My Favorite Products for Stress Relief in Grad School | In Partnership with Smile Brilliant

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Disclosure: This blog post is in partnership with Smile Brilliant. Smile Brilliant kindly sent me their products to try for free. This blog post also contain affiliate links - I may make a commission off of any purchases you make through affiliate links. Thank you again to Smile Brilliant for partnering with me for this blog post!

Hello, friends! It’s that time of the year, we’re in the middle of the semester and it is streeeessFUL. Since I started grad school, there have certainly been a lot of stressful times and most of the time, my stress tends to manifest as anxiety. For me, the best approach is often to figure out products and strategies that help reduce any overstimulation that might be causing my anxiety. So, today I’ve partnered up with my friends over at Smile Brilliant to share with you some of my favorite stress reducing products for grad school!

Smile Brilliant Custom Night Guards

One of the most obvious ways that my day-to-day stress affects me is through teeth clenching. Even if I’ve had a relatively normal day, I’ll often find myself clenching my teeth in my sleep and waking up the next day with my jaw seemingly glued shut and a lot of tension in my facial muscles.

I’ve worked with Smile Brilliant in previous posts and tried their whitening system as well as their electric toothbrush (hands down my favorite electric toothbrush) so when they offered to send me their night guards it seemed like a great opportunity to try and address some of the anxiety I’ve experienced! Though Smile Brilliant is perhaps best known for their whitening products, they’ve also expanded to a lot of other products like their new water flossers and plaque highlighters. 

I’ve been using the Smile Brilliant night guards since the start of the semester and they’ve been a game changer. Since I’ve been clenching my teeth for sooooooo many years, I’ve always been low key worried about how that might affect the health of my teeth and whether I might be unconsciously grinding them down overnight. These night guards have saved me a ton of worry since I know there’s something there protecting my teeth and I find that my jaw isn’t as clenched when I wake up in the mornings because the night guards are perfectly aligned to my teeth and create a bit of space between my top and bottom teeth so that there isn’t as much tension in my jaw!

If you’d like to try out any of Smile Brilliant’s products, including their custom night guards, you can use the code ellayvonne20 for 20% off your purchase! 

Fidget Rings

If you are someone who experiences social anxiety then I highly recommend a fidget ring! In my first semester of graduate school, I started experiencing a lot of anxiety during classes and found that having something subtle to fidget with made things a little more bearable. It certainly didn’t cure my anxiety (that’s still a work in progress!), but it gave me something to focus on that helped to distract me from my anxiety.

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Equilibria CBD Rapid Melts 

I’ve been on a bit of an anti-anxiety product adventure over the past year and one of my favorites has been the equilibria rapid melts. My anxiety is generally manageable but during days where I’m presenting or preparing for big meetings, sometimes it can get out of hand. Day to day, I found that taking the CBD oil wasn’t doing too much for me so I switched to the rapid melts and have found that they are somewhat helpful in reducing my anxiety levels if I take them while I’m experiencing more acute anxiety. 

Popflex Suede Yoga Mat

I’m a big big believer in yoga and meditation to help address anxiety but prior to using suede yoga mats, I’d always be so, so frustrated because my palms were so sweaty that I couldn’t hold any poses! If your palms also have a tendency to sweat like mine then I highly recommend the PopFlex suede yoga mats - ever since I got mine, I’ve never looked back - they are by far the best yoga mats I’ve ever used and come in tons of happy, colorful designs :) 

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Bose Headphones 

I think this might be the 3rd of 4th time I’ve mentioned my Bose headphones on this blog but seriously - they are the best headphones I’ve ever owned by a landslide. I tend to get easily stressed when there’s a lot of noise around me and with my Bose headphones, it feels like nooothing bothers me at all. This has been a life saver in busy airports, libraries, and shared offices! 

Spotify Subscription

Paired with my Bose headphones, my Spotify subscription has also been a life saver. If I’m in a busy place or feeling a little stressed, I’ll pop on my noise cancelling headphones, play a lo-fi or meditation playlist and it literally feels like all of my stress melts away and I’m able to focus again. Definitely worth every penny!

