Every day when I look in the mirror, I’m reminded that I should work out. I see fat building up around my stomach, my face looking puffier, and my neck blending into my jawline. Luckily, I don’t look overweight, but I still don’t feel comfortable taking my shirt off—my pale skin and “dad bod” make me self-conscious.

More importantly, I’m reminded of how physically unhealthy I feel because my lower back always hurts, especially on long days of standing. I’m usually twisting and shifting to get small, relieving pops from my joints. As the day goes on, my knees start to hurt from carrying my own weight, and my body gets stiff whether I’m standing, sitting, or lying down.

And the more these pains occur, the more I choose to stay in bed or sit everywhere I go. I always have to lean on something, otherwise my body quickly feels agitated from bearing my weight.

I don’t think I’m that old yet. I’m 40 now, and I’ve been gradually feeling worse since my mid-30s. The peak of my pain came when I was 38, when I rushed to the hospital because I thought I was on the verge of having a heart attack. It was one of the scariest moments of my life. I genuinely thought I was about to die.

I was scared because of the numbing pain in my legs, back, and face. My tongue also felt numb and tingly. At the time, I thought it was a symptom of a heart attack, which scared me because I thought I was about to die, all alone, lying on my bedroom floor.

The nurse hooked me up to an EKG to monitor my heart’s electrical rhythm. Luckily, those pains were not a symptom of a heart attack, but it scared me nonetheless. It was so frightening, I called the mother of my kids to tell them I love them in case something did happen.

Most of the pain seemed to start in my lower back and spiral down my legs. As the day went on, it felt like my legs were steeped in a pit of fire, burning in excruciating pain. At its worst, as the pain became overwhelming, it felt like my shin bone was about to snap. Then the tension would travel up my back and gradually tense my shoulders.

I was only 38 years old when all this was happening.

Each day I would normally rest my body, and I never really strained myself. I didn’t do much physical activity, aside from what I did at work. For context, I mostly stood around at work, moving little items from one location to another. Quite boring, honestly.

But I later learned that this was part of my problem. I mostly only stood in one place at work, and then sat down all day outside of work,

This is what most of my days consisted of:

On my days off from work, this was my schedule

Aside from walking between locations, I was not doing any kind of physical activity. I was doing the bare minimum. In fact, I thought I was healthy simply because I thought I didn’t overeat, and I did not look overweight.

So as the pains kept getting worse over time, I couldn’t understand why my body hurt so much.

I was getting tons of rest, so why did I not feel better?

Why does my back hurt all the time?

Why is my entire body feeling like it is falling apart, and like it’s ready to give up on me?

Every joint was hurting. My energy was always low. I always needed a nap or felt like I needed to fall asleep. But why? Why am I always tired and hurting if I’m always resting?

Two years later, I learned that all the time I spent being inactive was the very thing wrecking my body, draining my strength, locking up my joints, and leaving me more fragile and in more pain as time went on.

When you look at me, you might not think I’m unhealthy, because I’m not “big” in any way. But for years, I led a sedentary lifestyle with very little physical activity, and research shows that prolonged sedentary time is associated with worse health outcomes. (The American Heart Association has a science advisory summarizing these risks, and large meta-analyses link sedentary time with higher all-cause mortality.) (AHA Science Advisory) (BMJ meta-analysis)

I went to therapy for several months and spent a lot of time recovering after that hospital visit. Later, I learned that physical inactivity is considered a major global risk factor for mortality, ranked by the World Health Organization as the fourth leading risk factor globally (after high blood pressure, tobacco use, and high blood glucose). (WHO via NCBI Bookshelf)

That’s some scary stuff.

I don’t want to risk an early death just because I spend most of my day sitting. Here’s what that kind of inactivity does to your body over time:

So yeah… if I’m spending most of my day sitting and not getting enough physical activity, I’m basically training my body to be in constant pain and to face lots of medical issues sooner in life.

