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Exercise can be nearly as effective as therapy for depression

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Re: Exercise can be nearly as effective as therapy for depression

#151

Post by tdeck »

bluerooibos wrote: post #109
smeej wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no question if I want to do it, it is set at that time and I have to do it, period. Gosh it must be nice to have at least an ordinary amount of executive function skills. Is it really this easy for neurotypical people to build routines? That's really all it takes? I don't see how this removes willpower at all. It just determines what time you have to use it.

All you need to do is go to sleep before 12 every single night and wake up at 7am without fail, hit the gym and crank out a few sets of squats, hit the pool and the sauna, read a chapter of that book, and then cook yourself an amazing breakfast, all before 9am. If you're a real go-getter, though, you'd wake up at 6am and do some vibe coding for an hour on that side hustle. Super simple.

Don't forget to spend a few minutes journalling self-affirmations.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_o7qjN3KF8U

Re: Exercise can be nearly as effective as therapy for depression

#152

Post by WalterBright »

azkalam wrote: post #99
avidiax wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My suspicion as someone with lifelong weight struggles and having tried GLP-1 medication: overweight people require more willpower to lose or maintain weight relative to those of normal weight. So the advise or admonishment of the normally weighted that losing weight "just requires willpower" is true but facile. If we were to medically induce a constant feeling of hunger and insatiability into a person of normal weig…

Over-eating is not strictly a choice. Corporations spend billions on manipulating the public because it works. Regulation is needed, not willpower.

I don't believe regulation is the answer. As I get older, I've become increasingly skeptical of any information coming from the government.

Re: Exercise can be nearly as effective as therapy for depression

#153

Post by nerdsniper »

MikeNotThePope wrote: post #145
isk517 wrote: post #132

Exercise is great, just make sure to take sometime to evaluate where you are at mentally. I was running about 40 miles and doing 5 hours of lifting per week to try and stay a head of my depression, and when I finally burnt out everything came crashing down all at once.

Exercise is great for addressing feelings related to being physically inactive. It won’t address other mental health issues, such as learning to control your emotions & fostering healthy relationships.

> Exercise is great for addressing feelings related to being physically inactive.

That definition is probably too narrow.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurobiological_effects_of_phy...

Re: Exercise can be nearly as effective as therapy for depression

#154

Post by darrenf »

yomismoaqui wrote: post #68
cheald wrote: post #2

This is a finding that keeps coming up, and I've certainly found it true in my life, but there's a significant chicken-and-egg problem in that depression frequently precludes the motivation to exercise, and if you don't already have a deeply-disciplined routine to overcome the lack of motivation, people won't do it. Exhortation to develop those good habits in the good times, I suppose.

Motivation is fleeting but routine persists. When there is something that you want to do regularly (exercise, doing the final boring part of some sideproject, cleaning the house...) you remove willpower from the equation and set a day and a time. For example, everyday from 18 to 19 I work on my sideprojects, or saturdays from 16 to 18 is house cleaning time. There is no question if I want to do it, it is set at that…

I found this to be true, and that it perfectly dovetailed with TFA.

When I was at my absolute depth (so far…) back in 2013, I would see my counsellor at 1130 on a Saturday. I’d be able to recount the darkness of the previous 7 days in stark vivid detail, yet cheerfully and not feeling at all depressed in the moment. The counsellor asked what I did on Saturday morning except the session and my answer was, well I do Parkrun[0] of course. I always do Parkrun. It’s in my calendar, it’s not really negotiable. It might have been the only time I managed to get out of bed all week, but, I mean, how can I possibly skip Parkrun?

I never actually linked the exercise to the boost in my mental health until I had it pointed out to me at that moment. I go for a run and I feel better because of the run. I would spend the whole 5km stewing and ruminating and maybe in tears but half hour after getting home I could function! it’s stuck with me ever since, and I’ve never (yet) been so down again.

Tomorrow will be my 429th Parkrun :)

[0] https://www.parkrun.com/

Re: Exercise can be nearly as effective as therapy for depression

#155

Post by observationist »

MikeNotThePope wrote: post #145
isk517 wrote: post #132

Exercise is great, just make sure to take sometime to evaluate where you are at mentally. I was running about 40 miles and doing 5 hours of lifting per week to try and stay a head of my depression, and when I finally burnt out everything came crashing down all at once.

Exercise is great for addressing feelings related to being physically inactive. It won’t address other mental health issues, such as learning to control your emotions & fostering healthy relationships.

