I have nothing against Bill Bryson but I admit I couldn’t make it all the way through his recent book The Body: A Guide for Occupants. There was just too much about death and decay, which reminded me of the death and decay going on in my own body; and frankly I needed no reminding.
But I did read the chapter titled ‘On the level: Bipedalism and exercise’ because it had some stuff in it about walking. Most of it was pretty well known to pedalists such as you and me but I my eye was caught by the information that ‘Today the average American walks only about a third of a mile a day – and that’s walking of all types, including around the house and workplace … According to the Economist, some American companies have begun offering reward to employees who log a million miles a year on an activity tracker suck as a Fitbit. That seems a pretty ambitious number but actually works out to just 2,740 steps a day or a little over a mile,’
Those must very short steps - 1.92 feet per step by my calculations: that is not the step of anybody engaged in actually walking.
But then Bryson was in the Times last weekend saying ‘I’m very active. I walk between 16,000 and 20,000 steps a day.’ I have no reason to doubt him, and nobody believes that walking in itself makes you thin, but I would say he certainly doesn’t LOOK like a man who walks 20,000 steps a day.
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