So, a friend asked me a question about my exercise routine, and I thought it might be helpful to put that down in more than 500 characters.

We used to follow at least the exercise component of The Hacker’s Diet - getting in at least 15 mins a day in the morning, before work - before we changed jobs to one which required a commute that started a lot earlier. We never picked that back up, even as circumstances changed - but these roles required a decent amount of walking to and from the bus stop, every single day - and that was enough.

And then, March 2020 happened. Our job became at home all the time (save a brief return to the office stint last year that upper management now seems to have completely forgotten about). The only thing that kept us active, the only reason we left the house some days, was Pokémon Go.

In late 2022, a friend - an artist, a fantastic community creator and leader, and one of the most positive influences in our lives - announced her intentions to exercycle while streaming cartoons, three times a week, three episodes per session, to keep a consistent schedule and for those exercises to be accountable.

In June 2023, I started joining in with those streams more regularly as a viewer - as the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic episodes had finally got ahead of the point where I originally stopped watching the series. ¹

And in August, I bought the absolute cheapest garbage AS SEEN ON TV exercise bike that’d take our weight. (We didn’t initially know if we’d stick with it - something a little more expensive might have been better for a better saddle)

And we’ve done what we can to keep to that same schedule since; every Monday, Tuesday, and Friday, we do what we can. Sometimes that’s not much; we’ve overdone it on the Sunday, or bad leg is playing up after Monday’s session. Sometimes that friend is unavailable and we’ll stick to the schedule ourselves while they’re busy. We post our results after every session - but I never look back at the numbers; the goal here is more maintenance than muscle. The important part is just… trying - and then reporting on what was done.

It turns out there’s a reason why the most common bit of exercise advice is to tell a friend that you’re doing so.