Join our free Facebook group to connect with others taking the #3MillionSteps2025 Challenge challenge!

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Are you struggling to lose that last bit of fat?

Research shows hitting the right number of daily steps can dramatically boost your metabolism and fat loss through NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis).

Learn how the engineering concept of the Compound Effect explains why small, daily increases in movement create exponential results over time - transforming not just your physique but your entire metabolism.

Main Takeaways:

• The Compound Effect shows how small daily improvements lead to exponential results

• 8,200 daily steps (3 million/year) hits the research-backed sweet spot for health benefits

• Walking enhances lifting results through improved recovery, nutrient partitioning, and metabolism

• Personalized progression rates ensure sustainable implementation based on your starting point

Benefits of walking according to research:

• Enhanced insulin sensitivity and blood sugar control

• Improved nutrient partitioning for muscle growth

• Better recovery between lifting sessions

• Reduced muscle soreness and inflammation

• Enhanced sleep quality and stress reduction

• Increased NEAT for easier fat loss

• Preserved muscle mass during cuts

• Better joint mobility and reduced stiffness

• More stable energy levels throughout the day

• Improved cognitive function for training focus

Remember: Walking alone isn't enough - you need progressive overload through strength training. But for those already lifting, increasing daily steps is the perfect complement to optimize your results.

Join our free Facebook group to connect with others taking the challenge and share your progress

3 Million Steps for Fat Loss: Harnessing the Compound Effect in 2025

Think your daily steps are insignificant for fat loss? Think again. Walking isn’t just a casual activity; it’s a powerful tool for fat loss, improved health, and better training results when used strategically. In this episode of Wits & Weights, we explore how the compound effect—a principle rooted in engineering—shows why small increases in daily movement can lead to massive transformations over time.

By targeting 3 million steps this year (about 8,200 per day), you’ll unlock benefits like better recovery, fat loss, and nutrient partitioning while building sustainable habits. Let’s dive into why daily movement matters, the science behind our 3 million steps target, and how you can implement this challenge today.

The Power of the Compound Effect

The compound effect, a key concept in engineering, shows how small changes can yield exponential results over time. In fitness, this principle applies directly to walking. Every additional step creates a cascade of positive changes:

1. Boosts NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis): Increases daily calorie burn.

2. Enhances metabolism: Improves insulin sensitivity and nutrient partitioning.

3. Promotes overall activity: Encourages more spontaneous movement and better cardiovascular health.

For example, taking 500 extra steps daily might seem minor, but over time, this compounds into significant health and fat loss benefits.

Why 3 Million Steps?

The goal of 3 million steps in 2025 boils down to hitting the evidence-based sweet spot for daily movement. A 2022 meta-analysis in The Lancet found the ideal range for health benefits is 7,000–9,000 steps per day. Our challenge of 3 million steps (8,200 steps/day) falls right in the middle.

Benefits of hitting this target:

• Metabolic improvements: Better insulin sensitivity, blood sugar control, and nutrient utilization.

• Fat loss support: Increased calorie burn (e.g., 120,000 calories/year for 3 million steps).

• Recovery and performance: Enhanced blood flow, reduced inflammation, and faster muscle recovery.

• Mental and physical health: Better stress management, improved sleep, and reduced systemic inflammation.

Building Your Step Goal System

Step 1: Track Your Baseline

Before setting a target, find out your current average steps by tracking for one to two weeks. Use any fitness tracker, phone app, or wearable device.

Step 2: Gradual Progression

Increase your steps incrementally.

• Add 500 steps per day each week if starting from a low baseline (e.g., 3,000 steps/day).

• If you’re closer to 6,000 steps/day, aim for 1,000 extra steps per day weekly.

Step 3: Create a Supportive Environment

Incorporate walking naturally into your daily routine:

• Take a 10-minute walk after meals.

• Use rest periods during workouts to add steps.

• Park farther from your destination or use stairs instead of elevators.

Step 4: Build a Feedback Loop

Track your steps and celebrate progress. Join the Wits & Weights Facebook group for accountability and community support. Share your journey using #3millionsteps2025 to connect with others taking the challenge.

Walking as a Catalyst, Not a Replacement

While walking provides incredible benefits, it’s important to pair it with strength training. Progressive overload through lifting is essential for building and maintaining muscle, which complements the metabolic benefits of daily movement. Walking is the catalyst that amplifies the results you’re already achieving in the gym.

