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Thanks to the Affiliate Summit Feedfront Magazine, I decided to give a treadmill desk a try. I was never keen on the idea before because I like my exercise time to be my head clearing time. But I got tired of sitting in a chair all day. And I figured that I could combine my “work walks” during the day with some cardio walks and runs and night.
My husband and I set out to rig up my existing treadmill into some kind of desk. I won’t bore you with details, but we were lucky that we had some great things on hand (first…a treadmill! Then other handy items like a docking station). We bought a shelf and two shelf racks at Lowes and built the “treadmill desk.” I put a cordless mouse and keyboard on it and tested it out. After some trial and error, it seemed perfect. I started using it for a couple of days, but the kids were still home for summer break and I was getting ready to head to Affiliate Summit.
Fast forward a bit and I have now completed my first full week of working on the treadmill. Pretty decent stats. I walked just over 16 hours during the day between Monday and Friday. I burned 3730 calories (over a pound!) and walked 34.5 miles. In addition to the obvious calorie burning benefits, here were a couple that I didn’t plan on:
- I drank a lot of water. I hate drinking plain water but was so thirsty that I more than tripled my daily water intake.
- I ate less snacks. Between the time that I spent on the treadmill and the fact that I wasn’t near the kitchen, I just wasn’t thinking about food.
- I slept like a baby. Combine the mental exercise of working with the physical exercise and I was worn out each night!
I’m hoping to get back to running at least a few days a week in addition to the treadmill work. I know that I need that cardio, and I just need to keep running to stay trained to be able to run the mini marathon again next spring. I hope that this is the first of many posts about my treadmill desk!
My treadmill actually folds up to the wall. When we first got it, we had it in our bedroom because it was the only place that we had room for it and we didn’t want to disturb the kids when we were using it. Ten years later, we finally have room to leave it set up all the time!!
Have you seen those little laptop stand things? They just slip over the front of the treadmill like those old cupholders we used to slip in the windows of the car before they started building them into every armrest. Check out http://www.surfshelf.com
I so want to do this. I’ve been thinking really hard about setting this up, unfortunately no room and I don’t think my office at work would let me. LOL. I will have one one day though.
I just recently read that article, too, and was thinking I need to put one of those in my office, but I don’t even own a treadmill. After reading your story, though, I’m even more motivated to get one – thanks for the inspiration!