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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.
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
Living With a Nerd
I wonder how many people will get wrapped up in the game, bust their ass and get shot across the room after they've been "PWNED".
"Well doctor, someone was spawn raping us and the next thing I know, I was trying to pry my head from under the sofa. I was pwned."
"Please, shut up. Just when I think you can't say anything more stupid, you speak again." -Archie Bunker.
I'd love to see them walk on a treadmill and try to send email at the same time.
Granted, IT would get called to fix the treadmill if it broke.
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
Imagine moving that treadmill controller around to LAN parties. Only the most dedicated to weight-loss would attempt it, but man would it be hilarious to see the 300 pound guy sweating his ass off getting that thing through the door.
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
According to xe.com, you lose 655 pounds straight away !!
"I am not bound to please thee with my answers" [William Shakespeare]
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.
I may make you feel, but I can't make you think.
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.
100 calories per hour * 8 hours per day = 800 per day. 5 days a week = 4000 calories per week. That's like running a marathon. Just over 40 hours instead of 3 or 4.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
I guess you don't know much about genetics, do ya? :-)
It's a simple formula: calories in - calories burned = fat stored.
If calories in - calories burned = fat stored * magic_genetics_modifier then you've invented energy creation from nothing or destruction without release.
In either case, the genetics excuse for obesity is incompatible with the conservation of energy. The genetics track really means some people have faster metabolisms and burn the calories or don't have as efficient a gastro system to extract calories from food. Other people have slower metabolisms or more efficient gastro systems to get every bit out. People in the latter group need to eat a lot less and/or find a way to burn off more (exercise). Convincing people of formula #2 above is just more helpless victim mentality.
I'm cucreantly oon a traedmill worksttatioan and I mu8tgst say that6y I lovwe it. It makeeks lossigsn weight so easty. Ittsw a littlwe buumpy but I dootn' think anyoeonq2 nottices.
Faith is a willingness to accept something w/o complete proof and to act on it. Reason allows you to correct that faith.
I'm seeing a lot of BS flying around about the idea of a walking desk, and having built my own, I thought I should de-FUD the conversation a bit.
.7 mph, which is crazy slow. Slow enough, in fact, that its almost hard to walk at that speed. The point is to just move and burn a steady trickle of calories over a long period of time, not "work out". If you're sweating or even breathing hard at all, you're doing it wrong. I can talk on the phone and the other party has no idea that I'm on a treadmill. I personally vary my speed between 1.2 and 2.0 mph. Basically, the speed is inversely proportional to the amount of concentration required by the current task. If I'm just reading, I can do 2.0 with no problem. If I'm writing code or doing any real amount of typing, I'll usually keep it around 1.4 - 1.6.
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You're not running, or even walking quickly. James Levine, the guy spearheading all this NEAT stuff, recommends
Which brings me to an important point: typing speed is nearly unaffected. My error rate is probably a little higher when on the treadmill, but not enough to be an issue at all. I can still out-type nearly everyone on IM, so if the walking slows me down at all, it's a moot point anyway.
It took me a couple days to really adapt to it, but once you're used to walking and working simultaneously, it's pretty mindless. Your legs basically go on autopilot while your mind does what it needs to do. I would compare it to [car analogy alert!] driving a manual transmission in heavy city traffic. It sucks at first, but eventually it's all muscle memory and you don't have to think about it at all. You just do it.
Here are some (old, crappy) pics of the treadmill set up in my old office:
http://img476.imageshack.us/img476/7197/091806120
http://img513.imageshack.us/img513/9194/091806121
http://img513.imageshack.us/img513/898/0918061211
http://img513.imageshack.us/img513/8043/091806121
http://img513.imageshack.us/img513/6964/091806121
It looks somewhat assy, but it works really, really well. The keyboard/mouse platform is ultra-stable and does not move at all or even vibrate at the speeds I walk. With the monitors positioned the way they are, my eyes never have trouble following even small text, and I'm older with very bad vision. If anyone is considering doing this, don't even bother with a treadmill that retails for less than about $1500. You need a high quality treadmill to achieve the necessary silence and stability for office use.