Saturday, May 19, 2007

We should all lose 30kg



This is what happens when 'your employer owns your body and soul' cross-breeds with 'nothing is more dangerous than fat.' A treadmill desk designed by the Mayo clinic. Don't mock because they were seriously scientific about their research:

"If obese individuals were to replace time spent sitting at the computer with walking computer time by 2 to 3 hours a day, and if other components of energy balance were constant, a weight loss of 20 to 30kg a year could occur,"
It's none of our employer's business whether or not we lose 20 to 30 kg, or gain 20 or 30 kg. Our bodies and our lives should belong to us, that's the basic meaning of freedom.

4 comments:

  1. Anonymous4:20 pm

    Uh, Mia, you're a socialist. Your body belongs to the state/collective/empire/thing.

    Or are you turning libertarian on us?

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  2. Anonymous5:20 pm

    Framing the objective as weight-loss is indeed dubious, and is just begging for a sarcastic response from fativists (factivists?). But I'm sure you'll also be able to see it like this, even if it's a painfully liberal-rights framework: Freedom from exercise at work should be balanced against the freedom from developing OOS, neck/back pain, obesity and diabetes while spending 1/3 of one's life in a sedentary office environment (ie. the right to health). Also, nothing in the development of this 'walking computer' suggests compulsion anyway, or does it?

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  3. I definitely should lose 30kg. Although given that I have about ... online body fat calculator suggests about 10-15kg fat in my body total... error, error, insert leg in meat grinder and press start... error! Or worse, my partner weighs about 45kg total. She'd be a head in a jar after losing 30kg!

    I just suggested to a coworker that since he's cold he could walk down the stairs instead of using the lift, and that might warm him up a bit (we can't walk up the stairs, the "security" system prevents that). He took the lift anyway.

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  4. Anonymous12:33 am

    I wouldn't mind doing an hour or so on that desk. Humans were designed to be active, whether it be working in the field or doing the laundry without the aid of a machine it's only being in the last 50-100 years that sitting on our butts has become a way of life.

    ReplyDelete