Your step count is boring me to tears (and probably everyone else too)

Sydney Morning Herald

20-06-2025

Once upon a time, in the distant year of 2005, when it was inconceivable that statement belts would ever be unfashionable, Special K launched a wildly exciting promotion: buy an enormous box of cereal and a pedometer might just appear inside! My memory of the specifics is a little hazy (2005, to me, will always be the era of Going Out Tops and little else), but I'm pretty sure it was a one-in-every-three-box-wins-a-pedometer situation.
Fuelled by the twin desires to get our hands on this technology and to do so in the cheapest possible way, my housemate and I went off to the supermarket. We weighed a bunch of Special K boxes and emerged victorious with our very own pedometers. I wore mine to university a few times, then quickly grew discouraged that my purely incidental exercise wasn't quite hitting the mythical 10,000 steps a day goal. So I stopped wearing it, then I lost it altogether, and never gave it another thought until, well, now.
If this rather tedious tale were to unfold in a contemporary setting, things would be quite different. For one, almost everyone has some form of step-measuring device in their watch, Fitbit or smartphone now, so there would be no need for cereal boxes. But also, since the heady days of boho chic and Kim Beazley's last dance (not together), the world has changed. We in the West have evolved into body data narcissists. Thanks to our smartphones, smartwatches and Fitbits, we have become obsessed not just with compiling but aggressively sharing operational information about our bodies with the world at large.
Step counting is the most profoundly stupid example of this. Did you know the idea of walking 10,000 steps a day isn't rooted in modern science at all? It originated from a Japanese clock company that created a pedometer for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. They chose 10,000 steps because it was a nice, round, memorable number. The notion that this is an achievable, desirable and genuinely beneficial health goal is about as meaningful as feeling 'so special' after a bowl of cereal. While, of course, physical movement has proven benefits, the core objective of modern fitness is just part of a convenient marketing ploy.
All right, so we've established that the whole premise of step counting is flawed. And that would be fine if it were just one of those we things knew but nobody talked about (like Maroon 5 having three Grammys). But these days, it's apparently a crucial part of the step-counting process to just blah blah blah about it.
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If my Special K story happened today, I'd wear the step counter constantly. I'd talk endlessly about it, doing annoying things like announcing to the office, 'All right, I'm going for a walk to get my steps up!' or 'I'll get the photocopying, my steps are way down today.' I'd even proclaim, 'Hey everyone, did you know that I WALK?' And I'd never lose interest or stop wearing that pedometer. In fact, when I died, I'd request in my will that someone else put on my Apple Watch, so my steps could continue for time immemorial.
This is because the incessant monitoring of step counts (along with sleep scores and exercise loads) has become intricately linked to our identity. Talking about your daily steps tells everyone that you have a health regimen and the emotional, mental, and financial capacity to indulge in this particular brand of self-analysis. It's showing off. A stupid flex, like carrying a huge water bottle or constantly eating fruit. Yes, I get it, you're healthy; now, please leave me alone with my idleness and my tablespoon of butter dipped in the communal sugar.