There's a deeper level to the way you calibrate your mental operation. If you're under a lot of mental stress, your body is evolved to prime you for physical effort, beyond the fight or flight responses. By engaging in exercise, you're resetting your physical condition, and that can put you in a much better position to mentally cope with whatever is happening.

This is something that has very deep evolutionary roots. A looming project deadline, a relationship crisis, feeling burned out, general malaise about your place in life - all of those stressors can bring about different neurochemical and hormonal changes that are in whole or in part dealt with in a healthy way by engaging in strenuous physical activities.

That puts you in a position to gain perspective without the immediacy of the negative emotion, so you don't have to feel anxious, or have subtle negative threat framing around everything.

You can abuse that, like anything else, and mask real negative factors in your life, or it can be a phenomenal and healthy way to deal with the negative framing of otherwise neutral or even positive circumstances in your life.

Re: Exercise can be nearly as effective as therapy for depression

#156

Post by stuffn »

wombatpm wrote: post #105
stuffn wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or avoid medication for anything but treatment resistant depression. SSRIs are not well understood. Their side effects are not great. Getting off them is miserable. I had them. I felt dead inside. Mission accomplished. Depression was gone, so was my desire to eat, have sex, or do anything else. I wasn’t depressed, I was a zombie. 8 adjustments and medications later I got off them and realized they’re yet another pill…

Medication is the fastest way to make some positive progress before you completely spiral and majorly fuck up your life. Would you rather take a pill and keep working while you sort things out or would you try to rebuild everything after you burn it all down? Talk therapy and exercise may be just as effective or more so long term, but may not be effective enough in the short term.

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Re: Exercise can be nearly as effective as therapy for depression

#157

Post by stuffn »

skywhopper wrote: post #131
stuffn wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or avoid medication for anything but treatment resistant depression. SSRIs are not well understood. Their side effects are not great. Getting off them is miserable. I had them. I felt dead inside. Mission accomplished. Depression was gone, so was my desire to eat, have sex, or do anything else. I wasn’t depressed, I was a zombie. 8 adjustments and medications later I got off them and realized they’re yet another pill…

[flagged]

[flagged]

Re: Exercise can be nearly as effective as therapy for depression

#158

Post by andy99 »

roguechimpanzee wrote: post #140
bluerooibos wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All you need to do is go to sleep before 12 every single night and wake up at 7am without fail, hit the gym and crank out a few sets of squats, hit the pool and the sauna, read a chapter of that book, and then cook yourself an amazing breakfast, all before 9am. If you're a real go-getter, though, you'd wake up at 6am and do some vibe coding for an hour on that side hustle. Super simple.

I know you’re being smart but these things are all possible if you want to make them happen

People would rather blame external factors and not take responsibility.

It’s actually insulting to people who work hard that some people assume they have it easy somehow, like the “must be nice” comment upstream. Not everyone takes the view that you can’t control what happens to you, it’s pretty easy to see who does.

Re: Exercise can be nearly as effective as therapy for depression

#159

Post by technothrasher »

kayodelycaon wrote: post #117
cheald wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It still requires willpower, but to use a metaphor, it's much easier to travel down a well-trod path than it is to cut a new path through the jungle. Repetition and consistency establishes the path, so the willpower required to travel down it the next day is reduced over time. Establishing a pre-set time and committing to that time ahead of time removes the "will I or won't I" decision at "go time", when you're most…

This method requires a significant amount of executive function. My body doesn't feel the passage of time consistently. So my mind is never prepared to switch activities when it needs to. And there are times my brain stops working on a particular task and nothing can get it started again. It's like a leg going out, you just can't stand on it. This isn't occasionally where habit could be picked back up. This has been…

I would imagine you'd get this advice from other non-neurotypical people too. My son is neurodivergant, and strict routine like what is being described is about the only thing that keeps him able to handle most daily life tasks regularly. But plenty of other advice he constantly gets frustrates him similarly to the frustration you seem to be describing. We call it "you've just never had it cooked right" advice. So I feel your exasperation.

Re: Exercise can be nearly as effective as therapy for depression

#160

Post by keeganpoppen »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #13
HauntingPin wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also question the universality of it. No amount of exercise changed my depression or made life any less miserable. Anti-depressants finally helped me get past the trauma I was unable to properly process otherwise.

And you think the effects of drugs is universal? Exercise is a side effect free treatment that works for some people so it’s worth a shot because it sometimes works.

i think they are merely saying what worked for them. it is working for me too, despite my misgivings about “just taking a pill”. YMMV.
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