New Treadmill Desk-Excercise while Working

Full Article at New York Times

TERRI KRIVOSHA, a partner at a Minneapolis law firm, logs three miles each workday on a treadmill without leaving her desk. She finds it easier to exercise while she types than to attend aerobics classes at the crack of dawn.

Dr. Joe Stirt on his home-office treadmill.

Brad Rhoads, a computer programmer and missionary in Princeton, Ill., faces a computer monitor on a file cabinet and gets in about five miles a day on a treadmill while working in his home office.

“After a while, your legs do get kind of tired,” said Mr. Rhoads, 40, who started exercising in March, when doctors advised him to lose weight after open-heart surgery.

Ms. Krivosha and Mr. Rhoads are part of a small but growing group of desk jockeys who were inspired by Dr. James Levine, an endocrinologist at the Mayo Clinic. In 2005, Dr. Levine led a study showing that lean people burn about 350 more calories a day than those who are overweight, by doing ordinary things like fidgeting, pacing or walking to the copier.

To incorporate extra movement into the routines of sedentary workers (himself included), Dr. Levine constructed the first known treadmill desk by sliding a bedside hospital tray over a $400 treadmill. With a laptop and a phone headset, he said he can go all day at a leisurely 1.4 miles an hour.

Without breaking a sweat, the so-called work-walker can burn an estimated 100 to 130 calories an hour at speeds slower than two miles an hour, Mayo research shows.

Enthusiasts began following Dr. Levine’s example, constructing treadmill desks that range from sleekly robotic set-ups to rickety mash-ups that could be Wall-E’s long-lost kin. But the recent introduction of an all-in-one treadmill desk from Details may inch work-walking into the mainstream, as dozens of businesses invest in the hardware to let their employees walk (and, ideally, lose a little weight) at work.

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