Treadmill Desk

I’m a writer and an editor, and I sit a lot. It’s embarrassing how much I sit every day. Sadly, the sedentary lifestyle is really starting to catch up with me and over the past year I’ve watched as my hip measurement started approaching my age. I’m in my mid-40s, so that’s really bad news!

So, I finally got fed up with it all and had a genius brainstorm (or hairbrained scheme as my husband may think). I turned my treadmill into a walking desk.

For under $50 in parts (because I already owned the somewhat dusty and underutilized treadmill) I’ve got a great new setup.  One shelf (only came in packages of 2) from Martha Stewart, some grippy cabinet liner cut to size, two surge protectors (my husband insisted the laptop and treadmill each have their own) and two clamps and voila! The secret to shrinking hips.

I hope.

I didn’t keep track of my exercise yesterday, but so far today I’m at 5 miles walked and 815 calories burned. I’m playing around with the incline and speed and right now I’m at a 2.0 incline and walking at 1.3 miles per hour. So far, so good. We’ll see how I feel tomorrow morning and maybe I’ll increase one or both.

I don’t feel like I’m “exercising” and that may be the key to success. The only thing I notice is that after an hour of walking my back gets tired. So, I sit for 5 minutes or so and then get back to work.

Speaking of work, I can type, read and basically do anything on my laptop. Writing by hand is pretty iffy, though, so I’ll hop off and write by hand at my other desk.

Oh, and if I want to watch something on TV or Netflix, I ramp up the speed to 3 mph because it’s not too fast for just looking at the screen.

I’ll let you all know how this is working in a couple of weeks, but in the meantime, what do you to get some exercise into your day?