I've been doing some thinking about increasing NEAT. Leigh told me I can decrease my calories eaten, or increase my calories burned... Of course those are the 2 options!!! And I was left thinking, "how can I possibly burn more than I am already? I am doing 4 resistance, 3 cardio, housework, gardening etc, and I don't have the energy for jumping jacks that I had at 20-40!" Plus, on OPT, I've been feeling a bit stressed from the 4 resistance days per week.
Then I thought, for some reason, about walking. Oh, my friend just came back from a 2 week trip to China where distances are HUGE, crossing the wide streets, airport, department stores, museums, the photos just showed huge spans of distance to walk.
Then I remembered when I travelled around the world for 5 years. I first spent 10 months as a volunteer on a kibbutz, where they had an all-you-can-eat buffet for breakfast, one for lunch, and one for dinner. I quickly went up from 188 to probably 206+... None of my clothes fit by the time I left Israel for Turkey.
In Turkey, we walked. We would get up in the morning, walk to, and around the market and buy (well, not Greek yogurt) Turkish yogurt and canned black cherries mmmmmm.... and we'd buy lunch to go: salad fixings, feta cheese, olives, and a "french bread" fresh from the oven. I would eat 1/2 of the whole bread with the Greek salad.. Fresh lemons for salad dressing. Then we'd walk
an hour+ into the countryside of whatever town we were in, a wonderful adventur walk, and I would then sit down and paint/watercolor for 4-6 hours. Then we'd walk back to town, stopping for tea and some new cookies (each town had different cookies to try)...Daily we bought dry roasted chickpeas and dried apricots for a snack as we walked around. ...and then get a vegetarian dinner of some bean vegie stew or omelette.
I lost a huge amount of weight, probably went down to 150 easily over 3 months in Turkey. I could not believe what was happening. I was not dieting really.
walking.....
I walked around the world this way for 5 years, walking, eating from markets or street vendors, painting, walking and looking at everything new. There was not any chocolate or icecream or pizza anywhere to be seen. I ate some cookies daily. I ate a ton of fruit. We'd buy 10 avocados and eat one each a day. We'd buy 100 passion fruit and eat 10 each a day. 1-2 mangos a day when we could find them. We'd be getting ready for a trainride, and buy a pineapple and eat 1/2 each on the train. Talk about 1-ingredient foods.
Well, I digress.
the point of this message is that I know I can easily increase my pleasure walking, and I know the GWF loves to give me credit for walking
, and I have experience that it works for fatloss.
So that's my plan. Increase my walking! No stress, keep it fun by walking outside, in malls, forests, and around the neighborhood, window shopping, etc.