Has exercise helped your mental health?
Has exercise helped your mental health?
Just a simple question to those of you suffering from depression, anxiety or are just going through a tough time. Now or sometime in the past.
Have you tried exercising, and did it help? What kind, and how did it make you feel?
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Mostly no, which appears to be the minority so I'll share. Adding exercise is adding stress, you need to find time, expend energy, you are physically tired afterwards, you feel guilt when you skip, muscle aches... It's all just terrible, but your body typically rewards you with endorphins to make it feel worthwhile, and more importantly it gives you a lot more opportunities. When you are in shape your perceived charisma goes up significantly, mostly because you are more attractive.
Reward needs to balance with effort. You'll have a lot more fun with concrete commitments, or if you actually enjoy the activity and want to do it. Going to the gym is depressing, but showing up for the weekly sportsball game will make sure you run a little every week and you might make some active friends that will introduce you to more things. Pickleball and indoor rock climbing are two entry friendly activities.
Yeah I'm going through a stressful period of time at work and so I've decided to try and pick up running. I hate running. It's literal torture and I'm exhausted afterwards. And my feet hurt! I don't know how people are insane enough to like this. So now I get stress at work and torture outside of it lol. And I've skipped days and I feel bad about it (shooting for 3 or 4 days per week with a couch to 5k apps).
The only saving grace with running with me me so far are two things...
- During the run, I don't have much mental energy to dedicate to work stress. Just running stress lol
- Checking off the exercise days in the app is nice. I've tried to exercise on my own without an app and it's a lot harder to keep up or stay motivated.