13 ms·

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 freque

by cheald 9mo ago

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.

zaptheimpaler 9mo ago
It doesn't have to take deep discipline. I started my routine by just going for short walk after dinner everyday and it built up from there. It's intimidating to have to start at gym for 60 minutes 3x/week. Just do whatever little you like - a few pushups, a walk, a dance and stop when its not enjoyable. It tends to naturally build up.
WackyFighter 9mo ago
Much like the sibling comment I started walking around the local park before spending more time hiking. I live semi rurally though and wouldn't want to walk in an urban environment. I normally feel much better after walking and cycling. Also I think doing something repetitive like walking allows you to think, tune out of other things.
- wk_end 9mo ago
  Everyone is different, so I say this not to tell you how to feel but just to offer a different perspective: Walking in urban environments can be its own sort of joy. Cities (well, good ones anyway) are full of life and energy and humanity, have unexpected nooks and crannies, and a rich sense of dynamism and excitement. Even late at night (as long as you're safe), a quiet city can be a source of serenity and melancholic beauty. Writers like Baudelaire and Benjamin described at great lengths the pleasures of flânerie. Nature is wonderful too, of course! I love a good hike through the forests and mountains...but I also love a good stroll downtown.
  - WackyFighter 9mo ago
    No. Urban environments suck to walk around. What you wrote is utter drivel. If one needs to justify it by quoting authors, that suggests it isn't self evident and they are just trying to justify something that they know isn't good.
    - wk_end 9mo ago
      What an unnecessarily hostile comment. "Utter drivel"? I was talking about how I personally feel. Am I just imagining enjoying the things that I enjoy? Writers have, obviously, written about how walking in nature is nice. Does me saying that now mean that walking in nature is awful? Maybe you're doing other people a favour by staying away from them, sheesh.
      - WackyFighter 9mo ago
        > What an unnecessarily hostile comment. "Utter drivel"? I was talking about how I personally feel. Am I just imagining enjoying the things that I enjoy? No it isn't. Anytime you make an fairly straight forward statement on any website you get some unnecessary contrarian response. There are a bunch of downsides to doing any sort of outdoor activity in an urban environment. That is just a fact. It is noisier, often there it nothing to look at, repetitive (in a bad way) etc. etc. Therefore I would not recommend walking as a form of exercise in that environment as the vast majority of people wouldn't enjoy it. Whimsical writings by 19th century French poets aren't relevant to those facts. > Maybe you're doing other people a favour by staying away from them, sheesh. What an unnecessary comment to make. I never said anything about what you are like.
    - tailspin2019 9mo ago
      What a bizarre response.
      - WackyFighter 9mo ago
        Not at all. It was a contrarian response. Walking in an urban environment is generally not very pleasant. It is often repetitive (in the bad way), noisy and there is little to look at. It the reason they often carve out space for parks and commons.
HauntingPin 9mo ago
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.
- 2muchcoffeeman 9mo ago
  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.
  - PaulHoule 9mo ago
    I'd argue that depression kills and optimal therapy is: anti-depressants, exercise AND talking therapy and the time to start is NOW. I wouldn't knock the effectiveness of any of them with the caveats that: (1) you can get anti-depressants from you primary care doc, the best practice is to start on something, ramp up your dose and try something different if it is not working or you don't like the sides. I really thought Vanlafaxine was a comfortable ride but it raised my blood pressure to the "go to the ER" range. Call on the phone and lean in about adjusting your meds. (2) Getting an appointment for talk therapy can take a while these days. (3) In a hard case you can get a more complex medication cocktail from a psychiatrist but the wait could be worse than the talk therapy. (4) People in the military do insane amounts of cardio because it helps dealing with insane amounts of stress. 2 hours a day of cardio helped me deal with a business development process that went on for years before ultimately failing.
    - stuffn 9mo ago
      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 to fix a problem 98% of people can fix other ways if they tried. I do not understand this intense desire to be medicated. Exercise, go outside, talk to people. Get good sleep. Once the rest of your life is squared away get some meds if necessary. Psychiatrists and psychologist walk the razors edge of quackery every single day. Talk therapy is a program to take tremendous amount of money from people and funnel it into their account. It’s absolutely nuts the average talk therapist bills at over 300 dollars an Hour. There is no reproducibility in mental health. in their “science”. Therefore, there’s no reason to believe their magical pills will fix problems they barely understand at a biological level. As a final note people in the military do a ton of cardio because running and rucking is hard work you train for. It is certainly not to “stay sane”.
