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" Do you have a neglected piece of exercise equipment in your home? Maybe it resides in a lonely back bedroom. Or perhaps it&amp;#x27;s collecting dust in a closet somewhere. Not exactly what you intended when you bought the thing right? Researchers now have an explanation for why we get hot and cold about our fitness equipment ...**** Researchers call it &amp;quot;unrealistic optimism&amp;quot;--and maybe you have a case of it? According to a study published in the Journal of Consumer Research, here&amp;#x27;s how our minds work: &amp;quot;Consumers adopt the tentative hypothesis that they will behave in an ideal fashion when predicting their future behavior,&amp;quot; the authors explain. &amp;quot;Unrealistic optimism by consumers may have negative consequences for both marketers and consumers. For example, if a consumer holds unrealistically optimistic beliefs about how often they will work out in the future, then they may overpay for home exercise equipment.&amp;quot; This makes absolute sense to me--it explains the baby jogger stroller that I rarely used and the poor lonely elliptical machine in the guest bedroom. But buying exercise equipment isn&amp;#x27;t a bad thing. The study&amp;#x27;s authors just note that many of us spend more money than we should on gadgets and equipment that we&amp;#x27;ll actually never use. Better idea? Before you buy, they say, ask yourself honestly: &amp;quot;How often am I really going to use this thing?&amp;quot; By stopping and trying to predict the real outcome (not the idealized one), we can be more realistic in our fitness goals and our spending. Have you ever fallen into &amp;quot;unrealistic optimism&amp;quot; with a fitness gear purchase? (I recently wrote about this new fitness gadget that lets you use your laptop while at the gym--but would you really use it?) Photo: iStock"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/health-fitness/blogs/vitamin-g/2008/11/is-your-treadmill-collecting-d>