How do you measure the value of a step? A common goal for many people over the last 60 years has become 10,000 steps a day for better health. The problem is … it’s a myth decades in the making.

A team of researchers decided to figure out just how many steps a person should really take for better health, landing squarely around 7,000 for the general population. And according to a local doctor, it might actually be best to drop the step count all together.

Published in The Lancet earlier this month, a new systematic study review challenged the health value of aiming for 10,000 steps per day. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution spoke with the study’s Philip Clare, Ph.D., a researcher at the University of Sydney, to discuss setting a more realistic goal.

“It’s not wrong to have a target that

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