Naturally, after that heart attack scare, I wanted to know what I could do to avoid that problem from happening again, and how I could solve my growing health issues.

Too many of us are sitting for long periods of time at computers, watching TV, or scrolling on our phones. I’ll spend about an hour per session (without even noticing) sitting wherever I am, scrolling TikTok, reading tweets, watching YouTube, or consuming random, meaningless stuff online.

You know how I learned about this crisis? YouTube.

I sat around watching videos to learn that sitting around might be increasing my risk of an early death…

The irony of that loop was baffling. But the point is that more people around the world are becoming sedentary, which means we’re spending less time being active and more time sitting. We’re sinking deeper into the grip of technology and letting minor pains dictate our actions and inaction. That compounds into a growing health problem, which worsens our habits, feeds into bigger health problems, and keeps the cycle going.

So what is the problem here, and why should I care?

The problem is sedentary time, which is how much of your day is spent sitting or lying down with very little movement.

Sedentary time is essentially physical inactivity, which means you are not getting enough movement to support your heart health, metabolism, mood, and overall well-being.

For example, a large meta-analysis in The BMJ found a clear dose-response relationship between sedentary time, physical activity, and mortality risk. In plain terms, as sitting time increases and activity decreases, long-term mortality risk tends to rise accordingly. (BMJ meta-analysis)

And the American Heart Association basically says that too much sitting is consistently linked with worse cardiometabolic health and higher risk of heart disease and death — especially when it replaces movement. (AHA Science Advisory)

So why should I care?

Sitting around for one day isn’t going to ruin your life. Sitting itself isn’t the problem either.

But sitting around for the majority of your day for years adds up. It gradually deteriorates your muscles and mobility, worsens blood sugar and blood pressure control, and increases your long-term cardiovascular risk.

Here’s what happens when you live a sedentary lifestyle:

I care because I don’t want to die early from something I could’ve prevented, and I don’t want to spend the second half of my life managing pain and health problems that keep me from enjoying the outdoors, or even more so, from doing activities with my family. So I decided to run a simple challenge of walking 10,000 steps a day for 30 days.

But before I tell you about the benefits of how something as simple as walking can be for your health, there’s one thing I had to confront first, and it has quietly influenced me to develop unhealthy habits every day.

It was my phone.

I love my phone. I can do just about anything and everything with it. It’s my inseparable friend that numbs me from all the pain and stress it creates.

I don’t know what you do each morning, but I’m betting it’s a lot like what I do. When I wake up, before my eyes can fully focus, my arm has already reached over and grabbed the phone, punched in the code, and opened an app for that first hit of stimulation. Two blinks later, an hour has passed while I scrolled through TikTok.

So I have to ask myself: why?

Why do I reach for my phone every single day without a second thought? Why do I always have this low hum of a craving to be stimulated by it? And why is it that my phone seems to hijack my motor controls before my mind can fully wake up?

According to Dr. Aditi Nerurkar, a Harvard physician who specializes in stress and burnout, every time you pick up your phone, your brain gets a small hit of dopamine, the chemical tied to reward and motivation. The catch is that dopamine doesn’t make you satisfied. It makes you want more. So the more I scroll, the more my brain learns that the phone is where the reward lives, and the louder the urge to reach for it gets. (Diary of a CEO with Dr. Aditi Nerurkar)

That’s why my hand moves before my brain does. I’m not deciding to grab the phone. I’ve trained myself to grab it. Thousands of tiny repetitions, each one paid off with a little dopamine, until the habit runs on autopilot. The average person checks their phone over 200 times a day without even realizing it. It’s not even a decision anymore.

