Sometime last summer, someone on social media gave remaining in bed all day a new name.

Bed rotting.

To use what I’m told is the proper terminology, the notion went viral. Sometime last summer, posts about it had been viewed more than 130 million times on TikTok.

Sometime last month, I was thinking about how the most productive exercise and the sort that stands the test of time results when your workouts are a natural part of a lifestyle you’ve come to love. It’s why I call myself a cyclist.

It may be hair splitting, but in my mind bicyclists ride for exercise and maybe transportation. Cyclists embrace a lifestyle where riding a bike serves those two purposes and leads to so much more.

Like a way of thinking about the world that transforms you into a “cycologist.” In last week’s article, I expressed that’s a good way to think regardless of how often or how passionately you ride because the mindset can be nicely condensed into the cliché “there’s more than one way to skin a cat.”

If that’s your mindset, you probably feel how I feel about bed rotting. That it epitomizes the new pseudo-knowledge that’s a big part of what historians may one day call the Information Onslaught.

Though I imagine dietitians will stick to another term currently in use: the Obesity Epidemic.

The two terms are certainly related. Just ask Penn Jillette.

He says: “For 50 million years our biggest problems were too few calories, too little information. For about 50 years our biggest problem has been too many calories, too much information. We have to adjust, and I believe we will really fast.

“I also believe it will be wicked ugly.”

The credentials that follow Jillette’s quotation as it appears at Wordsmith.org make no mention whether he bicycles in the way that would make him a cycologist. But his quotation helps explain why it’s crucial for you to be one.

Because for no amount of time is “wicked ugly” the way your brain or your belly have to be. Not if your thoughts are firmly grounded in cycology.

Case in point: this trend called “bed rotting.”

Proponents of the practice claim remaining in bed for a day - or a weekend - while you scroll on your phone, binge watch shows, and snack for sustenance provides “relaxation and an escape from life’s problems” as writes Amy Morin in a Psychology Today article. But, if you’re thinking like a cycologist, you’ll recognize, as British cycologists say, the “disbenefits” of doing this.

First is what you’re not doing, sometimes for as long as a weekend. Moving about - while treating yourself to junk food.

Because, after all, bed rotting’s designed to be an indulgence. Not to mention, actually standing up to cook a healthy meal would ruin the bed rot.

Talk about a solid strategy for creating something you certainly don’t want: added LBs of fat and not muscle. And talk about not facing up to what a cycologist learns to embrace.

Problems.

“The Obstacle Is the Way” is a saying of Ryan Holiday’s that he also uses as the title of a book that explains the worldview of a Stoic, a worldview that often aligns with a cycologist’s. What this cycologist takes from Holiday’s phrase is that somewhere inside each problem is the answer to it.

But to find what can seem to be the proverbial needle in the haystack, you need to work out with a pitchfork - and you can’t do that lying on your back, phone in one hand, Twinkie in the other.

Moreover, if the problem has led to anxious feelings or even depression, bed rotting could do worse than delay the battle. It could further harm your mental health.

In Morin’s aforementioned article, the licensed therapist and author of 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do links physical inactivity to anxiety and depression and notes “the longer you stay inactive, the greater the risk of developing or worsening anxiety and/or depression, which can reduce motivation and spur fatigue.” So while the idea of bed rotting may be tempting, good mental health requires three things you won’t get from it: real social interaction, physical activity, and problems solved.

While it’s all well and good for me to bad-mouth bed rotting, it’s even better if I offer an alternative. Mine starts with a phenomenon any cycologist consistently experiences.

That any exercise invariably improves your mood.

So if you’re feeling so overwhelmed or burned out with daily life, don’t bed rot. Now that it’s getting nice out, get out and go for a walk - maybe even ride a bike.

And if you are a cyclist at heart and feeling burned out from riding too much, that’s still no reason to bed rot. Just a sign to back off.

Cut your next scheduled ride in half, keep it flat, and so easy that little kids on tricycles pass you. And once you’re done, elevate your legs for at least some of the unused riding time.

And just so you know, I argued against bed rotting without ever mentioning what many would see as its worst consequence: a disruption of your sleep patterns that -ironically enough - drain instead of recharge your internal batteries.