Because depression feeds on withdrawal and inactivity, developing an awareness of the choices we make daily and where they lead is the first step towards healing.
We need to become aware of us – how we spend and use our energy each day. Do we live a sedentary life, one that honours the couch and TV and slowly robs us of what little life we have left in us? Or is activity/exercise/proper movement high on our priority list?
It’s up to us to make choices that positively support our body and our mind and help us get well. It’s called self-care.
The benefits of self-care are many: it is empowered to reduce stress and anxiety, improve physical health, boost self-esteem, protect mental acuity and lead to healthier relationships. And it all comes down to the choices we make in life.
When we take time to practise self-care by making healthy choices i.e., proper exercise supported by healthy eating, we enjoy all the benefits provided by this power duo in how we look, how we function, how we feel, how happy we are and the overall quality of our lives.
For example, how we handle our next meal says a lot about the choices we make. We can choose to prepare and eat a real meal made with healthy food choices, we can fill up on junk food, or we can skip eating entirely. The point is our choices are important and we need to start paying attention. One moves us toward healing our ill and depressed state, while the other two feed into our depressed state and deplete our energy reserves.
It doesn’t take a lot of energy to eat fast/junk foods or skip a meal. However, they are energy vipers, loading our bodies up with unhealthy ingredients like trans fats, bad carbs, excess sodium and unneeded sugars.
Our body must then use precious energy reserves to ward off the negative effects that these damaging products bring on.
On the other hand, preparing and enjoying a home-cooked meal takes way more energy initially than grabbing a bag of chips, however this is the only choice that returns our energy multiplied as we feed our body the nutrients required to make and boost our energy reserves.
The same applies to exercise. If we are currently in the zone of depression and find it hard to do almost anything but want to stop feeding the monster and get out of the trap, the way out is to become more active, much more active and that means movement.
Physical activity is a mood booster, kicking in important endorphins/hormones like serotonin and dopamine that help keep us happy and content along with another hormone, norepinephrine, that enhances cognitive thinking, facilitates learning and improves one’s mood.
Exercise elevates our heart rate offering the potential to reverse brain atrophy caused by stress. When we are inactive and sedentary, our brains don’t release these mood_ lifting hormones offering no viable defense against sadness and depression.
If exercise improves what we already have, then logically, the lack of it contributes to a mental health downturn.
In fact, it only takes 10 days without fitness for our brains to begin losing cognitive function. When mood is depressed or low and/or stress is high, motivation to move is often low too, yet if we don’t move, our mood suffers even more.
The reality is, when we are in an anxious or depressed state, physical activity is the last thing on our minds because we just don’t feel we have the strength to tackle it. This creates a vicious cycle that can only be broken by guess what? Physical activity.
When exercise becomes a habit, we reap the benefits of more strength, more fitness, more energy and above all, more happiness. We also experience firsthand the number one reason people go the gym, “Because it makes me feel good”.
Prioritising our own health and wel-being by looking after our physical, emotional and mental needs is one of the best things we can do, for ourselves and for our loved ones. However, it is not a part-time job or an occasional focus, but a lifelong commitment or even better, a lifelong investment.
Every time we exercise or enjoy a healthy meal, we reaffirm that we are making our personal health and fitness a priority. We enjoy massive improvements in all areas of our lives when our focus is self-care, positioning ourselves as better employees, partners, and friends.
