Treadmill Workstation

coondoggie writes "Did you know you could lose as much as 66 pounds by sweating on your PC? Well using the Mayo Clinic's vertical workstation, that just might be the weight loss wave of the future. The vertical workstation is basically a desk mounted over a treadmill that lets office workers to kill two birds with one stone — send emails, check invoices and write reports and burn calories at the same time, say Professors James Levine and Jennifer Miller of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, who came up with the machine/desk. There are other things you can try as well. For example, the FPGamerunner, a USB full-size treadmill that works with any first-person shooter (FPS) game, has you covered. Walking on the treadmill moves your character through the game. Handlebars and buttons at the front of the $1,299 treadmill control your direction and fire your weapons." This seems like a lot better idea than me trying to collect Pokemon on an elliptical trainer which will no doubt one day lead to a very embarrassing obituary.

Comments

My workout

[Pojut]

I lift 4 days a week and do cardio 3 days a week. One of those cardio sessions every week is actually done on a stationary bike while playing video games.

It works fantastically...I find that I will stay on that bike for a MUCH longer time (roughly 30 minutes longer) if I am actively engaged with something other than my legs moving

Re:My workout

[0100010001010011]

I'd comment that running and biking use the arms differently. Moving your arms is proper form for running while it is not for biking. I'd suspect that on a bike you'd be able to concentrate using your arms better (after all they're supposed to be available for steering).

Your mileage may vary?

[thousandinone]

I dunno how effective it would be for me. I have to get up to a pretty decent run to get my heart rate to a point where its any real benefit, and I doubt I could type well at a run. As for FPS, most of them already reduce your accuracy when your toon is moving; compound that with the physical movement of your body and you probably won't be hitting much; this problem could be mitigated by just having pixel perfect aim in the game and letting the actual movement be the cause of inaccuracy, but I can see that being abused...

And another

[dreddnott]

I posted the above as kind of a joke, but I became curious and visited the official Gamerunner website.

Apparently the treadmill actually will sell for $495 plus S&H, once they get their store going.

And from looking at the actual manual for the thing (warning: PDF!) it looks like it uses two USB connectors (one for keyboard, one for mouse) and the display panel is powered by two AA batteries. You'd think there would be enough bus power in two connectors to power a low-end LCD display.

Weight loss thru exercise alone is a fallacy

[deacon]

Do the math. Brisk walking burns 7 calories a minute. A McDonalds value meal has 1170 calories. You have to walk briskly for 167.14 minutes to burn off those calories. That's 2 hours 47 minutes. Of walking. Briskly.

Exercise has important health benefits and you should be doing it. But to lose weight, you need
to control your food intake. All the fad diets and pills are bullshit and possibly harmful as well. Eat less calories, and you will lose weight. And while you are at it, cut out all the hydrogenated fats. Eating lard would be less harmful. If you are addicted to nicotine, get your fix thru a method other than smoking or chewing.

Yes I am ranting. But I hate to see people oblivious to the fact that they are
ruining their health and quality of life by ingesting obscenely excessive amounts of harmful "food" products and nicotine delivery systems. Know why all the old people you see on the street are thin like birds? Because most of the fat people died when they were 50 years old, and the rest of them are confined in a nursing home waiting to die.

Re:Weight loss thru exercise alone is a fallacy

[SCHecklerX]

Somewhat true. But we don't all exercise alike. I'm currently 235 lbs. In the winter I take a cyclist-specific 2 hour spin class once a week. I've burned almost 3000 calories in 2 hours in those sessions.

I've used the hacker's diet (which adheres basically to what you state). But I've found I do much better just consciously eating less, and exercising a lot more. It's now cycling season, and I have for the most part recovered from the surgeries that were keeping me from exercising over the winter months, and the lbs are melting away without me having to suffer through a strict calorie-counting diet.

Granted, I'm not a typical case. Most people certainly would not do a few days a week on the bikes (a couple of days of singletrack, and a few on the road), and certainly wouldn't go through 50ish miles at a time with a lot of climbing.

But to state that exercise has little to do with weight loss depends on the type of exercise that you do. It certainly does feel a lot better to exercise more than it does to eat less. And at the intensity levels that I personally exercise at, it certainly does have a large impact. Of course, eating less is also part of the equation, but if you put the emphasis on that part, you will be miserable, at least for awhile. And who wants to be stuck in calorie-counting mode all their lives in order to control their weight?