The Compound Effect Goes Both Ways

Every decision compounds over time—whether it’s adding steps or skipping them. A small daily effort, like taking the stairs or walking after dinner, accumulates into big results over weeks and months. Conversely, neglecting these actions can lead to regression.

By embracing the compound effect in 2025, you’re not just adding steps—you’re creating a ripple effect for better health, fat loss, and fitness success.

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Transcript

Philip Pape: 0:01

Think your daily movement doesn't matter much for fat loss. Recent research shows that simply hitting 8,000 steps a day dramatically reduces mortality risk and boosts your metabolism. Today, we're using the engineering principle of compound effects to reveal why 3 million steps this year 2025, could transform your physique and health, and how small increases in daily movement create exponential results over time. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the podcast that blends evidence and engineering to help you build smart, efficient systems to achieve your dream physique. I'm your host, philip Pape, and today we're exploring how one engineering concept, the compound effect, reveals why taking just a few more steps each day this year could be the missing piece in your lifting and nutrition strategy. Now you're already putting in the work at the gym, I hope lifting weights, tracking your protein, focusing on progressive overload. If you're not doing those things, I would set those foundations up before you try to ramp up your steps. But if you're not paying attention to your daily movement, you're missing a crucial catalyst for better recovery, nutrient partitioning and your overall results. Recent research in the Lancet Public Health tells us that mortality risk decreases significantly as steps increase, especially up to about 8,000 to 10,000 steps per day. But most lifters fail to hit these targets because they're trying to change too much too fast, they're not consistent, they're missing the power of compound effects entirely. Today we're gonna break this down into three parts First, how the compound effect in engineering systems explains why small movement creates exponential results. Second, the science behind why our target of 3 million steps lands perfectly in that research-backed sweet spot and can amplify your training results. And finally, the exact system you'll use to build up to this goal this year, based on your current starting point. Before we dive in, if you're ready to join others who are taking up this challenge for themselves this 3 million steps in 2025, and you want some accountability, some support, a place to share and track your results, join our free Wits and Weights Facebook group. You can search Wits and Weights on Facebook or just Facebook. Facebook or click the link in the show notes and you will there find a community of like-minded people who are just sharing their progress. They're posting every day, they're supporting each other and you can look up the hashtag 3millionsteps2025 to specifically follow along in this challenge. Again, join our Facebook group, click the link in the show notes or search for it on Facebook.

Philip Pape: 2:49

Now let's start by understanding the compound effect from an engineering perspective. We like to do that on these Wednesday episodes. In engineering systems we see this principle everywhere, from thermal systems, where tiny improvements in insulation can lead to big savings in energy, to electronic amplifiers, where a small signal gets stronger through a feedback loop, and chemical reactions, where catalysts compound the rate of change. The key here? You don't have to understand these systems, but it's the principle behind them. They don't just add up changes linearly, they multiply them over time through positive feedback loops. James Clear captured this perfectly in Atomic Habits when he talked about how a 1% daily improvement compounds to a 37x improvement over a year. So it is an incredibly important principle that can definitely work with your body, because things in the fitness realm work the same way.

Philip Pape: 3:49

Every additional step that you take creates a cascade of positive feedback loops. Notice I'm not just talking about adding steps and that's the end of the story. Listen to this chain of events. First, when you move more, yes, you are increasing your what we call NEAT, your non-exercise activity thermogenesis. Higher NEAT then boosts your daily calorie burn. That higher calorie burn, or higher energy expenditure, improves a lot of things, such as your insulin sensitivity and, of course, the amount of food you can eat and the amount of fat loss you can achieve. Enhanced metabolism also makes future movement easier. You are now a healthier person. You have better cardiovascular health, better blood sugar control, on and on. And then all of this improved fitness leads to potentially more spontaneous activity that you may not even be aware of, further increasing your NEAT. This is why active people burn a lot more calories, even above and beyond what you would think. Because of this cascade, because of this compound effect of one little thing that upward spirals into multiple behaviors, sometimes unconsciously.