4fterd4rk 9mo ago
Well... sure. I've had trouble with anxiety and it's actually an incredibly anxiety provoking thing for me to go to therapy. But I read enough information telling me that therapy is good for anxiety so I finally went. I think there's people out there who need to know that exercise is helpful for depression, even if the depression makes it difficult.
boplicity 9mo ago
We have a certain amount of "willpower" that can overcome motivational barriers. This willpower is limited, though. It's very helpful to have clear guidance on where to allocate this very limited resources, especially in situations where people are otherwise struggling. All of which is to say -- these exhortations can play a useful role. :)
- LorenPechtel 9mo ago
  Yup, which is why diets fail. People who are fat generally do not have enough available willpower to lose weight.
  - CrossVR 9mo ago
    This has more to do with hunger requiring a tremendous amount of willpower to ignore rather than fat people having less willpower than people of average weight.
    - PeterStuer 9mo ago
      It feels very different. Depressed people lack the motivation/energy to start exercise, fat people seem more in line with addiction in not being inclined to overcome short term craving for more feed. While at a certain level of abstraction you can reduce both to A -> !B -> C, that generalization seems to obfuscate specific important differences that impact pathways to treatment. Craving is not the same as lacking energy. Craving, while subversive, energizes, depression does not.
    - browningstreet 9mo ago
      If you eat poorly, those foods will not satiate and the "hunger" (it's not the hunger of a body starved of calories) persists. Eat for sustenance and the hunger you may feel will be different. I also know that if I overeat, I have a strong urge to keep feeding (more chips, more pizza, more chipsahoy). Whereas when I eat a proper meal, I'm fine when the eating of that meal ends.
      - 9mo ago
oldpersonintx 9mo ago
[dead]
refulgentis 9mo ago
This is 100% true, and what I'm about to describe isn't an attempt to falsify it: took me 11 years and 3 cities to figure it out. You don't have to exercise so much as get moving. I'm the best I've been in 37 years, and it's because in August I started forcing myself to just keep walking whenever I went out to have a cigarette. I was in Boston, and would end up ~nowhere and exhausted. Then started doing random stuff: "might as well walk to Harvard Square instead of the bike path again" "might as well go to a bookstore instead of somewhere random" "I should use the skate park, I don't fit in*, but I miss rollerblading from middle school" Then my dog died, 2 days later I severely sprained my ankle at the skate park and couldn't walk anywhere substantive for a couple weeks. By the time I'm able to do a sustained 10m+ walk it's winter. Went to visit California as a not-tech-employee for the first time, so I saw San Luis Obispo and Los Angeles for the first time. And the same habit kicked in, in SLO I ended up hiking for the first time on what I find out later was not a real trail, end up hiking every day that week. Get to LA and it's nothing like I would have thought. Egalitarian, tons of stuff to do, and Waymo is a godsend. Whenever I get antsy there's somewhere to go and a way to get there. 2 weeks later, I got an apartment in LA, moving away from Northeast for the first time in my life. I could see me just spending another 4 months decaying in Boston until its barely warm enough out to take a 30m walk, and I'm tired of that cycle.. All that to say, I'm fit, I had a great career in high school sports, I played basketball occasionally, but couldn't really get active consistently. Treadmill was never stimulating enough to keep my attention on anything other than being bored. In retrospect, I really wish I heard this old saw ~all of us know and heard it as "moving around" instead of exercise. (n.b. this was all under active mental health care x medications spanning a decade+. It's not that the mental health care was useless, I don't think I could have done what I did without it. But it couldn't "fix" me on it's lonesome, only enable me to get moving.) * in retrospect this was wrong, plenty of newbies, and one of the most welcoming social environments I've been in. just people out there all trying to do the same thing and supporting each other.
- cheald 9mo ago
  That's a great way to think about it. "Get moving" is a lot less intimidating and feels more achievable than "exercise" which conjures images of marathons and four-plate squats.
Insanity 9mo ago
Nail on the head. I know that exercise will make me feel better, but during a period of depression/grief I could not even get out the house.
- AnthonBerg 9mo ago
  To my surprise, it has been my experience that this turns out to be pulmonary. It was always the chicken-and-egg of... breathing. Seems like this has been my story: Severe prolonged stress floored me. Turns out that the autonomous control of bronchoconstriction and dilation had gone out of wack, into dysregulation. My lungs were basically clamped shut. (Muscular tension and sundry dysregulation from severe prolonged stress makes sense, right? Applies to the lungs too!) Exercise worked when I could get myself to do it... because exercise forces lungs to open. And the nervous system and brain, well it requires lots of oxygen. In order to learn. And unlearn. — edit: Also interesting: Ketamine therapy worked. And... ketamine is a bronchodilator!
