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Anecdota about depression and exercise: * It's not getting in shape what lifts depression, it is physical activity in itself. You generally feel better after

Anecdota about depression and exercise: * It's not getting in shape what lifts depression, it is physical activity in itself. You generally feel better after exercise. It becomes much easier to hit the gym after realizing the reason to go is simply to feel better. Instead of thinking _I don't feel like going to the gym_ the correct cognition is _my medicine is there_. * There's a variety of options to exercise. Don't stick to running if you don't enjoy it (but you keep doing it because you feel better). There's a large menu of activities, at first try what is convenient, deliberately try many things and find what is more fulfilling to you. * With exercise nutrition follows quite naturally. It's difficult to navigate all the BS in nutrition, but in general eating fresh things closer to nature (leafs, fruit, veggies, nuts, lean meats) also has an impact on your wellbeing. * Often there are more issues other than lack of exercise. If you are socially isolated, if you are under constant stress, if your home situation is dire, exercise will help you cope with it but it's not getting at the root cause. Identify and work on the cause too.

bonesss 8y ago
Heavy weights also make an exceptional therapist. You can tell anything you want to a 200 pound loaded barbell, over and over again...
- amelius 8y ago
  Some tips for beginners: - Make sure you don't overtrain, as it can make you feel burned out, which can last a week or longer, and certainly will not help a depression. It also will not make your muscles grow faster. It's better to start slowly. - If you can't do an exercise in a controlled manner, reduce the weight. - Also don't target the same muscle-group more than once a week. Your muscles need time to recover. - Muscles grow most if you load them (slowly) while they are being stretched. - Find a training buddy. - If you take supplements, be aware that they can have an effect on your mood. For example, L-glutamine and taurine (which are in many protein shakes) are known to affect neurotransmitters.
  - naasking 8y ago
    Untrained individuals really don't need to train very hard or frequently at all. Their bodies will respond to pretty much any kind of stimulus because it's so new. Also, training a muscle once a week is bad advice. Protein synthesis for trained individuals drops to normal after 48 hours, and for untrained individuals/novices after 72 hours. Your muscles aren't growing after that. The only reason to wait longer than that is if your workout incurred a lot of muscle damage. Muscle damage should be avoided at all cost. People used to believe that it was a trigger for muscle growth, but many studies later we know that that isn't the case. Load a muscle twice a week if a novice or intermediate, up to three times a week if advanced. Use lower volume per workout to ensure you don't incur too much muscle damage.
- IAmGraydon 8y ago
  I lifted weights 4 times per week for many years. It got me a lot of attention from the opposite sex, but never helped my depression or anxiety. Then I started running, and the effect was undeniable. It’s just one data point, but we evolved to run. I’m convinced it’s something about using your body to do what you were meant to do that helps alleviate anxiety and depression.
  - gameswithgo 8y ago
    we clearly evolved to lift weights too or it wouldn’t work.
    - EADGBE 8y ago
      Or maybe we evolved weights to work for us
    - IAmGraydon 8y ago
      Not quite. That's a bit like saying we evolved to play football or it wouldn't work. Just because we can do it doesn't mean it was a fundamental part of our evolution with a survival mechanism behind it. We evolved to be able to pick things up, but we did not evolve to lift weights in the way one does in the gym. Running, however, was our main mode of taking down prey. The animals we hunted could run faster than us, but they could not sustain it. Humans evolved to be able to sustain running for long enough that the faster prey would eventually get tired and could no longer outpace their hunters. These hunts would take DAYS in many cases. This running endurance was central to our ability to survive, and as with all survival mechanisms, using that trait was and still is hugely rewarding, releasing a flood of dopamine even in modern humans.
Guthur 8y ago
Why exactly are lean meats closer to nature?
- aggie 8y ago
  That advice has a Michael Pollan (eat food, mostly plants, not too much) or Paleo Diet vibe to it. Perhaps a better term would be closer to what we would have encountered through most of the evolutionary history of our digestive system. In that time, nature hasn't generally been full of fatty meat. I don't know if that's actually true or if the theory of the diet is correct, but it is intuitive.
  - vibrato 8y ago
    Nature has been full of fatty meat until we killed it all and had to invent agriculture.
    - scottlocklin 8y ago
      Now there's someone who has never been hunting or fishing. Animals don't tend to get real fat in nature; you need to raise them on a farm for that. People can actually die of "rabbit starvation" from eating lots of wild rabbit meat without enough grease and carbs from something else.
      - int_19h 8y ago
        That depends a lot on the animals. Plenty of fat in a whale, for example, and societies that depend on whaling (or hunting other cetaceans) usually consume it in large quantities. Conversely, rabbit is one of the most lean game animals out there.
- gameswithgo 8y ago
  people can’t help but make up inaccurate shortcuts when thinking about things.
  - 8y ago
akeck 8y ago
> but in general eating fresh things closer to nature I like to think in terms of "level 1" and "level 2" food. * Level 1 is things that come from the ground/water (salt), grow from the ground/water (vegetables, etc.), or come from things eat things that grow from the ground/water (egg, fish, etc.). * Level 2 is recipes made from level 1 stuff.
philwelch 8y ago
> It's not getting in shape what lifts depression, it is physical activity in itself. You generally feel better after exercise. Although being in shape can make the physical activity itself less miserable, and the sense of accomplishment is often deeply fulfilling to people. > Often there are more issues other than lack of exercise. If you are socially isolated, if you are under constant stress, if your home situation is dire, exercise will help you cope with it but it's not getting at the root cause. Identify and work on the cause too. It's a process. It's always a process. Tackling the simpler things (e.g. exercising, cleaning your room, getting up in the morning instead of throwing off your circadian rhythms, going to bed at night instead of throwing off your circadian rhythms, grooming yourself) makes you better at addressing these other problems. You need a foundation where you have at least some discipline and order and routine in your life to have the mental energy to cope with the harder parts of life.

