Originally Posted by jlippinbike

The pandemic lifestyle most people were forced into caused them in some cases to get sick, but in most cases to gain weight and lose fitness. I suspect you got the triple wammy: sick, fat, and unfit. Getting past the sickness probably added to the fat level and definitely helped increase the level of unfitness. At that point I'm sure your blood pressure on average went up. To rebuild your fitness you need to eat more healthily, probably eat a little less, and do low intensity aerobic exercise (zone 2). This is how you lose weight and build endurance capacity. The higher endurance ability you have will probably indicate less hypertension. Ideally the zone 2 workouts (probably on the bike) will last at least 3 hours. The body uses fat for fuel when doing low intensity exercise. Only after you have gotten back to a normal weight and on the road to a normal fitness level, it is then that you can add 2 or 3 higher intensity workouts a week. Or if you are over 55 or so, then maybe only 1 high intensity workout a week. Your blood pressure should be fine thereafter. But right now you are obviously doing things backwards. You are starting out with the HIIT stuff. Not good. Last year after a bout with cancer I wasn't too active. My weight went up and my fitness level had tanked. My blood pressure was up to something like 140/20 or 145/20. Six months after doing what I describe herein above my blood pressure was back down to 120/80. My bike rides were a bit longer than 3 hours each, though.