The 3 Best Shoes for Walking All Day, According to a Person With Flat Feet and a 10,000-Step-Per-Day Regimen

These were my first pair of supportive sneaks after finally moving on from shoes that looked great, but just didn’t provide the full-coverage support my sad little feet needs. I’ve got high-maintenance feet, people. I walked into my local Fleet Feet as if I’d just been through a rough break up and spun an epic yarn for the salesman about my foot issues. While other customers were getting fitted for their marathon-running shoes, I was bemoaning how much it hurt to walk the dog. He told me to hop onto their nifty foot 3D foot scanning thingy, which informed him with the cold-hard data that my feet are bad, very pronated and as flat as flat can be. We got to shopping, ultimately landing on these New Balance gems. The moment my feet slid into them, I felt relief. I put my other sneakers in the recycled shoe box and walked home in them. 

Oo-oh heaven is a place on earth and that place is Brooks Glycerin GTS. We’re talking love at first fit. An all-enveloping support bestowed upon my pair of pronated yams that lifts, holds, cushions yet still allows for the toes to wiggle around—that is what love is. If in each passing year my shoe rack looks more and more like my father’s, so be it. At least my feet will be walking on clouds…clouds that are semi-firm, that is.

I’m usually not one for lace-less gym shoes. The intention is great, but usually the collar stretches, and I wind up gripping onto the soles of the shoe for dear life with my toes. Well, I’ve made an exception for the OOFOS OOmy Zen. Sans laces, the shoes are seamless, extremely lightweight and miraculously supportive. Sometimes while wearing these I actually stop and think, “Wait…how are these things holding me up?!” The brand chalks these wins up to their “recovery technology” that’s meant to support your arches, absorb impact and fight fatigue with their OOFoam™ design and “patented footbed,” and the shoes live up to the promise.