New Exercise Routine

This past week I’ve been exercising twice a day, as I try to boost the weekly total to about 17 hours of exercise/move time a week. That’s the point last time when I started to lose weight.

I have also cut my carbs to breakfast time only with one or two exceptions: small sandwich (for light lunch), banana (I never cut those), and the occasional shared cinnamon roll. But I’ve decided to be good and try to cut out some of that. It’s never a good idea to go whole hog on the first attempt, so it’s a piglet step-by-step approach to going whole hog.

I’ve also decided to monitor my water intake as well, by drinking about 2 liters of water a day. But I’ve only being doing that a couple of days. Generally, I drink 2~3 cups of coffee a day; plus several cups of tea. But they include milk, typically. So water is an additional calorie free way to stave hunger a little, improve my hydration (Taiwan is quite warm), as well as digestive benefits (fewer calories, more full sensation, avoiding junk food, etc.)

But yesterday Christine suggested a new exercise route that solved an old problem. In March, I was doing a bit of frequent hill training: walking uphill to an elevation of 100m. It’s not much, but when you fast walk uphill, it boosts your metabolism. The problem is that daytime temps have been two warm, and night-time it’s not lit and rural (so snakes, wasps, and bumpy track). The new route is actually lit-comfortably, not so rural, and elevates to 127m. It’s also about 10% longer.

Last night I tried the new route: Biking to Guandu from Zhuwei (20 minutes), then walking up the hill through the campus. I was too pooped to go more than 1/3 of the way uphill because I also rode quite fast. I ran out of stamina at Guandu. Oh, well. So route change: train to Guandu, walk up & down, bike home. That is doable, I think!