Parking Pass Ponderings: Getting in Touch with my Inner Slug

I finally got a permit to park close to the chem department. This is a huge deal. Parking is tightly enforced and many spots are off limits even on nights and weekends. Due to construction they were only letting faculty purchase the better parking permits. As a result I was parking in the free lot, which was about 3/4 mile away. I liked the walk, which is quite pretty but hated the inconvenience, both not having my car close by and also having my overall commute time be about an hour per day (more in winter). The unexpected outcome was that it wrecked havoc with my exercise schedule and I gained weight. Why? I'm still not entirely sure. As far as I can tell it's a lot of little things. The gym was on my way to the parking lot, so that should've been good. The 1 1/2 mile walk every day certainly did help mitigate the fact that I wasn't working out, but it had the side effect of making me very hungry, more so than could be attributed to the walk itself. To go to the gym it became a question of lugging my gym bag, backpack, and lunch bag to and fro, and what to do with my wallet and computer when I was at the gym, and by 7 pm I'm usually cranky and hungry and want to go home. The preferred option was to go around 6:30, right before I turned into an evil hungry slug, and then come back to lab, finish stuff up, and then go home. However, making a separate trip, then coming back to lab, then going home, meant that I was walking almost 2 1/2 miles not even including my workout. Regardless of whether I worked out or not, I was crazy hungry by the time I got home, and usually long before then. Although I knew that these things were playing a role, most of the time I assumed that it was my work schedule or general laziness and old age that were making me not want to go to the gym.
The construction was finished and they started letting people on the wait list buy passes. I did not hesitate and got mine immediately. As if by magic, all of a sudden I started going to the gym again. I don't get crazy hungry late in the day, either, although it's only been a few days so it may be coincidental.
If I had been able to buy a permit when I first got here, I'm sure I wouldn't even be questioning my motives, but the irony of buying an expensive parking pass and replacing my daily walk with a somewhat more intense workout 3 or 4 times a week doesn't escape me. But whatever - honey badger don't care.