Advice: Exercise Bike - new/used?

AMc

In my 30's I used to cycle to work and that meant I was in reasonable shape.
Fast forward to my 40's and I work from home sitting down all day.
I've put on lots of weight and now I'm at nearly 100Kg at 6'2" which is not good.
I've got a belly so I guess I'm storing fat around my internal organs which I understand is very bad.

Work, location and family mean I can't go out for a road ride regularly.  
My thinking is if I have a static bike in my home office I can jump on and do something rather than nothing each day.  Moving on to doing some road riding as well when the weather improves and there's more daylight in the evenings.

There's a supplier nearby who sells reconditioned gym equipment trading for  6 years.   
For £200 I can get a "Life Fitness LeMond RevMaster" recon spin bike then I'd need a heart rate monitor of some sort to track I'm in the fat burning range.
I could buy a consumer bike for about £200-250 with a monitor built in but I'm guessing an older commercial bike will be better than a low end new bike?

I'm hoping some of you gym goers can comment on the sense in my plan or offer some other suggestions?

TIA

nick67

If I were you since you already have a bike why not get a turbo trainer or set of rollers and use it.

AMc

I measured up and there’s not enough room in my office.
I’m also a bit nervous that taking my bike up there would mean it would never see tarmac again

nick67

If you are looking at an exercise bike and that fit, why won't a normal bike especially on rollers.

Get another bike

AMc

The spin bike I mentioned is 42”/107cm long, quite big for a static bike.
My road bike is 68”/172cm long.
The gap between my office door and the open filing cabinet drawer is 44"/112cm.
So a full size road bike is 14"/36cm too long won't fit in my office.

p9ul

I'd agree with the Turbo Trainer suggestion - Zwift has been an absolute game changer for me.

AMc

At the moment I'm really only trying to put in the equivalent of 10,000 steps a day in exercise.
Gaming the work might be fun but I don't have a big office and I can't fit a full size bike in there.

p9ul

I'm pretty sure you can run Zwift off a number of exercise bikes - as long as you're able to set up the metrics being transmitted to the device running the programme. (I run it on an iPad and it works fine but always seem to have issues with a more powerful android phone). The key thing will be being able to measure your power output.

Heart rate monitors a fairly inexpensive, and your fat burning zone is pretty low down on the effort level.

AMc

I'll definitely check out Zwift if it can work with an exercise bike.  At the moment I'm trying to avoid buying a turkey of a static bike to begin with - I'm after quiet, stable, durable and not bank breakingly expensive - I'm not interested in hanging laundry on it

I'm concious I'm in pretty poor shape, I can walk 7-8 miles a day when we're doing city breaks etc so so lower energy exercise leading to something a bit more significant is my plan.
If I can start up with the equivalent of a brisk walk then get faster that would be ideal.

I've read that I need to kit 60-70% of maximum heart rate to burn fat.  I'm only going to know if I'm in that zone with a HRM of some sort but I've read in the user reviews that the lower end monitors on bikes can be quite unreliable and inaccurate.  I used to use one when I was cycling regularly and I had a habit of going above the fat burn rate and staying there which I now realise may be one of the reasons I didn't find it terribly effective and as a result didn't push on with it.

Thanks for the thoughts so far

nick67

Something like this might be an option to replace your front wheel which would mean it would fit within your space

Wiggle | Tacx Antares Support Stand | Turbo Trainer Spares