I decided to add long distance walking back into my program. I walked 7 miles yesterday afternoon. I need a better strategy for socks, that’s for sure.

I still need to check the data, but going by memory I do believe my leaner periods were associated with intentional walking on the regular. In particular, I keep looking back at Dec 2021-March 2022 when I broke my plateau and hit the leanest I had ever been. The weight started to creep back up once the Cicada swarm got so bad that I couldn’t walk without being regularly smacked in the face/neck, and I just lost the routine since. I also think back to 2019 which was another successful period in dropping my weight. Back then I was in the office 4 days a week and made it a point to do regular walks on my lunch break (~20-30 min). That and walking to and from the metro added to my steps, plus the bootcamps I did at night (when I had more time to do so consistently) contributed to an average of 15k+ steps a day. I only did the 1 heavy strength train session a week with a PT (who had a background in heavy lifts and training them). My protein wasn’t high enough at the time to capitalize on the muscle gain was the only issue.

The added bonus of the long walks is my disconnect time and/or focused time listening to my audio books. When I was in my 20s and lost that first large chunk of weight (80 lbs), I had spent 30 min on the elliptical and read a book at the same time. I linked my love of stories with a lot of steps, effectively. I also had nothing else going on in my life except work so it was easier to be consistent. Sadly, I had no access to the information I do today in regard to just how important protein is and how to really work rep schemes.