True or false? Steps (activity) matter more for long-term health than body weight?

As you probably know if you’ve followed me for a while - to me, weight is an important and helpful metric. The scale is a tool to make sure we are achieving our goals - if those goals are weight related of course. 

The scale isn’t ultra-necessary though and that was proven (probably more than ever) with a recent meta-analysis published in August 2021. 

Here’s what they found - steps (activity) is more important than weight for lowering all-cause mortality. 

But what shocked me more than anything was the level of impact steps had:

That’s right - this study showed the relative risk of walking just 2,700 steps compared to 16,000 steps results in a higher all-cause mortality risk higher than that of smoking or morbid obesity.While this isn’t mind-boggling in the sense of “yes, more movement is healthy” it is by magnitude of results.

So what do we do with this new information? Here’s what I’d recommend: