From Fat to Fit: How to Make Technology Work for You

This post is by Bobby Lehew of Branded Matters.

They say technology makes us lethargic, that technology promotes a sedentary lifestyle. “They” are wrong. Technology enabled me to lose forty pounds, kick my blood pressure medicine and consistently run five miles a day, five days a week.

How?

Simple. I finally found the secret combination for someone with too many computer screens: I made them each my ally.

It started when I began calculating the time I spent sitting, reading my RSS feeds. Given that I was now virtually processing all my learning and viewing most of my entertainment via the web, I started thinking, there must be a way to stay in shape while online. One of the many hats I wear is that of a geek marketer for our business. I keep an eye out on trends that could impact our business. Staying up to date with technology is an important part of my work and my life. I needed a way to stay abreast of the radically shifting changes online while attempting to get in shape.

Standing desks were becoming popular and even treadmill desks but nothing really worked for me yet. With a few minor purchases and a few tweaks to my online experience, I eventually combined something I loved (the web) with something I hated (working out). Here’s how I did it.

Walk before you run

Walk before you run—this is conventional wisdom, right? I figured going from doing nothing to moving was progress, so I didn’t let the lack of athletic ambition get in the way of my simply moving. I started walking. Consistently.

Running a small business and raising a family of five children doesn’t leave one much room for discretionary time. Multitasking becomes an art form for a father of multiples. I began to seek ways I could maximize my time alone—reading books online, watching movies on Netflix, anything to help juggle multiple tasks simultaneously.

I walked almost daily for close to a year until one day, bored with walking, I started running. I didn’t plan on it, I just reached a point where walking was easy, I was no longer breathless and my legs didn’t quake. I could handle stepping it up a bit (literally).

From walk to run … with technology

Going from walk to run was made easier because I had figured out the solution to my personal fitness puzzle. Two essential pieces were a stable way to display my laptop on my treadmill and a way to easily browse the web while moving. I purchased a simple piece of acrylic called The Laptop Stand, affixed it to a tripod I already owned and placed it in front of my treadmill. This was one half of the equation.

The other half was to find a mouse that I could use to navigate while walking, perhaps even running. After many attempts with an actual mouse, technology finally advanced in the form of an app called Mobile Mouse that allowed me to use my iPhone as a mouse. Mobile Mouse replicates your desktop so that you can actually launch applications from your iPhone, scroll through pages on the web and click on the entire face of your iPhone screen. It is practically a hand-held trackpad.

The final component was finding a way to read my RSS feeds. Google Reader has a little used feature called Reader Play. Much like Google flip, Reader Play enlarges your feeds on your screen, enabling you to read them, safely, at a distance and flip through each update, magazine-style. Reader Play even automatically plays video clips when you advance to the next post. I will often save or share information, literally, while on the run. The Laptop Stand, Google Reader Play and the iPhone app Mobile Mouse was, for me, a fitness enabling trifecta.

For someone who hates exercise, I realized the secret wasn’t just discipline. It was much more than that: the secret was to combine something I loved with something I hated.

Today’s technology enables you to multitask like never before. A few simple hacks and you can watch while jogging, read while biking, and even jam while swimming. The hard work wasn’t getting on the treadmill. The hard work was tweaking and hacking until I found the perfect combination that eliminated all the reasons not to exercise. If you work hard at discovering how to combine what you love with exercise you’ll soon watch both excuses and pounds melt away.

Bobby Lehew is the Director of Operations at Robyn Promotions. He writes regularly on his blog Branded Matters and runs five miles a day five days a week. You can find him on NikePlus or Twitter as BobbyLehew.