Tales From a Treadmill

When I found out I was pregnant with Whimsy, I insisted on getting a treadmill.  I knew that even if I ate steamed broccoli and grilled chicken for the duration of my pregnancy, I would be packing on at least 50 pounds and being 40 while trying to lose that baby weight wasn't going to be much fun, so I turned to Craigslist, as I often do.  And let me tell you, when I was 42 weeks pregnant and about to be induced, I got on that treadmill and decided I wasn't getting off of it until I went into labor.  Voila! Whimsy made her appearance about 8 hours later.

Now that Whimsy herself  is running around and poking her nose into everything, I have to steal time on the treadmill whenever I can.  I steal it from the 14 year old who would rather just leave for school early instead of helping with his baby sister. And I steal it from my work-time, too and this is how:

 I was reading Gretchen Rubin's Better Than Before about the formation of habits and she weaves a little story about her sister into the book.  Her sister is a diabetic and a tv show writer, which is a pretty bad combination.  So she gets her sister an expensive contraption called a "Treadmill Desk."  As soon as I read that combination of words,  a light went on in my head and I was off to Pinterest to see if my regular treadmill could be converted into a treadmill desk.  It turned out that with a pine board and two metal cuffs, I could indeed achieve a desk for my laptop where I could walk and do mindless things I normally would be sitting down to do.

I don't have to tell you that walking, even walking slowly, is so much better than sitting at a desk for hours.  I get bonus points by having my treadmill in the sunny window where I work on my vitamin D production at the same time.  I find that at 2.5 mph, I can still type fairly easily as well, so I'm able to send email, blog, and work on other written projects like Etsy listings.  I don't feel guilty for taking time to scroll through Facebook and Instagram, since I normally would just be sitting around doing those things and now I have the added bonus of getting in some much needed exercise.  It really just makes a lot of "guilty" activities seem not so bad.

The desk is easy to slip on and off.  When the desk is off, I can run, walk, pray, listen to the Robcast, and sometimes just escape from the world.  When the desk is on, I can work while walking, or if I'm not actually walking, it's a great height for packing Etsy orders and holding my scales for weighing the finished packages.  I have less than 10 dollars in the desk, but I have gotten so much use from it.

We have too many modern conveniences to get the exercise we really need. This is how I am fighting the tendency to be sedentary.  It's not easy to squeeze some quality movement into the day, but my treadmill desk is a good way for me to do the things I normally do with the added benefit of moving.

Now, if I could just come up with a way to get the windows washed while I was reading a book....that would be some clever multitasking...