Fairy Lights & Phillip Hue Bulbs 

Twinkly lights and light bulbs with warm hues reeeeally help to chill me out so I always have a ton of twinkly fairy lights hanging in my office and in my living room! Even though they can be a bit more of a hassle to manage, I find that they create such a nice ambience that I’m able to relax more easily even when I’m doing stressful work!

Alright, that’s all I’ve got for you today! Thanks again to Smile Brilliant for partnering with me on this blog post! If you’re interested in trying out any of Smile Brilliant’s products, you can use my code ellayvonne20 for 20% off your purchase. 

Sunny Health & Fitness Spin Bike Review | My Indoor Cycling Bike

TL; DR Don't buy this bike unless you're ready to have to find and buy repair parts on your own, have the skills to repair them on your own, and are prepared to do that at least a couple of times a year.

I bought my Sunny bike as a part of my at home cycling setup after lockdown closed down many of my favorite gyms and fitness boutiques. Before lockdown, my favorite kind of workout was 100% cycling. Although I used to vary my workouts a lot between cycling, yoga, barre, and boxing, cycling was always my go-to and where I felt most at home. Halfway through lockdown, I found myself really missing my cycling workouts so I decided to take the plunge and create a setup that would allow me to take cycling classes at home.

Although I do love my at home cycling setup (I wrote a whole post about my at home cycling setup here), there have been so many road bumps along the way with this specific bike that I thought it deserved its own blog post.

I’ll start with the good things:

• Actually being able to enjoy working out from home: I love that I’m able to now cycle from home - although things are now slowly opening up, I've really enjoyed the flexibility of being able to hop onto my bike whenever I have a spare minute and not having to go through the process of booking bikes in a cycling studio, getting all my gear on and walking or driving to the studio (something that's the absolute worst during the winter months!)

• Low cost: The primary reason I went with a Sunny Bike was because it was lower cost than other at-home bike options but still offered the things I wanted to have. The specific bike I bought was around $350 which is much lower than the usual $600-$2000+ that a good quality indoor cycling bike will run you, but higher in price than some of the other spin bikes Sunny offers.

• Quiet bike: The reason I opted for a slightly higher-priced Sunny Bike was because of the magnetic belt drive. Since we live in an apartment complex, I wanted a bike that could handle regular cycling workouts without any loud noises from a chain drive bike. Outside of the horrible cranking sound that started happening when the bike broke (stay tuned) it's been a quiet bike.

• Nice-to-haves: I love that the bike is pretty seamless to put together and has a simple digital screen that tracks distance and RPM (not all spin bikes track this and it's pretty crucial in any music-based spin class). The specific bike I purchased also comes with a table stand which was the perfect fit for my specific use case where I throw my tablet on the bike to watch spin classes on the peloton app.

Okay on to the bad things:

• It broke. This was the BIGGEST downfall of the bike. Within two months of having the bike, it started to make a clicking sound that eventually progressed into a horrible cranking clacking sound - which made the bike pretty much unusable. I purchased the bike in November, started hearing the clicking sound in December, and by January was already contacting customer service and purchasing my own replacement parts. Though the bike breaking might not be a huge deal to someone who has a lot of experience with bike part replacements, it's something that is totally foreign to me so it is a MASSIVE con to have a bike that breaks in 2 months. Not to mention the fact that this is total crap for the environment and likely lands a bunch of broken bikes in the landfill.

• You’re not supposed to stand up on it? After the bike started making this awful noise, I contacted customer service via email and started reading negative amazon reviews in depth to figure out next steps. Generally, customer service recommends that you do not stand on Sunny Bikes despite the fact that this is written nowhere on the product description. I intentionally did not purchase several other spin bikes because the product descriptions recommended users not stand on them. If this is the case for the Sunny Bike, the product descriptions should make this clear - but instead, this was pretty hidden - so it feels a little deceptive of the company.

