Namsan reboot

After staring at the horror of my gut in that picture over at Charles's site, I decided a few days ago that it was high time to start hiking up Namsan again-- something I haven't done for months, much to my shame (not to mention discomfort). My first night of hiking brought home the fact that I have completely de-trained: I did the easiest route up the mountain, and had to stop twice. The second night was better: no stopping on the way up, though I did huff and puff a great deal.

I'm going to continue with daily hikes, building back up to what I used to be able to do: my ass-kicking route involving about 1100 steps up the mountain. That's going to take a few weeks, but I'm confident that, with some consistency and self-discipline, I'll do fine.

I'm also going to start... I can barely type this... watching what I eat. You have my apologies in advance, because foodblogging might be a bit boring in the upcoming months. But this is necessary. I'm doing all this to be more or less presentable to my family when I see them in June. I have no illusions that I'll have turned into a lean, mean fighting machine by then, but at the very least I'll be less puffy.

I'm not looking forward to hiking Namsan during the day as the weather continues to warm up, but because one of my friends will be hiking along with me, I might have no choice: he's not a vampire like me, and can't hike during the late hours without getting sleepy. This semester, my Tuesday and Thursday classes end around 10AM; I might go do my hikes right after class on those days, then hike alone on the other days.

The point is to reverse the awful process you see below:



The above sequence is 2005, 2005, and a couple weeks ago. Yikes. Not how I want to celebrate the Year of the Pig.



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