 Hey everybody, Dr. O here. So how important is walking? Increasing physical activity by walking more is one of the foundations of my fat loss program for a reason because it works. I have failed you if you don't see that by the end of this course. You see there's lots of things that I recommend but walking is a big, big part of it. Intermittent fasting was the most powerful tool that I used to get into a calorie deficit. But walking and sleeping were the two biggest changes that I made early on in my weight loss journey. I will share a lot more about the link between walking and weight loss later. But there's a ton of evidence that supports the fact that walking is one of the most important things that you can do to live a healthy life. But can you walk your way to a longer life? Walking more will help you lose weight and live a better life but will it be a longer life? Are step counts linked to all cause mortality or dying for any reason? Let's dive in and take a look. So what does the science say here? Daily step count and all cause mortality. A dose response meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies, so a meta-analysis of study of studies. Seven studies, there were 28,141 total participants, 175,370 person years and there were 2,310 deaths during the time of this analysis. The researchers found that the rates of all cause mortality were about 12% lower for every extra 1,000 steps per day that people walked up to 17,000 steps. So if you increase your step count by 1,000 steps per day, your risk of dying of anything all cause mortality drops 12%. More than 17,000 steps per day is probably even better but there isn't much data to look at because most people don't walk that much. Who knows? 60,000 steps per day might make you immortal. I highly doubt it though, but at some point the juice just isn't worth the squeeze. We just can't walk 24 hours a day. But let's look at how powerful this is. Walking 16,000 steps per day was associated with a 66% reduction in all cause mortality compared to walking just 2,700 steps per day. So 2,700 steps a day isn't very many but it's not a lot less than the average American is walking. 16,000 steps definitely doable if you try hard. This means that you have a 200% higher rate of all cause mortality if you walk 2,700 steps per day compared to walking 16,000 steps per day. This is a massive deal. Let's compare it to a few things. Compare these findings to smoking. If you smoke, you have a 70-80% higher rate of all cause mortality. If you're obese, if you have a BMI of 40, which is morbid obesity or class 3 obesity, that's associated with a 74% greater all cause mortality risk compared to a BMI of 23. This means that you can make the argument that walking only 2,700 steps per day is more dangerous for you than smoking or living with obesity. It's difficult to overstate the importance of simply being on your feet and moving a lot, which is what we're here talking about. Do we really need to walk 10,000 steps per day? I just got done telling you that 16,000 to 17,000 steps per day might be optimal, but this might not be practical or even possible for you in the beginning. That's perfectly fine. Don't let these big numbers scare you. You can make a lot of progress with far fewer steps. Let me show you here. You see that the studies are plotted on these lines here. You have steps per day on the bottom and hazard ratio on the side. It is true that the death risk continues to drop with every step, but you can also see a point of diminishing returns. Most of the health improvements actually happen before we even reach that 10,000 steps. I think 10,000 steps is a fine goal for most people to shoot for, even though you could make an argument that more would be better. What are our key takeaways here? Walking is one of the most powerful tools you have if you want to live a long and healthy life. If you tell me that you want to live longer, one of the first things I'll tell you to do is to walk more or to sleep better. Those would be the two big ones for me as far as easy things to do. Easy being a relative term, I guess. What are our action steps? Begin by finding a way to walk an extra 3,000 steps per day. No matter where you're at now, try to increase it by 3,000 steps per day. Getting to 7,000 steps per day is where we see that change in our appetite. That's a really good early goal to shoot for. 10,000 steps per day is a great goal for most people. But if you want to aim for 16,000 steps or more, if you're trying to maximize weight loss and health improvements, this is the perfect time to start focusing on solutions. How are you going to get to 10,000 steps and beyond by becoming a neat freak? All the things we've been talking about in this course. All right. I hope this one helps. Have a wonderful day. Be blessed.