Do an experiment right now. Don’t keep reading. Do it.
Pick up your keyboard and turn it upside down. Tap it twice lightly against your desk.
If crumbs fall out, you are busted!
It’s not the keyboard that makes you fat. It’s the operator of the keyboard. No, don’t look behind you.
TV is not the only culprit behind the rise of obesity. People sit for hours both at work and at home…staring at a monitor… with no more exercise than typing a few keystrokes or rolling a mouse. Their necks hurt from their bad posture. Their feet and ankles swell from being bent for long periods of time, just like being on a long airplane flight. Their eyes get blurry and tired because the monitor refreshes at a faster cycle than their brains.
The no-food-at-the-computer rule is more important for humans than for computers.
It’s true that coffee…especially that $5 barista creation…is bad for keyboards, but it’s worse for you. The caffeine gives you a feeling of clarity, and you get a sugar spike from the sugar and casein in the milk, but then the buzz passes, and you slide further into a cyber-coma. At least then you might get back up and get something else to eat or drink, but it’s likely to be just as bad for you. And so it goes.
If you spend hours on the box without getting up, stretching, getting a drink of water (not soft drink, not coffee, not beer), and moving your muscles, your body can’t tell the difference between the computer and the TV. It’s the same thing as playing your game console on the big screen. You might be more emotionally involved, but your body is sagging into a sack of flab.
Your brain may be taking in new information, but your blood is pooling in your lower body, and probably in your stomach to digest the crumbs that made it to your mouth.
You aren’t getting the benefit of the nutrients you take in because you aren’t moving enough to get your blood flowing properly. Your muscles atrophy from lack of use and from your body stealing the protein from them to manufacture the nutrients you aren’t taking in.
Moving builds muscle, helps circulate blood and lymph to support the delivery of nutrition and oxygen to cells and to remove toxins and waste. Getting fresh blood and oxygen to your brain helps you learn faster and make new neuron paths. Even if you are eating good foods, if you aren’t moving, they aren’t getting delivered. I’m not talking about two hours of cardio a day, although I’m not against aerobics. It’s about getting off your gluteus maximus every hour or so. Nobody ever worked his or her butt off by sitting on it for hours at a time.
Getting up and stretching also helps you maintain posture, which supports your muscles and helps you breathe. How many times have you found yourself slumped over a hot keyboard? You can’t breathe in that position. Where does your oxygen come from to support your metabolism? Breathing. Sit up and breathe. Get up and breathe.
Finally, consider how much your vision affects how you think. If you are only focused on a near-sighted view of things, reinforced by constant computing, then how much of a long view can you take mentally? Getting away from the computer allows your eyes to rest, to focus further away and to get a different perspective on your task at hand.
That perspective might help you see past the immediate reward of snacks to the longer term goal of why you are working so hard.
Get up. Drink water. Stop eating at the keyboard.
-James D. Brausch
8 Comments
LOL great post - luckily I have no crumbs in my keyboard — but two years I would have definitely been “busted”!
I work in front of a computer all day and I definitely try to stand a lot and move - even if it’s just to alternate lifting my legs up and down or fidgeting. I also stand when the phone rings and use the copier on the second floor (using the stairs) and use the ladies room that is furthest away.
I would leave a comment, but I have to stand up and get some water now. Sorry.
- Aaron
I love this one - unfortunately, it hits really close to home (my keyboard DID have crumbs drop out )
One other thing that works for me is to use a large exercise ball (65 centimeter for me at 6 foot, - 75 cm for you, you are taller) as a chair instead of the standard office chair. This seems to help me remember to keep my posture better, and keep me moving a little bit, even while working at the computer.
Hi James! Sorry, I had to clear away the cookie crumbs from my shirt before I could dump out the keyboard… Shame on me!
Hey, I truly admie all your input with this blog.
I too have posted pictures like yours here… but, I’m still too embarrasses to put them online.
May God continue to bless you and all of yours,
Don D. Morrison
Thank you for sharing this post with the readers of this week’s Carnival of Family Life! This week the Spring is Just Around the Corner Edition is hosted at home at Colloquium! Hope you will drop by and read some of the many other wonderful entries received this week!
Yeah, I’m busted, but the crumbs coming out are from RICE CAKES and I have the perpetual bottle of water sitting here, as well. Point for me, right?
(Down 75 pounds, by the way.)
No kidding! My keyboard has been making fat for years. I saw an advertisement the other day for a stand-up desk configuration attached to a slow-moving treadmill. Now if I could just master walking and typing at the same time.
Great post! All I can say is that I am guilty.
Interesting post!, man
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