two-mature-sporty-women-smiling-while-doing-bicep-curls-with-weights-ways-to-stick-to-fitness-routine-for-mental-health

6 Ways to Stick to a Fitness Routine to Improve Mental Health

Exercise Improves Mental Health – Here’s How

 

Exercising regularly is one of the most effective ways to manage your mental health naturally. In mild cases of depression, anxiety, or other mental health conditions, regular exercise alone may be enough to manage your symptoms, eliminating the need for psychiatric medications.  

How does exercise help the depressed brain? When people are depressed, their brains atrophy (shrink) and become less adaptable. Exercise stimulates the production of a hormone in your brain called brain-derived (from the brain) neurotrophic (nerve growth) factor (BDNF). BDNF stimulates brain growth and promotes neuroplasticity, the ability of the brain to adapt and change as it manages the complexities of life. This allows the brain to grow new cells, make more dynamic cells, make new connections, and repair itself, helping us heal parts of the brain that have atrophied. Exercise is the most effective way to trigger BDNF release. 

But can exercise help if you have several mental health issues at once or severe mental health conditions? Yes, exercising can improve your mental health even when you have multiple psychiatric conditions. As experts in treatment-resistant psychiatric conditions, our mental health providers have found that patients who exercise regularly in conjunction with other treatments are more likely to manage seemingly untreatable psychiatric conditions successfully.  

Exercising can be part of the solution to many mental health problems. Depending on the severity of your mental health conditions, you may need a comprehensive psychiatric care plan that includes exercise in addition to TMS, ketamine therapy, or antidepressant medications

At Manlove Brain and Body Health, exercising is an integral part of our psychiatric care plans because it helps improve the effects of all other psychiatric treatments. 

 

Pacing Yourself at the Gym

We know that regular exercise is good for our brain and body, so often, people set the intention to exercise more at the start of the new year but quickly lose motivation. How do you stick with it all year long?

1 Shift your mindset.

Exercise can improve your mental and emotional health, so make sure to prioritize it accordingly. When you shift your mindset to consider each workout as a commitment to caring for your physical and mental well-being, it becomes much easier to see its importance and make time for it. 

Before you get out of bed in the morning, determine when you will exercise that day and what exercise you will do. The question should not be will I, but rather when and how will I? 

2 Keep your fitness goal simple and realistic. 

It’s easier to commit to moving your body for a specific amount of time each day rather than trying to do a specific number of workouts each week. And, if you are too rigid in what your exercise looks like, it’s easy to burn out quickly. Keeping your goal simple allows you to add variety, which is one of the keys to staying consistent. 

Surprising fact: For most people, it’s easier to exercise every day for 10 minutes than it is to exercise two days a week for 35 minutes. Why? Committing to exercising daily removes the internal debate of deciding which days to work out.   

Commit to exercising one minute per day. If you exercise for a minute and don’t want to do more, give yourself permission to stop. Most people want to continue once they have started. If life happens and you can’t exercise one or two days per week, forgive yourself and pick it up the next day. 

Many people think that flexibility in your fitness routine hurts consistency when in reality, flexibility enables consistency. You do not need to go to the gym or pool every day. Adding movement in other ways, such as walking at your desk treadmill, stretching, or shoveling snow, may be a great way to infuse movement into your day. 

Any amount of physical activity will give you health benefits, but the more active you are, the more health benefits you will get. To get cardiovascular benefits out of your exercise, you need to exercise for a minimum of 10 continuous minutes. 

3 Use the start of the year to try out different classes. 

The people who stick with exercising consistently are the ones who figure out what types of exercise they enjoy. Use the first few weeks of the year to try out new classes. Try a few new classes to figure out which ones you like, and then rotate between the ones you enjoy for the rest of the year.

Fitness instructors know that most people will open a gym membership at the beginning of a new year, so they typically adjust their classes with this in mind. In January and February, they will provide breakdowns of the movements and slowly add progressions throughout the year. This makes the beginning of the year the best time to try a new class as they will likely be tailored to beginners. 

