I, like every one blessed with a mental illness, am always looking for new tools or tricks to help with stabilizing my mood. With depression physical activity is highly recommended. Here lies the problem. I work at a desk, in a cube, five days a week and at least nine hours a day. That will suck the life right out of. I workout every morning, but within an hour of getting to my desk my mood has usually tanked.

I probably do need a new job or winning lottery ticket. That has already occurred to me.

Trying to get more physical activity in to my day has been a challenge. I have started walking on my lunch hour, but I live in Pittsburgh and it is March. With the cold, snow, ice and rain the walking hasn’t really taken off. Since I walk around the parking lot wearing an iPod I have determined that on days when we are hosting meetings or training courses in our building walking is not safe. Being run over at work is not the way I really want to go. I have been in the “what to do?” state for a while over this. Then Amazon came through with the solution. Pedals on a stand.

Oh yes my friend I am the happy owner of pedals on a stand. Simple, well-built and not overly expensive which is all I wanted being on a budget. Mine doesn’t have the electronic gizmos that track miles and calories burned, but I am totally okay with that. They arrived Friday and I started using them on Monday. I LOVE them. I am not to the point of pedaling for the full-time I am at work but I do pedal for twenty minutes to a half hour out of each hour. Yesterday I did an hour and twenty minutes straight. I didn’t even realize it as I was engrossed in spread sheets. I will say that when I stood up I almost went right over on to my face. The legs were a bit wobbly. I figure that there will be weight loss just by using them, but the important thing is the mood stabilizing. I have to say that my stress is reduced and my mood is improving. Even the teeth grinding is less. That right there is worth the $20!

Take some time and think about what else you can do to help yourself. What can you tweak? Add to your day or even remove. Think about it and see what you come up with. I’ll be here just pedaling my way to sanity.