Is walking 6 miles a day good for you?
6 miles is 9.7 km. As a daily walk, it is a long walk that takes real time every day. Here is what it means in steps, time and calories, and what the research says about walking that much.
The short answer
Yes, if you have built up to it. Six miles is about 12,600 to 15,000 steps, depending on your height, which puts you in the top “highly active” tier of step research and well past the point where the large studies find most of the benefit has already arrived. It takes about two hours of walking a day, so the question is less whether it is good for you than whether it fits your life.
6 miles in steps, time and calories
Steps depend on your stride, which depends mostly on height:
| Height | Steps in 6 miles |
|---|---|
| 155 cm (5 ft 1 in) | about 15,000 |
| 165 cm (5 ft 5 in) | about 14,100 |
| 175 cm (5 ft 9 in) | about 13,300 |
| 185 cm (6 ft 1 in) | about 12,600 |
Time depends on pace:
| Pace | Time for 6 miles |
|---|---|
| Easy, 4 km/h (2.5 mph) | 2 h 25 min |
| Average, 5 km/h (3.1 mph) | 1 h 56 min |
| Brisk, 6 km/h (3.7 mph) | 1 h 37 min |
Calories depend mostly on body weight. For an adult of average height at an average pace, counting all the energy used during the walk:
| Body weight | Calories for 6 miles |
|---|---|
| 55 kg (121 lb) | about 450 |
| 70 kg (154 lb) | about 570 |
| 85 kg (187 lb) | about 700 |
| 100 kg (220 lb) | about 820 |
These come from a model of walking energy built on height, weight and speed (Ludlow and Weyand, 2016), the same one behind our calories per mile page. Our walking calculator works it out for your own height, weight and pace.
What the research says about 6 miles a day
No study or guideline measures walking in miles. The big studies count steps, so the step figures above are how 6 miles connects to the evidence:
- A 2025 review in The Lancet Public Health (Ding and colleagues) found that, compared with 2,000 steps a day, people taking 7,000 had a 47% lower risk of dying during the studies, and lower risks of heart disease, dementia, type 2 diabetes, depressive symptoms and falls. For early death, heart disease, dementia and falls, the curve flattened at around 5,000 to 7,000 steps.
- A 2022 meta-analysis (Paluch and colleagues, 15 studies, 47,471 adults) found the risk of dying levelled off at about 6,000 to 8,000 steps a day for adults 60 and over, and 8,000 to 10,000 for younger adults.
Six miles a day is well beyond the levelling-off points in both reviews: 12,600 to 15,000 steps against 8,000 to 10,000 for adults under 60 and 6,000 to 8,000 for adults 60 and over. For deaths from heart disease and stroke, cancer deaths, type 2 diabetes and depressive symptoms, the 2025 review found more steps kept helping in a straight line, so the extra miles are not wasted. They just add less per mile than the first few.
These studies follow people rather than assign them to walk, so they show a strong link, not proof that the steps alone made the difference.
For comparison, a 2017 study of postal workers in Glasgow found that those walking about 15,000 steps a day on their rounds had normal waist sizes, blood fats and blood sugar. Six miles of deliberate walking on top of a normal day puts you around there. If you want most of the benefit in less time, 3 miles a day gets you most of the way.
Does it count toward the exercise guidelines?
The US guidelines ask adults for at least 150 minutes a week of moderate activity. Walking counts as moderate when it is brisk: the CDC puts that at about 3 mph (4.8 km/h) or faster. At that pace, 6 miles takes about 2 h 0 min, so 6 miles a day of brisk walking is several times the weekly minimum. Easy strolling still adds steps, but it doesn’t count toward the 150 minutes.
Building up to it
Build up to six miles rather than starting there. Add about a mile a week, keep the pace easy at first, and take a lighter day now and then. Good shoes and socks matter at this distance, and blisters and sore feet are a sign to slow the increase, not to push through.
Walking with a finish line
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. The walk you would have skipped becomes the one that gets you to the next milestone.
At 6 miles a day, Lukla to Everest Base Camp takes about 6 days. Everest Base Camp is free. Get reTrek.