4 Take time to build strength.

Adding strength or resistance training exercises to your routine is not only a great way to vary your workouts, but it helps you see better results than if you focus on cardio alone; it improves balance, builds confidence, and helps you burn calories more efficiently throughout the day. 

While many people think of strength training as a young person’s game, it actually becomes more important the older we get. Strength or resistance training can help build and maintain healthy bones and joints, improve posture, and reduce the risk of falling. Older adults who participate in resistance training exercises reduce their risk of developing musculoskeletal disorders such as osteoarthritis, reduce joint and back pain, and are often independent for longer because they are able to maintain functional movements. 

Start by practicing the movements without any weight or resistance bands. Once you have the form down, gradually add weight. Only increase your weight when you feel you could have done more repetitions at the end of your circuit. 

5 Commit to a gym or club

For many people, going to a gym or community center is a commitment that keeps them going. Perhaps it gets them out of their home or office. It may be for social connection. Or they keep going so they don’t waste their investment. 

Visit a few gyms or community programs to see which one has the vibe you want. And remember, there may be more casual groups you can join for biking, walking, or volunteering to fight invasive plant species on your local trails. 

6 If a gym isn’t a positive experience, don’t go.

If you have no desire to go to a gym, don’t go. For individuals with anxiety or depression, an intense setting may not help their self-esteem and could even trigger their condition. 

Working out in the privacy of your own home is easier than ever with free or subscription-based online workouts. Simply search YouTube for a workout you enjoy – barre, strength training, kickboxing, yoga, pilates, step – and give it a try. 

Most online workouts don’t require any equipment. If you choose to invest in a few free weights and resistance bands, that’s typically all you need for almost any home workout. Just remember commitment and consistency are what’s important, so block out the time on your calendar and silence your phone!

Talk to your doctor before getting started.

Always talk to your doctor before starting a new fitness routine. Some underlying health conditions may make exercising more dangerous. However, most health conditions improve with exercise, so don’t let any existing conditions stop you from discussing an exercise plan with your doctor. 

 

Consistent exercise provides so many benefits for your physical and mental health. You won’t regret getting started. 

 

brain and body health, doctor talking to male patient

What’s Killing Us in 2024?

Jose TeixeiraDr. Jose Teixeira, MD is a well-respected cardiologist and electrophysiologist at Monument Health Heart and Vascular Institute with 46 years of experience. Dr. Teixeira completed medical school at Universidade NOVA de Lisboa in Portugal and a 2 year public health rotation before moving to New York City to undergo Internal Medicine residency training at […]

mindfulness, therapy, young woman smelling wild flowers

Finding Inner Peace Through Mindfulness

The beauty of mindfulness is that it can help you uncover greater degrees of inner peace. I use the terms awareness and mindfulness interchangeably though I find awareness to be more descriptive of what we’re looking for as we walk through the introduction of practicing mindfulness below. 

Inner peace is the springboard for many positive emotions – joy, contentment, humor, satisfaction of one’s life, freedom, lightness of being. These all begin at the doorstep of peace. 

Mindfulness is a little like swimming in the ocean. You can go as deep as you want. This article goes ankle deep. It is up to you how far you want to take it from there. 

Our Thoughts vs. Our Selves

If you break down the sentence “I have a thought”, we see that an “I” has a “thought”. We don’t customarily think about the “I” and the “thought” as two separate things. However, if we challenge our mind to look at these separately, we begin to understand that thoughts are something that “I” have. Technically, one could say, I am not my thoughts. 

As a culture, we’ve been taught to associate our identities with the thoughts that we have – the thoughts about ourselves and the stories we tell ourselves. Another way of looking at our identity is our awareness. And, I would suggest that our awareness is actually the deepest part of who we are. 

This is a new way for most of us to see ourselves. Where is it that we attach our identity? Is it in the awareness or is it in the thoughts we have?

That’s where we begin. We could ask, where do thoughts come from? Part of the goal of mindfulness is to become a student of our own thoughts. We consider:

  • How do thoughts serve us? 
  • Do we have to believe all of our thoughts? 
  • What’s the relationship between our awareness and our thoughts? 

