Extreme Office Makeover
Imagine never having to go to the gym again. In fact, imagine going to your job for a workout. Sounds crazy, but Dr. James Levine, an obesity researcher at the Mayo Clinic, has come up with a plan to transform offices into health cubicles.
Levine walks on a treadmill while checking e-mail and answering reporters’ questions. Keeping up a 1 mph pace throughout his workday, Dr. Levine burns an extra 100 calories per hour. “We’re talking more than 50 pounds of weight loss a year, if I were to keep my diet the same,” he says.
Dr. Levine’s recent study demonstrated that thin people are on their feet an average of 152 more minutes a day than more sedentary people. Thus the idea for the “ultimate office makeover” was born: a workstation with a computer, desk and treadmill rolled into one.
The makeover was relatively cheap. Levine says the 10 workstations cost about $1,000 each — about half the cost of a cubicle — and remodeling the space cost about $5.50 per square foot.
Though the treadmill-workstations aren’t commercially available yet, Mayo Clinic’s technology licensing people are working on that.