Good morning everyone, I hope your weekend is going well. I started sharing my thoughts regarding working from home in a series of Work from Home Diary posts. Feel free to share your work from home feelings in the comments section below. For today’s update, I wanted to talk about my judgemental exercise bike.
A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about the strange things I recently purchased on Amazon. Since we knew we would be staying at home more during the next few weeks, we decided to purchase an exercise bike. My wife was interested in a Peloton exercise bike, but I talked her down from $2,000 to $200. After doing some research, we decided to purchase a Stamina Wonder Exercise Bike from Amazon (the price has actually dropped from $200 down to $180). The Stamina exercise bike did not have all the bells and whistles of top of the line Peloton bikes, but it had pretty good reviews, could be folded and moved easily, and the price was right. We also purchased a floor mat from Amazon to protect the floor underneath the exercise bike.
I don’t know about you, but we watch more TV than ever before. Between CNN, local ABC news, Hallmark movies (my recent favorite is You’re Bacon Me Crazy), Netflix shows (like Too Hot To Handle and Tiger King) and more, there is always something to watch every day.
Since we do not have a home gym, the natural place for the exercise bike was downstairs near the TV. This location is perfect. I can ride the exercise bike for 60-90 minutes watching TV and keep my mind occupied from the miles ridden and calories burned. Having the exercise bike near the TV also serves another important reason: it constantly looks at me when I’m sitting on the couch, eating food and silently judging me (“hey, put the candy down and let’s ride”). I actually think I eat less junk food now that I can see the exercise bike out of the corner of my eye.
Between motivating me to eat less junk food (or to eat healthier food) and providing a way to exercise at home by mindless pedaling for hours, I’m very pleased with our exercise bike. I’m not expecting to get ripped or preparing for the next Tour de France, but any type of exercise is better than no exercise at all.
Have you been working out or doing any yoga or fitness classes at home? How has it been going for you? If you have any questions, please leave a comment below. Have a great weekend everyone!
More importantly, does your wife use it? I thought peloton was what all the cool folks used.
Yes, she uses the exercise bike too :)
I don’t think it is necessary to spend $2,000 plus monthly video subscriptions in order to exercise.
Exercise equipment like this provides an excellent place to pile clothes that have been worn, but are not ready for the laundry yet.
Haha, our bike is naked (no clothes hang on it).
Not yet, anyway.
In all seriousness, good luck with your exercise routine! I have found that the combination that works for me and keeps me in good shape is daily exercise, calorie counting (and no fudging here) and a daily weigh-in with Excel charting. Those three things work for me.
Hi Billy, that sounds like a great trifecta. It should be relatively easy to count calories since most of my meals are cooked at home. How long have you been keeping a daily log?
Zwift has been tremendous throughout this. I had it before to help keep in shape in the off season, and now use it almost every day. A lot of the pro teams have started riding on zwift. In the last week I have “ridden” with Chris Froome, Geraint Thomas, and many more pro riders (I actually watched them fly by me, but there is still some interaction you can have with them) The routes are varied, the incentives (getting badges or points to “buy” an upgraded bike) are motivating, and there is a world of riders to hang out with. Lately they have been reaching peak ridership of about 30,000 people at once on weekends and early weekday mornings. I am now “friends” with riders from around the world.
That’s really cool, I’ll have to check out Zwift. Thank you :)