when exercise started helping me
Nowadays, exercising really always saves me without fail.
I realized that today, after again feeling absolutely terrible but then dragging myself out of bed to at least walk on my foldable treadmill. I started wondering when this change exactly happened and what led to it, because I used to hate exercise. I didn't understand people who said it helped with depression. When did it truly start being a reliable way to improve my mental state?
What I struggled with back then were most definitely access, energy and health. I neither had a gym membership, nor did I have gym equipment at home. Wanting to exercise consisted of pulling out some yoga mat to do crunches like once a year, or going out for a run. Both suck when you haven't built it up over weeks or months! It was immediately difficult, painful and exhausting.
My undiagnosed autoimmune diseases added more pain on top; I was just too inflamed to really work out well or even recover for days on end, and I dealt with a lot of fatigue on top of everything. That makes starting and keeping at it almost impossible, except for unexpected good phases.
Without at least showing up semi-regularly, I made no progress, and every attempt I did make was immediately very exhausting with no reward. I felt like I couldn't last long enough in a session or exercise regimen to even reap the benefits. It didn't help at all that I immediately always chose something rather difficult or exhausting, as if I had to jump onto a level at which I expected a "default" human being to be at.
So what changed is:
I was diagnosed and found a working treatment.
This one is big; so much pain and fatigue gone. Training results finally showed and made getting motivated and back on track easier. Some exercise even started helping with the residual pain and symptoms.I searched for things to do that were easier on me.
I shouldn't immediately run or do crunches. Instead, even just walking, yoga, and some easy Pilates are enough, and more manageable to someone in my position. They are easier to pick back up after a few weeks and allow great control over varying the difficulty. With running, for example, I had no room to vary anything; even just the act of running was so exhausting back then that adjusting speed made no difference. With other forms of movement, I could build something without feeling totally exhausted.I signed up for the gym and just made showing up and walking on the treadmill a goal, and I watched videos or listened to podcasts.
This was needed, because when I started it, I was still recovering from a really bad flare up and couldn't be trusted to walk around unsupervised in the forest somewhere. At the gym while just walking, I could slowly build up my exercise tolerance and endurance while seeing it as a sort of "me time" with some enjoyable videos, and with people around in case I suddenly started feeling dizzy or anything, and with some rails to hold on to. By saving videos for this time, I made it more entertaining and had something to look forward to on it.I invested in a spinning bike, and later in a foldable treadmill for at home use.
I sometimes feel too bad physically or mentally to make it to the gym (or it is closed), and this enables me to still work out without being discouraged by my issues, time or weather. It also takes away the calculation of "Is it even worth showing up?" if I might just feel like 20 minutes of treadmill that day. Better 20 minutes than nothing!With all that, I slowly built up enough of a a baseline fitness for me that wouldn't make training annoying and just exhausting.
It was easier to get back in after a break, and every time I had to take one, I had lost less progress than before. I got better and better at finding my sweet spot, neither under- nor overexercising.The more times I actually pushed myself to exercise despite feeling awful mentally and left it happier, the more it didn't feel like an outlier, but a guaranteed outcome.
That made it easier to show up despite everything. It's still hard, but I know now that it is basically like a button to improve my mood, and who doesn't want that?
That behavior just keeps getting reinforced every time I can get myself out of a hole with this. It gets harder and harder to convincingly tell myself "No, this time will be different; you'll feel the same or worse when you do this. You should stay in bed instead." Lying down has a much worse track record: It never makes me feel better.
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