Taking a Step Back

When I was a kid, my friends and I liked to go to the movie theater to see scary movies. To cope with our fears during the films, we learned to mentally take a step back from the screen when it got too frightening. If you think about that, that is a very unique, very human ability. Animals to our knowledge can’t do this. 

By taking a step back we can change what our mind focuses on. For example, I can focus on the lights, the reactions of the people around me, the smell of popcorn, the fact that I’m out with my friends to give my mind a break. Then, when I am ready, I can re-immerse myself in the film. This is a really nimble ability that we have to take a step in or out of our situation. 

This same idea of taking a step back is how we begin to practice mindfulness. 

Upsetting Thoughts Destroy Inner Peace

Upsetting thoughts disrupt inner peace. Everyone has upsetting thoughts at times and everyone has their own kind of upsetting thoughts. There are typically two different styles:

  • Anxious/worrisome thoughts
  • Angry/frustrating thoughts

Upsetting thoughts can come out of nowhere. When you have an upsetting thought, whether you realize it or not, you have the choice to pay attention to that thought or to let it pass. 

Thoughts are a lot like clouds. They come somewhere from the west, they’re in front of us, and then they disappear somewhere to the east. They are always in motion.

If we decide to pay attention to an upsetting thought, we pull it into our consciousness. Thoughts have a way of just moving through, but we have to deliberately pull it into our consciousness for us to focus on them. 

When we begin to focus on that upsetting thought, it triggers other anxious/worrisome thoughts, so we let that cloud grow in size. Again, you have the same choice to focus on them or let them pass. It takes effort to bring thoughts into focus. 

When we start having anxious/worrisome thoughts, it creates anxious/worrisome feelings. Once we begin to have anxious/worrisome feelings, it feels more real. Feelings have a greater depth to them which hook us more. That’s what we want to find, what hooks us.

It would be normal to have a generic upsetting thought, followed by an anxious thought, and then a discouraged/depressed thought. At each point in this progression, we have the choice to let it pass or follow it down the path. 

If I choose to follow my upsetting thoughts, I will end up with a completely cloudy sky. No longer aware that I am a thinker having thoughts, I become lost in my thoughts. 

Step 1: Notice Upsetting Thoughts

The first step to being a student of our thoughts is to simply notice when we are having an upsetting thought. 

By simply planting the intention of noticing when you are having upsetting thoughts, you will begin to notice when you are having upsetting thoughts. 

We need to nurture this ability on a daily basis, reminding ourselves to catch ourselves having upsetting thoughts. As you practice, you’ll get faster at identifying them. The more quickly you can identify them, the easier it is to stop them before they get momentum going. 

Step 2: Identify Whether Your Thoughts Are Useful or Useless

Once we get a hang of noticing upsetting thoughts, have some curiosity about your upsetting thoughts. See what they do. See what they create for you. 

Some questions to consider:

  • Is there a connected theme?
  • Are they helpful in some way?
  • How do your thoughts affect your inner peace?

We can’t presume that all thoughts are helpful. We can protect our inner peace by identifying when we are having upsetting thoughts and understanding if they are useful or useless to us. 

Step 2: Catch & Release Upsetting Thoughts 

We all experience events of life. And when we do, we create and react to the commentaries that we use to describe those events and dramas. We are meaning seeking creatures, so we create stories about these events. They may be positive, neutral, negative, and even hostile. 

When we react and create these commentaries, we have a choice. Put strongly, we can become victims of our own emotions and our thoughts about those comments, or we can take a step back and witness these storylines as they develop. As Mark Twain said, “I’m an old man and have known a great many problems, most of them never happened.”

As we take a step back, we allow our thoughts to fade into silence. Again, thoughts are always in motion. Our brains are made for thinking. Our thoughts are valuable tools in the right context. They are here to serve us, but they can lead us astray. 

Our goal is to simply be more aware of our thoughts and which ones are useful and which are useless to us. Not all thoughts are created equal.   

