Tracking daily step counts can be useful for weight management

Step counts have an inconsistent relationship with weight loss. Photo: Getty

Over the past decade, smartphones have become ubiquitous not just for sending texts and staying abreast of news, but also for monitoring daily activity levels.

Among the most common, and arguably the most meaningful, tracking method for daily physical activity is step counting.

Counting steps is far more than a fad: The US Department of Health and Human Services dedicated a sizeable portion of its most recent physical activity guidelines to documenting the relationship between daily step counts and several chronic diseases.

Unfortunately, the guidelines have little to say about how step counts might be used to aid in weight management, an outcome of critical importance given the high rates of overweight and obese people in the US.

In the early 1980s, fewer than 14 per cent of adults in the US were classified as obese.

Today, just over 40 years later, the prevalence of obesity is greater than 40 per cent in the adult population, and current trends suggest that almost half of adults in the US will be obese by 2030.

I am a professor of exercise science at Kennesaw State University, and our lab has been conducting studies examining relationships among step counts and a number of health outcomes.