Walking is magic

Sometimes a planned event is all you need to kick your ass into gear. This seems to be what is happening to me at the moment. I'll be walking the latter half of the West Highland Way with a friend in September, which is awesome because it means more Scotland in my life. Although you could do the walk untrained, it will make for an unpleasant experience with blisters and such, I'd rather avoid that!

I cannot really practice the mountain part of the walk because I live in a swampy flat land called the Netherlands. We don't even have any mountains, just some hills in the south of the country, this is a huge oversight if you ask me. The only method left for me to prepare is: sheer volume.

That's why I decided to get at least 20.000 thousand steps 4–5 days per week, until the walk commences on September 2nd.

I'm now on Day 8 of my mission, and some strange things are happening. Good things, that's why it's strange. My default mode usually is: grumpy, tired, sarcastic. That's why it's such a huge shock to me that this whole thing has me feeling amazing!

For one, the 20k steps tire me out to such a degree that I sleep like a baby, and well over 8 hours! If you think about that for a minute, that's not crazy. Getting 20k steps takes about 4 hours. That's....a lot of movement if you're just living your daily life. It will tire you out, although I expect it to start feeling more normal once my body has adapted.

Running twice per week is very helpful towards getting the steps. Since I'm only a beginner at running, it doesn't add a lot of fatigue as my sessions are pretty short (4 km total).

I did decide not to count any time I spent on my bicycle towards the steps. I'm going into the office about 3x per week, which adds 1 hour spent on my e-bike towards my daily activity. Since it's an e-bike, I decided not to count it as steps.

On top of all this, I also do my strength training 3x per week. I do get some steps in the gym, but it also adds a lot more fatigue to my entire body. The amount of muscle soreness I had last week was no joke.

So yeah, no wonder I'm so tired at the end of the day. It's a good tired, if you know what I mean: You feel tired in your body, yet the mind feels satisfied. The last 30 minutes before bedtime are spent on the couch, just trying to stay awake. Those moments on the couch feel so deserved, it's great!

How do I live a normal life with the 20k steps?

You might wonder how on earth I manage to get the 20k steps when I have to work and everything. First off: that's why I want to reach that goal 4-5x per week and not every day. I will also tell you the secret ingredient: the walking treadmill.

There's no way I could get 20k steps if I had to do it without that machine. There simply wouldn't be enough time in the day.

The walking treadmill cost me €160 in January last year, and it has been a very helpful purchase.

On the one hand, yes, the machine makes you feel like you are a hamster on the capitalist treadmill, but you gotta think about the big picture. Capitalism or not, your health is one of the most important things you have, and walking is utter magic for your health.

It's super convenient to be able to walk while I am working! I put the speed at 3km per hour so I can still type and use my mouse like normal, and voilà, I'm working on my health + feeding the capitalist machine at the same time. Multitasking, baby!!!

Sarcasm about capitalism aside: how else should a desk dweller work on their health? The walking treadmill is unironically amazing!

Otherwise, you need to:

• go out before the work day starts
• and go out during lunch
• and go out in the evening

And I say this without knowing whether you even live in a safe environment! Maybe you live in car-centric hell, and there's no nice place for you to walk. Then it can be nice to know you can just use the treadmill and watch a nice TV-series while getting your steps in.

I wouldn't want to get the full 20k steps on the treadmill, but I do get about 7-10k per day on it!

I'm happy, is this a trap?

You know what I also noticed after a week of this challenge? I'm fucking happy. That's crazy, I'm usually not happy but "neutral" at best. (For the record: feeling neutral is fine, it's loads better than feeling actively unhappy, which I know all too well.)

I feel very energetic, more mentally stable and, dare I say it: productive. It's much easier to get shit done, I have no fucking clue what is happening to me, but I'm here for it.

Perhaps it's a trap and my usual demons will crawl back out of their holes to fuck up my mood again after a while, but for now I'm enjoying the heck out of this challenge and the positive feelings I'm getting from it.

Did I lose weight?

I'm not actively trying to lose weight at the moment, so I just observed what happened to my hunger signals and food intake.

Unsurprisingly, I feel more hungry because I move way more than normal. I stick to my usual routine of eating only meals, but the meals are bigger than normal for sure. I'm not tracking my food right now, but I estimate I'm eating about 300-400 kcal more than normal. Those extra calories come from (healthy) carbs, the best energy source for cardiovascular-based activities.

I do not expect my weight to change in the coming month, and I want to take this opportunity to remind you that you cannot outrun a bad diet. Don't believe the amount of calories your smartwatch or phone says you have burned: it's absolute horse shit.

My StepsApp says I burn 1000 kcal per day with walking 20k steps, and that just isn't true. From experience, I'd say that walking a lot adds about 300-400 kcal of expended energy to your day, and since I am eating those 300-400 kcal because of my increased hunger, my weight will remain stable.

Actually, when my body has adapted to all this walking in a few weeks, the energy expenditure of getting 20k steps will go DOWN. Unfair, but that's how it works. Our bodies are highly adaptable.

If you are a complete couch potato, and you pick up a new exercise "regime", you can lose weight while keeping your diet the same. But when you are already quite active, that no longer holds true. The body adapts to the new baseline, and starts being more efficient with the fuel (food) you give it. So, sad times: losing weight is mostly done through calorie restriction.

But no matter: walking is still magic! Magic for your heart, your health, your mental health, your insulin sensitivity, your thinking, your creativity.

Soundtrack

Summer or not, I'm listening to black metal. This has easily been the most innovative black metal album I've heard in a while: ....And Oceans - The Regeneration Itinerary

If you remember from last time, I was going to buy a new amplifier. I ended up with something totally unexpected: The Lyngdorf TDAI-1120. It's tiny, for an amplifier! It's fully digital, which will shock some audiophile readers, perhaps. The convenience, man, the convenience is too damn high.

This amplifier came with a microphone and stand to set up RoomPerfect, which in theory can improve the performance of your speakers in a suboptimal room. And since I'm a normie, my audio room is suboptimal for sure. I did the whole set-up process and did NOT like the results. It makes my B&W speakers sound like ass. The clarity of the speakers is totally removed by RoomPerfect, so I'm not using it. The good thing is that I can still tweak the sound, so I'm adding a tiny amount of bass and that's all it needs.

I spent a whole evening perfecting the positioning of my speakers, and the single best thing I did was: more distance from the back wall. The speakers are now 70cm from the wall, and it made the sound so much better! The bass is no longer drowning out the mid and high frequencies; I'm so happy with my audio set-up right now.

Books

I finally finished Empire of AI and I can only say: oof. This was not a pleasant read, but I learned a lot. It just left me feeling exhausted and sad. All this AI crap is just the umpteenth outing of men who think they are so smart and are "saving the world", but they are lying to themselves and us all the time. The author does a decent job exposing the whole thing. Imo, she could have been even more outspoken, but it's quite clear that she is against most aspects of AI. If you want to learn the origin story of OpenAI and how the company evolved, this is a good book to get up to speed. There's also more information about Altman in the book than I ever hoped to learn.

To make my walks more interesting, I have fallen back on audiobooks. This is a Highlander-like situation, as there can be only one book series I am listening to: Dungeon Crawler Carl (warning: amazon/audible link to the audiobooks). I tore through book one in 2 days, I'm now halfway in book 2. The audiobooks are sadly only available on Audible, but IT IS WORTH IT. I will not stop until everybody reads Dungeon Crawler Carl. This is the best book series ever. Harry Potter is cancelled anyway because we fucking hate TERFS, read Dungeon Crawler Carl instead!!

Aight, I'm going for a walk, see ya!