The Walking Desk Report

Two weeks ago Russ put together my new walking desk.  I have gathered a crazy amount of data based on my fitbit, my walking desk and my scale and I think that the results are worth reporting.  I will start with the bottom line so if you are actually interested you can read on.  In the two weeks since I got the desk I have lost 4.8 pounds.

A little more than two pounds a week is a very good rate for me given the following factors:  I am a fifty two year old woman, in the two months before I got my walking desk I had lost ten pounds.  So this 4.8-pound lost was not new weight I was losing, nor just water weight loss that is normal when you just begin reducing.

Thanks to my friend Jan who turned me onto my fitbit I had been trying to get 10,000 steps a day since the end of October.  It was hard.  I just met my goal most days by having to run around the house late at night.  I think that the late night push to get to 10,000 steps did not help my sleeping and I don’t think that walking around the dining room table was the best way to keep up my pace.  But I was losing weight at 10,000 steps, which was a big improvement from before the fitbit.

Enter the walking desk.  I started doing all my computer work and walk at the same time.  Some things started happening; the bills were paid ahead of time, e-mails were responded too in a timelier manner, I wrote my blog earlier in the day, I was reaching my 10,000 goal by two in the afternoon.

I upped my goal to 12,500 but my daily average was more like 15,000-17,000 steps a day.  I was sleeping better because I was not exercising after 7:00 at night.  I was doing other exercises to stretch out my legs and get some arm workouts in.  My little used office has never been so organized and the laundry even gets folded more quickly because I do it while walking at my desk.

I do write my blog while walking and you regular readers will have to weigh in if the quality has gone way down.  I try and proof read things while sitting at my regular desk just to make sure I am making as much sense as I regularly do and you all get what you pay for.  I can’t hand write letters while walking unless I want to appear that I have aged about forty years.  I can talk on the phone while walking and so far no one has noticed any background noise.   I just don’t seem to notice that I am walking while I am working.

I have been asked by a few people to post a video of what it looks like so I am doing that here. Dana’s Walking Desk on You tube.  I try and not use this blog to promote products and I get no money from so if you want to know what kind it is, send me a message and I will let you know.

I have been eating the same way so I think that I can say the desk is the only difference.  It’s a significant enough improvement to warrant this report.  I am not going to do a controlled study and not use it for two weeks to see what happens.  We all know I am no scientist.