bonesss 8y ago

Heavy weights also make an exceptional therapist. You can tell anything you want to a 200 pound loaded barbell, over and over again...

amelius 8y ago
Some tips for beginners: - Make sure you don't overtrain, as it can make you feel burned out, which can last a week or longer, and certainly will not help a depression. It also will not make your muscles grow faster. It's better to start slowly. - If you can't do an exercise in a controlled manner, reduce the weight. - Also don't target the same muscle-group more than once a week. Your muscles need time to recover. - Muscles grow most if you load them (slowly) while they are being stretched. - Find a training buddy. - If you take supplements, be aware that they can have an effect on your mood. For example, L-glutamine and taurine (which are in many protein shakes) are known to affect neurotransmitters.
- naasking 8y ago
  Untrained individuals really don't need to train very hard or frequently at all. Their bodies will respond to pretty much any kind of stimulus because it's so new. Also, training a muscle once a week is bad advice. Protein synthesis for trained individuals drops to normal after 48 hours, and for untrained individuals/novices after 72 hours. Your muscles aren't growing after that. The only reason to wait longer than that is if your workout incurred a lot of muscle damage. Muscle damage should be avoided at all cost. People used to believe that it was a trigger for muscle growth, but many studies later we know that that isn't the case. Load a muscle twice a week if a novice or intermediate, up to three times a week if advanced. Use lower volume per workout to ensure you don't incur too much muscle damage.
IAmGraydon 8y ago
I lifted weights 4 times per week for many years. It got me a lot of attention from the opposite sex, but never helped my depression or anxiety. Then I started running, and the effect was undeniable. It’s just one data point, but we evolved to run. I’m convinced it’s something about using your body to do what you were meant to do that helps alleviate anxiety and depression.
- gameswithgo 8y ago
  we clearly evolved to lift weights too or it wouldn’t work.
  - EADGBE 8y ago
    Or maybe we evolved weights to work for us
  - IAmGraydon 8y ago
    Not quite. That's a bit like saying we evolved to play football or it wouldn't work. Just because we can do it doesn't mean it was a fundamental part of our evolution with a survival mechanism behind it. We evolved to be able to pick things up, but we did not evolve to lift weights in the way one does in the gym. Running, however, was our main mode of taking down prey. The animals we hunted could run faster than us, but they could not sustain it. Humans evolved to be able to sustain running for long enough that the faster prey would eventually get tired and could no longer outpace their hunters. These hunts would take DAYS in many cases. This running endurance was central to our ability to survive, and as with all survival mechanisms, using that trait was and still is hugely rewarding, releasing a flood of dopamine even in modern humans.

Guthur 8y ago

Why exactly are lean meats closer to nature?

aggie 8y ago
That advice has a Michael Pollan (eat food, mostly plants, not too much) or Paleo Diet vibe to it. Perhaps a better term would be closer to what we would have encountered through most of the evolutionary history of our digestive system. In that time, nature hasn't generally been full of fatty meat. I don't know if that's actually true or if the theory of the diet is correct, but it is intuitive.
- vibrato 8y ago
  Nature has been full of fatty meat until we killed it all and had to invent agriculture.
  - scottlocklin 8y ago
    Now there's someone who has never been hunting or fishing. Animals don't tend to get real fat in nature; you need to raise them on a farm for that. People can actually die of "rabbit starvation" from eating lots of wild rabbit meat without enough grease and carbs from something else.
    - int_19h 8y ago
      That depends a lot on the animals. Plenty of fat in a whale, for example, and societies that depend on whaling (or hunting other cetaceans) usually consume it in large quantities. Conversely, rabbit is one of the most lean game animals out there.
gameswithgo 8y ago
people can’t help but make up inaccurate shortcuts when thinking about things.
- 8y ago

akeck 8y ago

> but in general eating fresh things closer to nature I like to think in terms of "level 1" and "level 2" food. * Level 1 is things that come from the ground/water (salt), grow from the ground/water (vegetables, etc.), or come from things eat things that grow from the ground/water (egg, fish, etc.). * Level 2 is recipes made from level 1 stuff.

philwelch 8y ago

> It's not getting in shape what lifts depression, it is physical activity in itself. You generally feel better after exercise. Although being in shape can make the physical activity itself less miserable, and the sense of accomplishment is often deeply fulfilling to people. > Often there are more issues other than lack of exercise. If you are socially isolated, if you are under constant stress, if your home situation is dire, exercise will help you cope with it but it's not getting at the root cause. Identify and work on the cause too. It's a process. It's always a process. Tackling the simpler things (e.g. exercising, cleaning your room, getting up in the morning instead of throwing off your circadian rhythms, going to bed at night instead of throwing off your circadian rhythms, grooming yourself) makes you better at addressing these other problems. You need a foundation where you have at least some discipline and order and routine in your life to have the mental energy to cope with the harder parts of life.