I'm a person who likes to thrive for personal integrity by walking her talk. It's not always easy or perfect and, as with many things in this life, it's an ongoing process.

My last adventure on this domain has to do with staying healthy and fit.

I managed to loss my pregnancy weight in about 12 months, which felt great, but I'm not finding the time to exercise regularly. I do some weight resistance training once a week and I keep this going because my personal trainer comes to the house every week at the same time and she really gives me a workout.

Yet to stay healthy, I know I need to have some regular cardio sessions too. I love to walk. When we are on vacation in Portugal or California, I really walk a lot. I do easily more than 10,000 steps per day (measured by my handy-dandy pedometer). But here in Phoenix, I have to confess that my daily step count is only around 4,000 steps! This means that I'm living a sedentary life with all its health risks (even if we are not overweight).

To add salt to the wound, I work from home and spend most of my day in front of the computer or on the phone coaching my clients. The reality was that I was spending more than 7 hours seated between the time on the computer, a little bit of TV at night, reading and phone time. Not a very healthy life style!

For months I was trying to go regularly to the gym to listen to my podcast or other audio material while walking on the treadmill, but the best I managed was to go once a week and not every week. I have many irons in the fire and after getting my daughter from preschool it's family time.

I was in a dilemma without knowing how to solve my challenge. Then my personal trainer (Jacky Burke at Body Definitions) told me about this all movement around working standing up. It sounded great, but I love my office and I did not fancy to the idea of having to change my big beautiful desk or even replacing my loved reading chair by a treadmill. But I started to look on the web and researched about this idea (I don't need a big motivation to start googling anyway ;-)). Surprise, surprise, I found out that there are retrofit solutions to raise our computer screens and keyboards without having to buy a new desk (one excuse gone!), and that there is even a company that does a treadmill with a detached control panel that can be kept under our desk (another excuse gone)!!

So, I decided literally to walk my talk about being more physically active during my workday. I now have the stand, so I spend most of my time typing while standing, and the great thing about it is that I can also lower it down to work seated on my exercise ball to have a break or write some paper notes. I'm still waiting for the treadmill, but I already feel more alert and energized with my new working environment.

Please feel free to speak your mind. I would love to read and respond to your comments.

Let's keep walking our talk,

Ana

P.S.:

If you want more information about joining this uprising, I'm posting several links below with useful resources.

Workspace Planner Tool: http://www.computingcomfort.org/create2.asp

Adjustable Screen and Keyboard Stand: http://www.ergotron.com/WorkFit/tabid/640/language/en-US/default.aspx

Treadmill that fits under the regular desk: http://www.treaddesk.com/

General information: http://www.juststand.org/

And of course for those who live in the Phoenix area, the website of my personal trainer: http://bodydefinitions.com/