Some thoughts are stickier than others, and no one will be perfect at this. It’s a matter of doing what we can to not be reactive to all of those storylines our minds create. As we do this, we begin to find peace.

Step 3: Focus on the Present

I used to have a Golden Retriever named Max. He could be asleep, but if you threw a stick, he had to go fetch it. I’d suggest that he didn’t have a choice, he was bred for that. People have more freedom than that. We don’t have to fetch every thought that comes into our mind. 

If you observe your mind, you’ll notice that it might dwell in the past or fixate on the future. Our mind has no time to waste. It has to find things that are potential threats or look for problems to solve. This isn’t a bad thing unless it leads us to places we don’t need to go. We want to notice that we are having thoughts and evaluate whether our fixation on the past or future is helping or hurting us.

We can become more aware by focusing on the present. You’ll notice that our mind is easily bored. In stillness, it has a tendency to race about for something to fill it. One way to embrace the stillness is to take a few deep breaths. Breathing is naturally relaxing and allows us to ground ourselves in the present moment. 

The mind can be afraid to be present to now. It’s afraid of what might be perceived as emptiness, but we may find beauty and delight in emptiness. 

The mind is not prone to trust life. It tends to thrash about looking for potential threats. Our mind tends to over prepare, becoming vigilant. The mind is always looking to create meaning out of things so that it doesn’t have to deal with emptiness. It’s amazing the way we flee emptiness. It’s also ironic that it’s the least thing we need to fear. 

Meditations On Now

Something about now is nurturing. It tends to be overlooked. Now is present. It touches stillness, and is often joyful. There’s a lightness of being in now; it does not get lost in the outer circumferences of life, the outside trivias and dramas that don’t amount to much. There’s a serenity to now. Now demands nothing. It simply is. The experience of now is an experience of a deeper reality. Now can lead to an awareness of the connection to a greater whole. I am now. This last one is a little more than ankle deep in the ocean, but it’s worth some reflection. 

Practice Protecting Your Peace Every Day

We find inner peace by valuing inner peace. I protect my peace and sense of wellbeing from upsetting thoughts that aren’t worth engaging in. It’s a choice. It’s a deeply human choice. And, it’s where real freedom exists. 

Mindfulness is all about being nimble with what we choose to think. We don’t have to go to every place that our thoughts take us. We all have these abilities, we just need to be deliberate in using them. We need to remember to take a step back and ask ourselves, is this a thought worth having? 

Join Us for Group Therapy

Manlove Brain + Body Health is now offering group therapy sessions for depression, anxiety, and PTSD. Learn more >

 

improving brain health

Natural Ways to Heal Depression – 10 Lifestyle Tips

Dr. Stephen ManloveStephen Manlove, MD graduated from the University of Minnesota Medical School and completed residencies in Psychiatry and Internal Medicine through the University of Virginia Medical School. He holds multiple board certifications in psychiatry/neurology, internal medicine and forensic psychiatry. This deep understanding of medicine gives him a unique ability to practice truly holistic psychiatry—fusing […]

Megan Burgard CNP at Manlove Brain and Body Health

Mental Health Specialist, Megan Burgard – Nurse Practitioner

Introducing Nurse Practitioner, Megan Burgard to the Manlove Brain and Body Health team!

Get Outside & Get Active!

One of the most amazing things about summer is that there are natural remedies everywhere to help improve your mood. The trick is to make sure that you take advantage of them while you can. The fresh air and sunlight are free resources that will help improve your mood, reduce stress, and improve your overall health. This is particularly important for anyone battling depression and especially treatment-resistant depression.

Spring

What You Need to Know About COVID-19 This Spring

As we move beyond  the one year anniversary of the COVID-19 outbreak here in the United States, Americans are filled with mixed emotions. You may feel relieved that we can see the light at the end of the tunnel as the vaccine is being distributed across the country to healthcare and frontline workers, military personnel, and seniors. No matter how you are feeling, it’s important to let go of the things that you cannot change and focus on the things that you can.