Hypothesis: If I Don't Have Time, Just Add Weight

Around the beginning of March, I decided to re-commit to walking 10,000 steps a day.

Around the beginning of April, I jumped that up to 11,000 steps a day.

Good results so far. Slightly lower blood sugar and my weight is down by several pounds.

But for the beginning of May, I reconsidered the "add an extra thousand steps a day" formula.

Steps are time, and I already commit around an hour a day specifically to walking (above and beyond the steps I take in the normal course of getting things done). Usually in two 30-minute dedicated outings.

Unless I considerably pick up my pace, which is already fairly brisk, there's a limit to how many steps I can take in x minutes. Once I get below 200 pounds for the first time in 25 years or so, I may try to work some running into my daily step count, but between bad knees and an old lower back injury, I have to get the weight off first for it to be doable.

If I could figure out a way to get work done while walking, heck, I'd walk all day. It's been a few years since I did more than 15 miles or so at a stretch, but I'm sure I still could. I found out in the Marine Corps that I'm a genetic freak in that respect. If I'm in anything approaching good shape I can start walking and not stop until told to, with as much weight as I can carry hanging off me. But absent some kind of cool augmented reality glasses with a bespoke work setup built into them, when I'm walking, all I can really do is, um, walk.

So instead of taking more steps per day, I'm sticking to 11,000 steps ... while carrying  barbell plates in a backpack on those dedicated walks.

Just got back from the first, one-hour, 2.x-mile test walk with 22 pounds (four 2.5kg plates) in the pack. Not only am I none the worse for wear, but the weight tends to correct my posture such that my back is hurting less than usual (good) and my quads are complaining some (good).