Who moved the goal posts over there?

In order to maintain general well-being we are advised to cover a certain mileage every day. (On foot, not in a car - get a grip already, will you?) "10,000 steps a day are all you need to stay fit!" declare the health editors in every magazine. "This information is brought to you by Acme Step Counter - clickaway to walk your way to daily fitness." ('Nice alliteration, Denise.' 'Why thank you, Mrs Miggins.')

I have a step counter. It clings to my waistband, clunking away so it sounds like I am carrying a dried pea in a matchbox everywhere I go. I have become obsessed with listening to it, knowing that every 'clunk' I hear is a record of another step towards my daily 10,000. Sometimes it doesn't clunk and this annoys me. I wonder, 'How many steps have I walked that haven't been recorded? Have I already achieved my step dose for the day and could I be sitting on the sofa now watching that programme where elephants with cameras in tree trunks harass tigers, like pachyderm papparazzi?'

Have you ever tried to cover 10,000 steps a day? Okay, everyone who is an athlete and trains for 20 out of 24 hours, put you hands down now. I'm talking to normal people here. My initial experiment of wearing a pedometer at home whilst going about my daily business revealed I covered about 3,500 steps on average. So I found myself going for an extra hour walk to reach my target. Sometimes this isn't practical(like if it's blowing a storm or you've got a life to live) so you find yourself jogging on the spot whilst cleaning your teeth, doing the washing up and opening your post. Then you find yourself jogging across the kitchen to get the bread from the bread bin, or to take the rubbish out because jogging a) means you can make lots of little bouncy steps that b) all register on the pedometer (clunk, clunk, clunkitty clunk) which c) alleviates some of the paranoia previously mentioned.

Never jog when peeling vegetables or carrying a mug of tea...and watch out for cats...and pins, especially if you're well into your dressmaking course and it has become the 'new best thing to do'...

So, having now developed an obsession with getting that counter up to the magic 10,000, I read on Monday that to achieve weight loss through walking I have to stomp my way up to 13,000 a day! 13,000!!!! Who decides these numbers?? I tell you who. Some skinny bit of size 000 who subsists on a daily half an apple and a water biscuit and who wears two hollowed out pipe cleaners for trousers. They put a 'fat' (aka normal-sized) person on a treadmill and count the steps they cover before they reach certain stages of unconsciousness. Red in the face = 5,000 steps = unfit. Lying on the floor gasping for breath in the latter stages of lung collapse = 10,000 steps = look at you, you fat slob, you can't even stay upright. Pokes with a sharp stick and no response =13,000 steps = you are dead but at least you're in the right band of the BMI index and no longer an offence to my eyes.

It is my target to achieve 100,000 steps this week. That's 30,000 more than 'normal'. So far, at 9.30 on Wednesday morning, I have reached 34,791....34,792...34,793...34,795...................