• Customer service is...questionable. Here begins the saga: I don't necessarily have any beef against specific customer service staff because I know that customer service staff only have as much guidance and leverage as their employers give them. However, the process of requesting service on the bike was in a word...ridiculous. Before even contacting Sunny, I had figured out exactly what was wrong with my bike and knew what part replacement to request. The website recommends sending an email for service, but after reading a couple of reviews, I decided to follow up my email with a call and after trying a couple of different times, was eventually able to get a real person on the other end of the phone.

  Once I was able to get a person on the phone, he ran through a bunch of possible reasons why my bike might be broken, asked me to check a laundry list of things on my bike, and finally, after he had exhausted his list, finally agreed that I was probably right about the broken part of my bike (the ball bearings). After this, he continued to pressure me to replace my bike with Amazon (rather than through Sunny) but I insisted that I preferred receiving the replacement parts and trying to fix it myself. In the end - after a 45 minute call - I was finally able to get him to send me the parts needed along with some YouTube videos that they send to help you fix it on your own.

  Since the parts for the bike weren't going to arrive for months, I took the email sent by customer service and ordered the replacement ball bearings myself. Fortunately for me, my partner is pretty bike savvy and was able to (after an entire weekend working on it) figure out how to replace the bearings on my bike back in January. The bearings from the company didn't arrive until March.

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Since we fixed the ball bearings ourselves, the bike has run pretty smoothly though I'm prepared to replace the bearings 2-3 times a year for the lifetime of the bike. In hindsight, I definitely would have purchased a different brand of cycling bike that I'm more familiar with and has a better reputation (e.g., schwinn). Though I love my bike when it's working, it wasn't worth the money saved having to deal with the catastrophe that was this bike. So, if you're looking for an indoor cycling bike but you're not prepared to fix it yourself when it inevitably breaks, I highly recommend you look elsewhere for an indoor cycling bike!

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My DIY Peloton Setup | How I Created an At-Home Cycling Studio

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Hello, friends! Today, I'm talking about my DIY Peloton setup and my full spin bike review all in one day - whew! Like many people, during lockdown I've been forced to figure out how to continue my workout routine at home - something I very rarely did before lockdown. It's been a learning process and I have some parts of my setup that I love and others that I don't love so much so stick around to learn more!

Why create a DIY Peloton Setup?

Before lockdown, my favorite kind of workout was 100% cycling. Although I used to vary my workouts a lot between cycling, yoga, barre, and boxing, cycling was always my go-to and where I felt most at home. Yoga and barre are pretty simple to recreate at home but cycling? Pretty much impossible! Halfway through lockdown, I found myself really missing my cycling workouts so I decided to take the plunge and create a setup that would allow me to take cycling classes at home.

The second reason I opted for DIY setup was pretty obvious - because of the cost! I enjoy being able to switch up my fitness routine and am a firm believer in being able to adapt your health and fitness routine to certain seasons of life. The peloton itself will cost you at least $2000+ and the subscription another $40/month. Since I do not plan on doing peloton classes every single day, the price tag of a whole peloton system didn’t seem worth it to me.

My Setup:

Sunny Health & Fitness Spin Bike

For my spin bike, I chose a Sunny Health and Fitness Spin Bike with magnetic resistance and belt drive. Both of these features make the bike feel more similar to the cycling studio experience. I've had a whole load of ups and downs with this spin bike which I wrote about in a whole review post about the bike. I love that the bike is pretty seamless to put together and has a simple digital screen that tracks distance and RPM (not all spin bikes track this and it's pretty crucial in any music-based spin class). The specific bike I purchased also comes with a table stand which was the perfect fit for my specific use case where I throw my tablet on the bike to watch spin classes on the peloton app.

I absolutely love that this bike has made working out at home so much more enjoyable, but there were A LOT of cons to owning this particular bike. Long story short - I can't recommend this bike because it requires way too much maintenance for someone with no bike tech experience, but I'm learning to live with the bike because I've already purchased it and don't want to contribute to more waste by dumping the bike. If you're considering buying from this brand, check out my full review before buying and proceed with caution!

