Continuing this thread about walking: I am experimenting this week with focusing my exercise regimen around three 15-minute walks per day. They typically break up my preps, with the third walk sometimes occurring after I’ve finished by 70 minute commute home.

For years I’ve been able to consistently exercise every weekday morning, which usually consisted of 20 minute rides on my Peloton bike, but I’ve had far less desire to do this ever since I firmed up the walking habit. I know that there is dimishing returns for a large amount of exercise time, and 45 minutes per day seven days a week means I’ve got cardio covered.

Instead, I’m focusing now on strength training, three sessions of 20 minutes weekly, as recommended by this article in the New York Times. I can’t help but kick myself now over my ignorance regarding strength training, believing that it was just for people who wanted to visibly flaunt their muscles. The closer I get to 40, the more I realize how vital these efforts will be if I want to keep feeling this good further into my teaching career.

The “experiment” poses the question that, if I do a mostly decent job of eating right, will my weight trend downwards? My current weight is 30 pounds lighter than my heaviest point before taking my current position in the Summer of 2019 - but, I had made it almost 20 pounds lower before settling sometime in 2021 (I held off the pandemic weight as long as I could). I lost this weight by exercising EVERY day initially while also being QUITE vigilant about what I ate. The exercise is a shift but the eating is…a little more lax.

I hope to find that this walking regimen is enough to slowly put my weight into a downward trend (or, at worst, maintain where I am), because it has been so beneficial to me in other ways, and I don’t see myself stopping now.