Fat burning desk helps lose kilos at work

May 15, 2007 by Geeks are Sexy | 4 comments

Working in an office and need to lose a bit of weight? Maybe you should try one of those new “treadmill desks” designed by U.S. researchers at the Mayo Clinic institute.

They built what they called a “vertical workstation”–a desk fitted over a standard treadmill. They had 15 obese people to work at this treadmill-desk and measured how many calories they burned.

If an overweight office worker used this vertical workstation all day, every day for a year, he or she could lose up to 66 pounds, the researchers report in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

Here’s a picture showing a staff member at the Mayo Clinic using the vertical desk. Working on this thing would probably reduce my productivity by about 50%, but I’d be willing to try it for a while, even if it’s just out of curiosity.