Leslie Sansone's Walking Videos: A Computer Potato's Fitness Plan

Because computers have become as integral a part of our lives as television sets are, more and more of us are turning into "computer potatoes." And if your profession requires working on a computer that could easily mean up to eight hours a day sitting in front of one.

My slowly decreasing fitness level due to working at my computer started bothering about 6 months ago. I found myself waking up every morning vowing to exercise that day. The next thing I knew, it was 6pm. I was so fried from working at my computer the entire day there was no way I was going to work out.

The more I failed to keep my commitment to exercising, the more I realized I HAD to do something about exercising on a regular basis. Especially after listening to Dr. Oz on the Oprah Show. Dr. Oz. has educated millions of Oprah viewers about the omentum. Dr. Oz says the "omentum is the fat organ connected to your stomach that's only purpose is to catch and store fat. When the fat is stored in your stomach, your body has easy access to it. The fat then creates an inflammatory process that irritates your arteries and puts you at risk for blocked arteries." If you've ever looked at a person and thought to yourself, "he has a blubber gut", that person is most definitely at risk for heart disease. I found myself staring down at my abdomen wondering just how healthy my own omentum was. My slowly increasing waistline said, "not so healthy"!

Being a pragmatic soul, I looked at my day to day routine and my own exercise habits realistically. I knew that if I was going to maintain a healthy level of fitness, I had to integrate exercise into my day, all through the day. And here is what I devised for myself.

I'd been working out the previous summer to a series of video walking tapes by Leslie Sansone. Some of you might already be familiar with her work. She has built her entire exercise brand around walking. Wal-Mart carries a selection of her DVDs.

I had three of her workouts on video tape; the one mile, two mile and three mile. One day I decided to play her one-mile workout video on the TV while I recorded it to my computer's hard drive. I used a free program I downloaded from the Internet called Audacity to do the recording which lasts 15 minutes. In that 15 minutes, Leslie takes you through a vigorous, low-impact, one-mile walk.

Once I had the 15-minute walk recorded on my hard drive, I converted it to an MP3 file which I then loaded onto my MP3 player. Although this one mile walk is low impact, it does get my heart rate up.

And you can do the walk standing right in front of your computer at home, or in your office at work. Or if you get a 15 minute break in the morning and afternoon at your place of employment, you can go to the lady's lounge. The beauty of this walking program is that you can do it anywhere. The minimum amount of space you need is about four square feet.

OK, so this recording on my MP3 player is the major element in my "computer potato" fitness plan. The second element is a little application I downloaded from the Internet for free called, "Stretch Assistant". I keep it on my desktop. All you do is set the timer in this tiny little software program (I set mine to remind me to get up and walk every hour and a half and then I shrink it down. ) When a hour and thirty minutes has gone by Stretch Assistant pops open on my computer screen to remind me to stretch/exercise.

Before I jump to my feet, I always reset Stretch Assistant and shrink it back down knowing an hour and a half later it will remind me to get up and walk again.Then I turn on my MP3 player and start my one mile-in-15 minutes, Leslie Sansone walk.

The government recommends that each of us should try to walk 10,000 steps a day for health and fitness. It's estimated that there are 2000 steps per mile. By setting my Stretch Assistant for every hour and a half, in an eight hour work day, I can fit in 5 one mile walks and that gives me my 10,000 steps for the day.

I find that by integrating my walking into my computer workday I can faithfully stay committed to my exercise program. If I put off my exercising until I'm done working for the day I know I'm not going to take the time to do It's just to easy to eat dinner and collapse on the couch to watch some TV.

By making walking an integral part of my computer workday I know I am maintaining a healthy fitness level. So can you.