And here’s the part that actually unsettled me. Nerurkar describes something called “popcorn brain.” It’s when your mind gets so used to the fast, constant stimulation of the screen that everything in real life starts to feel too slow. Your brain is essentially popping off in every direction, unable to settle. Underneath that, two systems in your brain are getting rewired. Your amygdala, the brain’s alarm and stress center, gets hyperactivated, while your prefrontal cortex, the part responsible for focus, patience, and impulse control, gets dialed down. Over time, that combination weakens your attention span, shortens your patience, and ramps up your baseline stress and anxiety. (Diary of a CEO with Dr. Aditi Nerurkar)

Who would’ve thought that flipping my phone on would become a health problem? I was just curious about what my friends and family posted on Instagram. Although I’m not sure why I need to know before my mind wakes, or before I even get out of bed. It’s not like it makes a difference or benefits my day in any way. I find that strange.

Which brings me to the question that matters most for this whole experiment. Is this phone habit actually affecting my physical health?

The more I looked into it, the more I realized that our mental and physical health aren’t separate at all. Constant scrolling keeps your stress system switched on, and chronic stress is hard on your body, linked with poor sleep, higher blood pressure, and worse overall health. (Increased Screen Time and Declining Physical & Psychological Health)

To put it simply, your physical health will take a hit if your mental health is falling to s#!^.

But there’s an even simpler, more physical answer, and it’s the one I kept circling back to.

My phone is the single biggest reason I sit around so much.

Every one of those scrolling sessions, an hour on TikTok here, 30 minutes of YouTube there, is hours my body spends completely still. Researchers have actually measured this. Heavier phone users are significantly more sedentary than lighter users, sitting through hours more of their day. (College Students’ Mobile Phone Use & Sedentary Behavior) The phone doesn’t just stress my brain. It’s the thing that glues me to the chair, the couch, and the bed, the exact sedentary lifestyle that landed me on the floor that night, convinced I was having a heart attack.

So the two problems I thought were separate turned out to be the same problem wearing two faces. The phone keeps my mind overstimulated and my body completely still. Then, as one falls, the other follows.

And once I understood that, the solution got a lot clearer. I needed to spend more time keeping my body active. Sure, I’ll still use my phone, but I don’t plan to spend as much time on it. Instead, I can make dedicated break times for whatever I want, like scrolling through my phone for whatever reason. But to improve my health, I need to get outdoors and get my body moving, and since I’m not already active, I need to do something simple.

I needed to start walking.

There’s no way walking is going to solve my health problems. Right? I mean, don’t I need to run several hours a week, lift weights, and train like some Olympic athlete or something?

Well, I ran into some videos (once again on my phone) talking specifically about walking and how it benefits our health. Then I read a few books that spoke more on the subject to enlighten me about the medical data regarding the health benefits of walking.

One book that stuck with me was In Praise of Walking by neuroscientist Shane O’Mara, who makes the case that walking isn’t just exercise but something our brains and bodies are built around. The more I read and watched, the same handful of benefits kept showing up. Walking regularly lowers the risk of heart disease, eases stress and lifts your mood, gives you steadier energy through the day, and is tied to a longer life. None of it called for a gym, a trainer, or hours of my day. It just asked me to walk.

So, if walking can benefit my health, how much do I actually need to walk?

That’s where the famous number comes in. 10,000 steps a day.

What surprised me is that it didn’t start as science at all. It came from a marketing campaign in 1960s Japan, when the Yamasa company sold a pedometer called the manpo-kei, which translates to “10,000-step meter.” It launched right after the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, and the number was picked mostly because it was simple and memorable.

But here’s the interesting part about that number. Modern research has since caught up, and it turns out 10,000 was never a hard requirement. A meta-analysis of 15 studies found that taking more steps a day is tied to a progressively lower risk of early death, and most of those benefits show up well before you ever reach 10,000.

For a lot of adults, somewhere around 7,000 to 8,000 steps a day is already enough to see the beneficial payoff, and walking more on top of that only makes it moderately better. (Daily steps and all-cause mortality meta-analysis)

So 10,000 steps a day is my goal.

I could do less and still gain the health benefits, but I’m going with a nice 10,000 to ensure I see benefits from walking. And guess what? I have 10-days of data to show how well it’s going so far.

