WHY I DITCHED MY FITNESS TRACKER

Stop chasing a 10,000-step target - Active 10 is an easier, more effective way to get fit

- MICHAEL MOSLEY

Do you own an activity tracker? And do you find yourself, towards the end of the day, anxiously looking at your wrist, realising you haven't hit your 10,000 steps, and start pacing around the house, swinging your arms in a desperate attempt to hit that magical target? That was what I began doing when I first got an activity tracker, until my wife, Clare, told me that I was becoming really annoying.

The 10,000 steps figure was originally the product of a 1960s marketing campaign in Japan. A company, keen to flog its pedometers, came up with a device they called a Manpo-Kei, which translates into '10,000 steps meter'.