Philip Pape: 4:59

Now one of my clients, jerry I had him on the podcast a while back. He had already lifted for many years. He built a ton of muscle. He was carrying a little bit extra weight, so we wanted to work on fat loss, but he was only getting like 3,000 steps a day because he was an attorney on his butt all day behind a computer Raise your hand virtually if that is you and so we got his steps up to about 8,000 steps per day. It wasn't like 12. It was eight. And within I'll say within weeks, if not days his resting heart rate dropped dramatically. But he also saw that his expenditure climbed as he was in fat loss, which was almost a little I'll say a little bit surprising. It wasn't surprising for me I've seen this happen but the fact that he'd already built most of his genetic muscle that's what made it a little bit surprising the power of adding some steps, and that was just for his expenditure. We saw his health markers improve as well from the movement alone, before he had even lost very much weight at all. So keep that in mind if you're facing a plateau, if you're having issues with recovery, with training, with the amount of food you're eating, how powerful steps can be.

Philip Pape: 6:12

Now let's get into why this specific number. So I came up with this challenge. I'm calling it the 3 million steps challenge. It's not a challenge that you sign up for. It's just a goal that you can aim for for the year, and then you join our Facebook group and together we are going to help each other achieve it. And that specific number may not even be your goal. We'll get there. But I want to explain that number first. If we break it down to a daily number, it comes out to 8,200 steps per day. And here's where the research gets interesting. A 2022 meta-analysis in the Lancet showed that the sweet spot for health benefits lies between 7,000 and 9,000 steps per day. So this target of 8,200 lands right in the middle, right smack dab in the middle of this evidence-based range.

Philip Pape: 6:56

And for those of you already committed to strength training, which I'm going to mention multiple times today, you've got to be doing Walking is not enough, you've got to be strength training. The benefits directly support your goals and they compound them and they spiral them upward. So let's go through those benefits. I have quite a list based on what we've seen in the research. First are the metabolic benefits. Walking enhances your insulin sensitivity, which means better nutrient partitioning when you're trying to grow muscle. Now we know strength training also vastly improves this as well, so they go hand in hand. Related to this is it improves blood sugar control, which helps you with recovery, reducing fat storage as well. If you have historical issues with blood sugar maybe you're pre-diabetic or diabetic it's as powerful, if not more so, than metformin, which is the leading type 2 diabetes medication.

Philip Pape: 7:50

When you go for a walk after a meal so that's always the first place I advise people putting their walks is after a meal. It increases your NEAT, which we mentioned before, and that can account for up to half yes, half of your daily energy expenditure if you are a big time walker, and it also helps with your appetite regulation energy expenditure if you are a big time walker, and it also helps with your appetite regulation. So it just naturally helps you get in better tune with your hunger signals and makes the intuitive aspect of eating food easier. While you're tracking and getting to that point and I see this all the time with clients who increase their steps they're like wow, I didn't know it would help me with my yeah, my BMs and my digestion, but also with my hunger signals. Awesome, so those are metabolic.

Philip Pape: 8:29

Then we have the recovery and performance benefits that I don't think get talked about enough. For example, it enhances your blood flow between your training sessions. So it can actually not only help your muscles recover and repair, but also reduces DOMS, right Delayed onset muscle soreness. It's a great way to just kind of mitigate some of the soreness that you might get, which you shouldn't always be sore, but if you're in fat loss or you're doing a new movement or certain high rep work, I get it. You could, you could be sore. Maybe a type of person that has some extra cardio in there, you might get sore. So this is helpful. It also lowers systemic inflammation, which actually supports better adaptation to training, which is more of an acute inflammation, right, like training is an inflammatory response to the muscle tearing, but we don't, which we want, but we don't want systemic inflammation, so walking actually lowers that. It also improves your sleep quality.

Philip Pape: 9:21

Okay, if you're having trouble with sleep or getting good sleep quality and you're not walking enough, adding some walks in, especially later in the day, not too late, could be helpful. See what it does for your sleep, and we know how important sleep then is for everything else Muscle growth, fat loss, you know, avoiding fat gain in your belly, all those things. And then it helps reduce your stress. Just walking itself can be stress relieving in many different ways right Walking out in nature, walking while you listen to a podcast or music, just being with your thoughts, being with people, being in the sun. But it also just naturally reduces your chronic stress physiologically and that supports better testosterone and better growth hormone production. We see how all this stuff is connected. And then the last, not last. I actually have four categories here. So the third category benefits from walking, from steps, is the fat loss support which I know a lot of you came to listen to this based on my title, but it is very helpful and it's a great incentive.

