Exercise at your desk to lose fat and keep your health....

Today's Post:  Tuesday, 7-17-2012

It’s not widely known yet but there are now two ways to exercise at your desk while you work so you get the moderate exercise without taking time from your work.

One of them is new and can be used more of the time you are at your desk than the first one to come out.  It also costs less than half as much!

 This is extremely important news for two reasons.

1.  Doing nondistracting exercise at your desk has the potential to double or triple the amount of fat you can lose and keep off and to cut the time necessary nearly in half!

(I manage to squeeze in a bit less than half an hour a day of interval cardio and strength training each day.  But that much exercise leaves me about 1800 calories a week short of the 2900 calories a week people who have lost over 30 pounds and kept it off get on the average.  I don’t have more time.  But if I can arrange to get that added 1800 calories a week while I’m working at my desk, I CAN do that!

I lost 20 pounds recently and then regained 9.  I’ve kept off the 11 pounds because I’ve continued the eating upgrades since I began.

But had I lost 6 pounds too in the first part when I lost so well by using an at your desk exerciser I would have lost 26 pounds.  And had I lost another 6 pounds during the time when I regained, I’d have only gained back 3 instead of 9.  That means I’d be 23 pounds less fat than when I began now instead of 11!  That’s a BIG difference. )

This means that everyone who would like to be less fat or who is working to do so but sits at work now has access to this solution too!

2.  People today, between sitting at work and sitting at home, often sit for well over 8 hours a day.  This causes many health problems and literally billions of dollars a year in potentially. avoidable health care costs.

(I sit at work over 9 hours a day and about 2 hours at home each workday myself.) 

But research shows that this is a very powerful risk factor for heart disease and stroke and other diseases. 

Worse, exercising with interval cardio and strength training for an average of a bit less than 30 minutes each day while protective against this problem is only partly effective.

But if 80 to 90 % of the time you are sitting at work you are getting constant mild exercise by keeping your feet moving with such an exerciser, that problem is gone completely.  The health problem of sitting is virtually wiped out!

There are now two solutions to this problem and I’m working on a third one.

1.  The first one is the Steelcase walking desk or “Walkstation.”  See http:// http://store.steelcase.com/brochures/walkstation/ . 

This works partly but has two significant problems. 

It’s not usable for enough of the hours in the day you work for the best fat loss results and health results.  Even two hours a day of working while walking on the treadmill that it comes will burn 300 to 400 calories a day.  But few people will want to stand more than that a day while working. 

(At its set speed of 2 miles an hour, that’s mild enough to not detract from your work and equal walking 4 miles a day.  So it is better than sitting the whole time particularly for fat loss.)

Secondly, it’s much more expensive than I’d initially heard and starts at $4399.  OUCH!

2.  The second one is new and solves one of those two problems and partly solves the second one.

A man in Pleasanton, California has begun selling a desk plus recumbent bike combination for closer to $1800 to $2,000.  At a health show last Saturday, the people trying it praised it for having ample and usable desk space.  And, it costs thousands less than the walking desk!

That’s a lot better price wise than over $4,000!

(I think it’s still about five to ten times higher than what I think the market needs. It also isn’t easily retrofittable to the existing desks people already have. That’s important because I think everyone should work at an exerciser of this kind! I hope to help create that solution too.)

However, the active desk recumbent bike plus desk DOES do a great job on the health and fat loss side!  You can use it almost all the time you would otherwise sit at your desk instead of just part of the time.  So the exercise can be even more gentle and nondistracting than walking yet easily help you burn 2,000 calories per five day week or more.

As an example, Bryan, the man making them, is a regular runner.  But he needed to burn more calories a week to stop being fat as much as he needed and wanted to do. 

He’s used his active desk for 9 months.  AND, he lost 18 pounds!

The best news is that it’s available now directly through Bryan at bryan@activoffice.net .

He is also possibly going to sell it on Amazon soon.

If the price is something you can afford at all, and you have the bit of extra space where you work, I strongly recommend you consider getting one.

PS:  I got a much less expensive exerciser at my local BIG 5 sporting goods store.  Much to my great irritation, it raised my knees too much to fit at my desks either at work or at home.

But the key thing for this post is this: 

I’ve found I can use it while sitting on our couch at home and reading.  And, even though it’s not nearly as smooth to use as Bryan’s recumbent bike, I am easily able to start going and keep going on automatic pilot yet read with no noticeable effort or distraction for an hour or two at a time.