A while ago I had the idea about walking on a treadmill while working, then I saw a morning news segment about a study done by Dr. Levine, which is outlined here. I have a nice Precor Treadmill at home, the 9.31, and I use it almost every day which watching my latest Netflix rental and love it. However, I don't think my boss would be too keen on me dragging it into work along with a matching TrekDesk. Nor would I for that matter. I like having it at home.
And so began my search for a more practical option to burn calories at my desk. I purchased the PC Gamer Bike Mini, a cool device that is basically the front half of a recumbent bike and you supply the back half with whatever chair you prefer, in this case being my office chair. Its a pretty smooth motion and its not too difficult to use while working. The two issues I noticed are
- When doing thought intensive work, I occasionally wanted to stop and focus completely on the work at hand. I didn't see a problem with this. I'm not expecting to be working out every second I'm at my desk. I'm guessing users of the treadmill desk would want a break from time to time as well.
- On a normal height desk, while using the gamer bike, my knees go up too high and hit the underside of the desk. I solved this by raising my desk up with four inch high spacers.
So this was a doable solution, but it was still a bit inconvenient to have to jack up my desk, especially at my current job where we all share a series of interconnected Ikea desks. Raising it up would be very noticeable and annoying I'm sure.
So I needed a more practical solution. While hunting around for a solution, I started looking at mini stepper machines, then eventually wound up buying a mini elliptical. Current list price for it is $95.70 with free shipping. The product seems to work pretty well overall. However, while the motion keeps my knees lower, they were still grazing the underside of the desk. After a little trial and error, I came across 2 motions that worked out pretty well. The first was to have my knees point out to the sides and rest the outside of each foot on the elliptical pedal, and pedal that way. The other way I came up with was to put my heels against the front lip of the foot pedal and pedal like a recumbent bike. This way gives me a bit more of a workout and I usually take a break from it after 10 or 15 minutes. Duct taping old insoles to the front lip made this a lot more comfortable on my heel. The machine seems very quiet. Coworkers sitting right next to me can't hear it and its not really noticeable that I'm using it. This is nice because it doesn't reduce the appearance of professionalism in the workplace. And for anyone that might be self conscious, they could use it without worry.
Conservatively, I can probably burn at least 100 calories an hour doing this. So if I only do this for a combined two hours a day, that's 1000 calories a week. In month, I could burn a pound and in a year, thats an extra 12 pounds at least. I've only had it for about a month and I workout regularly in the morning as well. I'm just hoping for a slight bonus with this. That and, with my fidgety nature, I'll use it to some extent just because its there.
With so many people having desk jobs in today's society, for just $100 a person, I'd think this would be a good way for employers to combat obesity and health issues in their staff and possibly even lower their insurance premiums. If anyone finds this information useful and uses this at their work or some other desk workout solution, I'd love to hear from you and see how it's working for you.
The points I hope everyone takes away from this are:
- It is possible to workout at your desk in a practical and cost efficient way without embarrassment.
- I am a huge dork!
