A few weeks back I went to Kaiser to get an annual physical. The first time in over four years! My last checkup was way back in 2018. Then I got lazy, and then the pandemic happened. Now that things have largely gone back to normal, it was time to check that I myself am normal.
I no longer have any pandemic weight gain! Last September I went to a wedding, and my suit definitely felt a bit tight in certain places (neck, waist, and thighs). Fast forward to this month, and I measure out at within five pounds of my 2018 weight. Walking to and from work five days a week seems to have helped a lot, because I didn’t really change my exercise regiment. As a result, at the wedding I went to last week, the suit that I got tailored eight years ago fit just fine again.
The last book I read is The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter. In it, the author mentions a great way to exercise is to simply carry heavy things. That walk you go on can be made more difficult and challenging with a backpack and some weights. Apparently, carrying a significant load over long distances is a staple of our armed forces. It make sense: we’ve all seen soldiers overseas with those impossibly enormous packs.
Reading that inspired me to put weights in the backpack I wear to work. It’s a cheap and effective way to add a training dimension to something I have to do every day. If that twenty minutes of walking can count as exercise, then I can avoid having to schedule in additional workout time for the week. Because I plan to do a half-marathon later this summer, so I have to get back into running shape.
It’s been a long time.