Philip Pape: 10:15

So walking creates a calorie deficit. Well, it creates a calorie deficit. If you were previously at maintenance and now you add more steps, you're obviously going to burn more calories. Something like if you add 4,000 steps a day, you might burn an extra, say, 150 calories a day. That is not nothing. That is pretty significant because that means if you were maintaining, well, now you could eat 150 more calories of food to maintain, or you can just eat the same and actually start losing you know, maybe a half a pound a week or not quite just by adding 4,000 steps a day.

Philip Pape: 10:46

Um, success studies show us that successful weight loss maintainers right, people who lose weight and fat and they maintain it. They average about 11 to 12,000 steps and again, you don't have to go that high. If you're doing a lot of other things, it's not going to be as necessary. I do like those numbers if you can get there, but we're focusing on that 8,000 step minimum today and then over a year. If you, let's say, you got 3 million steps, that is equivalent to about 120,000 calories burned right, and again, that's total. Obviously, if you're getting 4,000 steps now, and you'd go up to eight. You're getting 60,000 extra calories, not 120, but you get what I'm saying. Just do the math. So, as far as fat loss goes, those are helpful.

Philip Pape: 11:29

It also helps preserve muscle during fat loss phases because you are increasing your energy flux. You're keeping your metabolism higher than it otherwise would be, which then allows you to eat more of everything protein, carbs, everything that supports muscle and helps avoid catabolism, the breakdown of muscle. Super amazing thing that you might not be thinking about. It's like well, if I'm in the same calorie deficit, what does it matter? Well, wouldn't you rather be in the same calorie deficit with 200 more calories a day? Yes, of course you would. And finally, it supports insulin sensitivity, which we mentioned before, but that also makes your body more efficient at using nutrients, which can be helpful during fat loss. And then, finally, we have lifting-specific benefits Better joint mobility, reduced stiffness between training sessions and, by the way, the best thing you can do for your mobility and joints is lift weights.

Philip Pape: 12:19

So don't take this to mean like, oh, we're gonna walk to offset how weights hurt your joints. No, that's not the mentality. The mentality is we need to lift weights. That supports our joints, and then walking also supports our joints and helps with the blood flow, and all that. It also improves your cardiovascular function, of course, which helps with your work capacity, which helps you get through workouts and get all the reps without feeling out of breath. It gives you more stable energy levels throughout the day, partly because of the blood sugar control, and it gives you better cognitive function for focusing during intense training sessions.

Philip Pape: 12:51

And I didn't even mention the mental health benefits. I don't know why I didn't have that in my notes, but the mental health benefits of walking are also well-demonstrated and worthwhile even just for itself. I did mention stress, but anyway, now I wanna be crystal clear again Walking alone is not enough. You absolutely need to be lifting weights with progressive overload to build and maintain muscle mass. But for those of you who are already doing this, increasing daily steps is like adding fuel to the fire. It's adding a catalyst to those efforts. That's the compound effect, and I see it with clients all the time. They add more walking in and so many things start to improve, almost surprisingly, like they'll fill out their check-in form and they'll say well, you know, I just all of a sudden felt like I had a lot more energy and I was actually walking more this week. Like well, there's probably a reason for that, and so any one of these benefits might apply to you and they're worthwhile in terms of a reason to walk, all right.

Philip Pape: 13:48

So here's where we get a little bit more practical right. Just like in engineering systems, we want to calibrate based on where you are starting from and where your baseline is. So, even though 3 million steps for the year equals 8,200 steps a day, if you are currently getting 3,000 steps a day, I don't want you to try to get 8,000 steps this week. Just add 500 steps this week and then add 500 more and then keep going. Now, if you're already getting, say, 6,000 steps, well, maybe you're at the point where you can add a thousand steps this week instead of just 500. You know, it's kind of like progressive overload for walking and just gradually progress. Allow the compound effect to start working.

Philip Pape: 14:26

Don't overwhelm your schedule or your stress or your lifting or anything by feeling like this is a burden. We don't want it to be a negative. We want the walking just to be an easy little thing. They're adding in and, by the way, 500 steps, that's like a quarter mile. You can add that almost by just changing some of the way that you do normal day-to-day activities, your chores, where you park, when you go to the store, taking the stairs instead of the elevator, pacing around the house, when you're on a call, it may not even require a walk, quote unquote. But then to get more steps than that, yes, it helps to have structured walks in there. So how do we do this?

