not add up to weight on a straight line, and a few weeks is too short to judge.
What you eat matters as much as how much you walk
Walking is one side of energy balance. What you eat is the other, and the ACSM’s own finding is that activity improves weight loss most when it comes together with moderately eating less. This page is about the walking side, because that is what we know about. For the eating side, a doctor or a registered dietitian is the right person to ask.
Can you lose weight just by walking?
Yes, modestly, according to the evidence above: about 1.3 kg over four months on average in the pedometer studies, with more for people who keep going longer and walk more. Walking also matters for what happens after weight loss, where the ACSM found that people with more than 250 minutes of activity a week keep weight off better.
A goal for every walk
The hard part of walking more is not the walking. It is having a reason to go out today. reTrek gives your walks a finish line: pick a famous route, like the Camino de Santiago or the Inca Trail, and every walk moves you further along it, with a short film about the place waiting at each milestone. You stop looking for a spare moment to walk and start walking to reach the next milestone.
Everest Base Camp is free. Get reTrek.