There’s a study showing that if you can frequently track the progress of an activity, you are more likely to achieve the goal and form a new habit. According to American Psychological Association, they say that “They found that prompting participants to monitor their progress toward a goal increased the likelihood that the participants would achieve that goal. Furthermore, the more frequent the monitoring, the greater the chance of success.” (American Psychological Association)

And it turns out this isn't a one-off finding. Self-monitoring—the simple act of recording what you actually do—is one of the most reliable tools researchers have found for changing behavior, and studies show it specifically helps adults cut down on sitting and move more. (Self-monitoring to reduce sedentary behavior)

I didn’t know this when I first started tracking my results. In fact, I just did it because I like tracking things as if it were an RPG video game—my favorite genre of games. I wanted to enter the data each day and see how I’m progressing, or how my totals are adding up over time.

That’s when I created this Activity Tracker on Notion.

There’s this saying that “things that get measured get improved”. That line stuck with me, and since I want to improve my health and fitness, I tracked how many steps I was taking each day from the exercise itself, the day’s total, and where I walked for the day.

I can track

The point is, I want to know as much about myself to see why I did well on certain days and why I didn’t on other days. I want to know how my mood was before the activity and how my mood was after the activity.

I did learn that my mood always improved after every walk. In fact, I felt better for the entire day simply because I went for a walk. And that wasn't just in my head. Physical activity is strongly tied to better mood and a meaningfully lower risk of depression, so those little after-walk mood boosts I kept logging would line right up with what the research already shows. (JAMA Psychiatry meta-analysis)

I also noticed that 2 days out of the 10, I did not meet my goal. When I enter the data, it automatically highlights the days that fell below 10,000 steps (which is my set goal), and I marked the day I completely missed with a large X as shown in the picture below. And honestly, seeing that big mark bugged me, making me not want to miss again. That's the accountability piece the research keeps pointing to, that when you can see your misses as clearly as your wins, you're a lot more motivated to keep the streak alive.

In Atomic Habits, James Clear says, "Habit tracking is powerful because it leverages multiple Laws of Behavior Change. It simultaneously makes a behavior obvious, attractive, and satisfying." And that's exactly what this little Notion tracker does for me—it makes the walking obvious because I see it staring back at me every day, attractive because watching the numbers climb genuinely feels like leveling up a character, and satisfying because checking off the day is its own tiny reward. My goal is to finish 30 days of walking, so I can improve my health, and most importantly for me, is to develop a habit of exercising every single day.

Ten days in, this tracker had already taught me more than I expected. The numbers kept me honest, the mood data proved the walks were actually doing something, and watching the streak build made me want to protect it. But if I'm being real with you, the hardest part was never the walking itself, it was getting out the door on the days I didn't feel like moving at all. So that became the next thing I had to figure out: how to make starting so incredibly easy that I couldn't talk myself out of it.

Throughout the 10 days of walking, I noticed that I didn’t always have a free hour to commit to exercise. That’s exactly why I missed all of day 6 and fell short on day 8. So I started experimenting with new ways to still hit my goal, even on my busiest days.

What I learned is that walking doesn’t have to come from one dedicated exercise session. You can rack up your steps incidentally throughout the day—parking farther away, taking the stairs, or pacing around the house while you’re on the phone. In the grand scheme of things, all steps count, but there are some real differences between how you get them, getting them all at once, and spreading them out throughout the day.

So in the next article, we’ll dig into how incidental steps compare to dedicated exercise walks, how you can break your walking into smaller segments throughout the day, and the pros and cons of spreading your steps out instead of knocking them all out in one go.

That’s it for now.

If you want to follow along with the rest of this 30-day journey, subscribe to my newsletter. I’ll send a direct email straight to your inbox the moment I publish each new article, so you won’t miss the results, the lessons, or the little strategies I’m discovering along the way.

See you next time.

Amado.

Until next time,

Amado Aguilar