Philip Pape: 15:01

All right, step one is to get that baseline. If you don't even know what you're getting, that's step one. Track your current steps for a week or two using any old device that can do that. They're all fine. Your phone, a wearable, an expensive wearable, cheap wearable they all work and you'll get a good average right.

Philip Pape: 15:17

Some days are high, sometimes are low. Don't beat yourself up just because you had a low day, because then you might have a high day. Don't try to make it up. Just see what your average is and then, based on where you honestly are now, you can choose how you want to increase from there and set your new floor. And then make sure that you are doing this intentionally around your schedule with what's really going to happen in your life. Don't just assume you can crank up the steps without any thought, right? So that's step one. Step two is so. In other words, I want you to not feel like you're forcing yourself to do it. I want you to set up the environment to help you be successful.

Philip Pape: 16:00

Park farther from the gym or the grocery store. Take a 10-minute walk right after you train. You know, since you're already at the gym, like, just add the walk to your gym session. Think of it as a cool down, or do it before the gym session, that's fine. Think of it as a warm up. Schedule walking meetings if that's a thing you can do. Add a 10 minute walk after meals, or even a five minute walk if that's all you can do.

Philip Pape: 16:23

Here's a hack that I like Use your rest periods between your sets in the gym and just walk around. I mean, unless it's just like massively intense, like super heavy deadlifts, where you're just gassed and you need to sit, and that's better for you, unless it's that, use the periods between the sets to just get a bunch of steps. You might get two or 3,000 steps during your training session just from that. And then the final thing here is now that you've tracked your baseline, you've set a target and you've set up your environment for success is to build that feedback loop. All right, log those steps Now. Again, if you're using a phone, it does it for you pretty much. I like an app called pedometer plus plus. Uh, it's on iPhone, I don't know if it's on Android, but it's a free app. You can donate to them too, but it's free, and it has a widget for your uh what do you call a complication for your Apple watch, so that you could set a target and see how you are tracking against the target.

Philip Pape: 17:18

Another way to build a feedback loop is to join our Facebook group and share your progress. That's actually one of the most powerful ways is community support and accountability. Jump on in there, show us your pretty face, take a picture of you walking, video of you walking outside, whatever. Throw a screenshot of your GPS, track whatever floats your boat, and we'll just all jump in and give you the applause and the recognition, but also the encouragement to keep going and help with any issues along the way. Also, look at how your increased steps helps everything else.

Philip Pape: 17:52

So you should be tracking your lifting performance at a minimum. Is it helping with that? Is it helping with your heart rate? Right, you're probably tracking. That was part of your. If you have a wearable, is it helping with your sleep, with your energy, with all the? Tie them together as an incentive for why increasing your step count is so helpful. And then always celebrate achievements. So if you went from 3000 average and now you're up to 3,500 average, celebrate that. It is worth celebrating.

Philip Pape: 18:24

All right, the last fascinating kind of twist here I want you to think about with this compound effect is that it works both ways. In other words, if you make a choice to take the elevator instead of the stairs and then you keep doing that, that's going to compound over a year in the opposite direction. That's 365 opportunities. If it's every day for the effect to work either for or against you, it's like a decision tree. So it's just like how missing one workout is not going to kill your gains, but if you keep skipping sessions, it's going to cause you to detrain your daily movement. Choices accumulate into either progress or regression. So this is the year to think about which direction you want to go. The compound effect is not just a abstract principle, right, it's a fundamental law of nature. It really is. We see it everywhere and by applying it to your movement through the 3 million steps challenge. You're working with those natural laws to amplify your results instead of fight against them.

Philip Pape: 19:18

All right, join our Wits and Weights Facebook group to connect with others taking the hashtag 3 million steps 2025 challenge. You could share your progress. You could support, be part of a community that understands the power of not quick fixes, but small, consistent actions. Click the link in the show notes to join the group or search Wits and Weights on Facebook. Until next time, keep using those wits lifting some weights and Weights on Facebook. Until next time, keep using those lifting some weights and remember every step counts. I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.