Peloton App

If you like cycling classes in-person, the peloton app is a great alternative that has a ton of different spin classes, instructors and music styles. I’ve had the peloton app for over 3 months and I still haven’t had a chance to take classes with every instructor because more classes (and more instructors!) are added all of the time. Also, if you’re not into cycling classes, the peloton app offers tons of other types of fitness and wellness classes (meditation, yoga, stretching, running etc.) that make the monthly $13 a month more worthwhile.

Shimano Spin Shoes + SPD Cleats and Cleat Adapters

I already owned a pair of spin shoes, cleats, and adapters to use at my local spin studio so it was nice to be able to finally use them at home! The spin shoes I own use SPD cleats which meant I also had to purchase cleat adapters - so before you buy, make sure you know what cleats and cleat accessories you may need because it can definitely add up!

SPD Clipless Pedals

The bike I purchased came with cage pedals so I purchased a separate set of clipless pedals in order to be able to use my spin shoes. This is by no means necessary but it certainly makes the experience a little more fun! The pedals were super easy to install and I will definitely be keeping the cage pedals in case anyone else in my family intends to use the bike in the future.

Set of Handheld Weights

I bought a set of handheld weights from Amazon a while back and they have served me VERY well. The set comes with 3 sets of weights - 2 lb, 3lb, and 5 lb which covers most of my at-home workouts.

A couple nice-to-have things I also used with my DIY peloton set up were my iPad, Apple Watch, and fairy lights that were already hung up in my office. These things were by no means necessary, but it was nice to be able to play the peloton classes on my iPad, track my workouts simultaneously on my Apple Watch, and create a nice cozy ambience with the lights!

For me, creating the cycling setup was actually super simple. Since prioritizing my health and fitness routine, I had already purchased my own pair of cycling shoes/cleats and a set of handheld weights for off times when I did happen to work out at home. The apple watch and iPad are both devices I use on a regular basis for my everyday life that were simple to incorporate into my setup. The only new purchases I had to make were the bike itself, the SPD clipless pedals and the peloton app.

The upsides:

• More affordable compared to a full Peloton bike setup. The actual Peloton bike will set you back anywhere between $2,000-$3,000 depending on what add-ons or accessories you need. On top of that the Peloton subscription is around $40 for Peloton bike users but is only about $13 a month for app users. In all, I spent around $380 for my spin bike and while again, I wouldn't recommend the specific bike I bought, there are plenty of much better bikes from reputable companies that are available for a fraction of the cost of a Peloton.

• Flexibility - Having the bike and the tablet separate allows me to take peloton classes wherever I am. Though peloton bike users can also take classes on their devices, the tablet it comes with is connected to the bike and only truly serves one function. I really like that I have an iPad that serves the same function, but outside of my workouts can be used for a million other things in my personal and grad school life.

• This would also be great for those of you who enjoy changing up your workout routine. The peloton app is great because it offers tons of different workouts but if you're not ready to commit to the $40/mo + $2,000+ price tag and aren't sure you'll use the peloton bike all the time, it may not be worth it to spend on the whole peloton system. Although I'm still subscribed to the peloton app, I've found myself mostly using it for meditation and strength workouts rather than cycling because I've enjoyed watching other videos while I'm cycling. If you're not ready to commit to hardcore taking all of the peloton cycling classes, then starting with your own bike and just the app let's you change up your workouts without feeling guilty 🙂

The downsides:

• You don't get as many features (like numbers/stats wise) as you would on a normal peloton bike. On the app you can also see other people taking the class but you’re limited in that you can’t really interact with other riders as much or see where you are on a leaderboard. For me, this isn’t a huge downside since I always turn off leaderboard stats in face-to-face cycling classes anyway, but if you’re someone who is motivated by getting ahead on the leaderboard, then this could be demotivating.

• Bike quality. Obviously, the bike I personally bought was lower in quality than that of a peloton bike but I think this could have been overcome if I had purchased a different bike.

All in all, I am really in love with my current cycling setup. It doesn't take up a lot of space in my apartment and it feels like a little workout oasis - especially if I cycle early in the morning when the whole apartment is quiet and only lit by the fairy lights. The biggest struggle I had working out during quarantine was not enjoying my workouts because all I could do were HIIT workouts. I'm so happy that this set up allows me to finally do workouts I love again.

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