In the past year or so, scientific evidence that your desk job could, quite literally, be the death of you has been piling up at an alarming rate. As a person who used to run around a clinic for 12-hour nursing shifts before adopting my current lifestyle of sitting on my couch with a computer (and sometimes Cheetos) on my lap for 9-10 hour stretches, this information is concerning. What is even more immediately bothersome is that, despite the fact that I work out five days a week, I have put on about 10 pounds in the past year. The more successful I've become in my career, the less healthy I've gotten. So when I heard about the DeskCycle, my ears and flabby butt both perked up.

The DeskCycle, as the name suggests, is a piece of exercise equipment that you can pedal underneath your desk. This seemed much more practical than a full-on treadmill desk, not to mention cheaper—it rings in at $159.

My first challenge was putting the thing together. Normally I take the rather unfeminist route and give everything with "some assembly required" to my more-handy husband. But not this time. I tackled nuts, washers, bolts, and tools, and was pleasantly surprised with the results. I had been skeptical about the quality, but this is not a piece of junk. It's got lots of metal components and it feels heavy and stable.