(Today’s Weight: 212, Miles Walked: 119.5)
After nearly 4 work weeks of using a treadmill desk and nearly 120 miles of treadmill walking, I’m convinced that this is my long term solution for staying active. I can’t say that I’m always excited about walking when I first wake up in the morning, but once I get going, it just becomes second nature.
Using a Treadmill Desk – Benefits
The most immediate benefit that I’ve noticed so far is weight loss. I’m down 6-7 pounds from where I started last month. Most nutritionists recommend losing no more than 2 pounds per week as the maximum healthy rate that your body can easily handle, and it looks like I’m pretty close to that right now. Here’s a graph of my weight loss tracking so far:
My progress since starting this website on September 28th, 2011
The other benefit I’m targeting is eliminating back pain and improving overall health by being more active. At this point, I still feel the need to stretch out once in a while, but I don’t have any lingering back pain any more after standing still for long periods.
Current Problems
It’s not all sun and roses, though. My neck has felt a lot more sore lately, and my current theory as to why is that I’ve had incredibly terrible posture for most of my life. The joint pain at the base of my neck is probably my body trying to adjust to having “good” posture. Hopefully it will lessen over time, but if not, I’ll have to look at adjusting the monitor or keyboard/mouse height.
The foot arch pain I experienced early on is gone now, but the bottoms of my feet do still get sore from walking barefoot for longer than an hour or so. Right now, I’m walking most of the time with shoes, but I’m slowly increasing the amount of time I walk barefoot. Eventually, I’d like to walk barefoot the entire time, but I’m not quite there yet.
Update On My Virtual Walking Journey
Here’s an updated map of my walk to Chicago (getting closer!):
On Vacation Next Week
There probably won’t be any updates on this site next week because my wife and I are headed to California for vacation. I’ll try to take a lot of pictures, though, and post them when we return.
Let’s see how much damage I can do to the weight loss plan in a single week of vacation…
If you have any questions or comments for me, please feel free to leave them below. Thanks for reading!
Did you explain in an earlier post exactly what the reasoning is behind walking barefoot?
Yeah, I was trying to see if it would alleviate my arch pain (which seems to have mostly gone away anyway). Plus, I read somewhere that it is better for your joints to walk barefoot, but I don't know if I can actually back that up with real data.
This is interesting, have fun on the journey.
Thanks, good to hear from you!
Yes. Yes you can ruin your entire weight loss with one vacation. What you've lost in 2 months, I gained last week on our cruise.. Most of it is gone, so it may have been severe drinking weight gain
Yeah, just had that problem myself. :-/
PS – I love reading your new blog posts, but I'm always sad when I finish reading them, because there are no more… That means you're doing well with blogging!
Well, lucky for you, I just posted a new one.