Mental Health Exercise When Faced With Anxiety And Depression

• How much activity
• Reasons to exercise
• Successful strategies
• Motivation

Why is exercise such an important part? Well in order to move past the anxiety and depression, you need to get the natural body chemicals, endorphins, moving through your system. These endorphins are similar to the chemical drug morphine that stimulates the pleasure centers of your brain.

We will help you determine how much exercise you will need in order to keep those chemical flowing while showing you the value of exercise. We will help you learn your top reasons for exercise and help you make a plan to get them to stick.

When It Comes To Anxiety And Depression Enough is enough

Most people do not realize the best time to get into exercise is when you are young. The younger you are the easier it is to keep the habit of exercise going. It also helps to keep your body in a much better shape. If you know you are in a good healthy lifestyle, you should be able to get into exercise. If you are not, we advise seeking the guidance of your primary care physician to begin.

The general guidelines we offer are:

• Children should exercise at least one hour a day of various physically rigorous activities
• Adolescents must follow the same guidelines as children
• Any adult wanting to be healthy must have 30 minutes daily of exercise
• Weight gain from aging processes can be slowed or stopped with 60 minutes of exercise
• Weight loss happens with 60-90 minutes of daily exercise
• Pregnant women should have 30 minutes daily.

Exercise should focus on or  include cardiorespiratory endurance, body composition, flexibility, muscle strength, and muscle endurance. Making sure you body can pump the blood and fluids and oxygen to your organs is essential to good health. If you have too much fat in your body, you will not be fit. Try to keep your body fluid in motion and keep a large range of motion. If you can build muscle strength and perform tasks for longer periods of time, you have a greater chance of keeping healthy and fit.

Why health improvement

So, after all we have talked about we said you might want to avoid the “shoulds” of life.  No we are not trying to make you have guilty feelings. We are just trying to establish the fact you should be concerned with fitness and maintain a healthy lifestyle to improve your mental health. Oh, wait, there will be some many excellent physical elements as well.

In the following chart, mark off anything you may have concerns with. If you have any family traits you are worried about, make a check and go on. Once you have gone through the list, spend a few minutes locating those areas of special concerns. Determine the top reasons why you should exercise.

Why Exercise Chart

•  Make it fun
•  Added energy
•  Lessens heart disease
•  Stress reductions
•  Immune system repair
•  Less depression
•  Reduced blood pressure
•  Lessens diabetes chances
• Increases confidence
• Helps weigh loss
• More flexibility
• More strength
•  Reduces cholesterol and triglycerides
•  Cancer reduction
•  Lessened chance of colon cancer
•  Sleep
•  Mental acuity

These are just some of the many benefits. You should find your own top 10 list and create it below.

Fit it into your life

Okay, we get it. 60-90 minutes a day is a large chunk of time out of your day. We know time doesn’t grow on trees, but where will you find that much time? The good news is you don’t have to have all the exercise at one time. Modern guidelines suggest you can get by with as little as 10 to 15 minutes at a time  for a moderate level of intensity. You will increase your heart rate and breathing just by mowing the lawn, riding a bike, walking or other simple tasks.

Many individuals will see they already have a higher level of exercise just by going to work. If you do not have a physically challenging job, you will need to find a way pump up the volume and get things shaking.

We know everyone is different and they have different lives and habits. The exercise program for you may not work for us. You need to design what will work for you.

In this coming section we would like you to review some potential ideas for exercise for your body. We then want you to determine what may help you get into shape (no—round is not a shape).

•  An early morning walk for at least 15 minutes
•  Use stairs not elevators
•  Walk at lunchtime
•  Golf, tennis, swim, biking, or other exercises
•  Get an exercise video
•  Get a trainer
•  Take some exercise classes such as yoga
•  Buy a treadmill

My reflections

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Wandering Willpower

When you continue to work though the realm of exercise, you may have found a few items of interest that could fit within your lifestyle. You seem to have what you want, but wait—what about the motivation and the initial excitement. How do you recover when this goes away?

DE-Motivation (no not THE Motivation)

We have discovered the pitfalls of distorted thinking. We need to keep you away from those types of thoughts and keep you moving through action and keeps you from failure. If you have any distorted thoughts, you will not be able to keep your enthusiasm for exercise. Now we need to help you choose a strategy.

Here is one sample de-motivation exercise model.

In this example the individual is a busy mother of two. She is always trying to find the time to do her job every day while  running errands at lunch, and dropping the kids at day care and picking them up. At the end of the day, she is making dinner and is too tired to move. We just told her she needs to exercise. Of course she shook her head and said we were crazy.

Demotivation Exercise Model

Personal Reflections:

My thoughts did cause me to lose focus on my life. If I took time to exercise, I might start feeling better about myself. My sleep might get better if I continue to exercise. If I lose the many bad thoughts, I can start to move forward.

The time has come for you to take the initiative to complete your own de-motivating exercise model.  Just make sure to  read the thought on the left hand column and respond in the right hand column. If you add a thought, make sure it overcomes the de-motivating thought in some way. Make sure to overcome the illogical, irrational, excuses, illegitimate statements, and non-helpful thoughts. Then complete the My reflections checklist at the end.

Demotivation Exercise Model

My reflections

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Tracking your movements

In order to maintain a high level of effectiveness, you should really look into ways of monitoring your exercise. There are many ways to do this including using a calendar. If you decide that writing down your progress, you will find an additional level of motivation that will keep you paying attention and focused.

This is a sample example of a Calendar list of Exercise

Use the following chart to make all of your exercise observations.

My reflections

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