  - ambicapter 9mo ago
    That's interesting. I've noticed when I go for a long-enough run and my body warms up to an optimal state, breathing feels easy and effective. I wish I could breathe like that all the time.
cultofmetatron 9mo ago
its amazing that we haven't found anyone dualwielding the skill of therapist and personal trainer. we already have things like sex surrogacy (https://www.webmd.com/sex/what-is-sexual-surrogacy https://www.webmd.com/sex/what-is-sexual-surrogacy) so its not like it would be that weird by comparison.
KellyCriterion 9mo ago
You can also have a "deeply-disciplined routine" and get thrown out of it and hit depression because exactly by that one impact. Source: Myself.
- gloxkiqcza 9mo ago
  I’m not sure if you need to hear this but in case you do: There’s only one way to get back to it and the sooner you do it, the easier it is. First week is hardest, then the positive feedback loop starts kicking in. Do not to think about it, just get it done.
  - undeveloper 9mo ago
    reread what you replied to
  - KellyCriterion 9mo ago
    What most people without this "experience" never understand: you just _cant_ If you've seen a distinct "low bar", its nearly impossible to get straight up above this bar
heavyset_go 9mo ago
> Exhortation to develop those good habits in the good times, I suppose. This is what medication for more severe cases of things like depression is supposed to offer: an opportunity to learn, usually through therapy, to cope with the condition in a healthy way.
- hu3 9mo ago
  Yup! Same thing for ADHD. Medication helps having willpower/focus to develop better habits and realize you are not a useless dumb human. It's just that your brain is a little finicky to get going sometimes. In fact the few diagnosed ADHD people I know are wicked smart. It's just that their brain overclocks to unproductive levels without medication.
yomismoaqui 9mo ago
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 time and I have to do it, period. The nice thing about routine is that the first times it is hard, but after some repetitions your mind (and body) begin to get used and it transforms into a routine and then it's like it's written in stone. That time period of that day X is for Y and it is what it is. Routine can be used for bad things but also for good things.
- jjtheblunt 9mo ago
  I bet simply having a dog needing walking tips the scales into an exercise routine at some level.
  - multiplegeorges 9mo ago
    It did for me. You have to be truly heartless to see a dog being sad about not going outside. So you take it for a walk, then another and another. Soon enough you're researching hiking trails in your region and getting healthier. Dogs are the best.
    - jjtheblunt 9mo ago
      agreed, with an addendum : we have rescue cats too, and they too are like "nope, off the computer, time to play". And perhaps because we have both, they all will play games together (and with us humans): the cats are like dogs who can do gymnastics. the cats will walk outside on leashes but look annoyed and embarrassed. however our feral ancestry dog is like having Richard Simmons on meth...and makes me amused at people who are like "a border collie is a handful". i'm like tell it to her paw.
  - specproc 9mo ago
    God yeah. So much healthier and happier in my forties than my thirties, and it's all down to my executive assistant.
mustaphah 9mo ago
Once exercise becomes a habit, it's very easy to do even on days when your mood is terrible. A strict routine (initially) is the trick to making things easier forever. You definitely want to build that habit when you're at your best.
hannob 9mo ago
True, but the same is true for therapy. Finding a good therapist isn't easy, and having depression certainly doesn't make it easier.
baincs 9mo ago
That may be true if you're severely depressed, but I think it can save you if you're starting to get depressed. That's what happened to me at one point, and an online comment saved me. I was like 60% depressed but on my way there. I just took my first computer science class in college but I was overly ambitious when I participated in an undergrad CS research. The stress and imposter syndrome was shoving me to the downward spiral. I posted some gloomy thoughts on an online forum. It was long ago, but I remember the post contained how I could kind of relate to the villain while watching the movie The Dark Knight Rises. Some online person advised me "lift weights". I had never tried seriously lifting weights, but I was living in a student apartment 10 minutes away from the student gym, so I decided to give it a try. I can't forget the sensation when I did a set of bench press. After a period of amassing so much stress, each rep felt like I was reaching my hand into my brain, directly scooping out the waste and tossing it away. I became much more active after that, and successfully finished the research and the degree. It's like how homelessness is more reversible for people who became homeless less than a year ago, and why organizations focus on those groups.
- eudamoniac 9mo ago
  If psychiatrists could mind control their depressive patients into doing 2-3 weeks of heavy compound lifts, I'm certain more than half would be cured.
iamacyborg 9mo ago
Motivation generally follows action, not the other way around.
javanissen 9mo ago
I think the real exhortation is to develop a multi-pronged strategy for managing depression. I didn't feel like my depressed life got durably better until I had both exercise and therapy, and there are still times where things aren't going well with no clear discernible reason. I suspect that adding a low dose of medication on top would help. Every additional coping mechanism you add, that works well for you, provides defense in depth.
broof 9mo ago
Also the bad times can be a great time to build good habits. I’ve tried and failed to develop an exercise routine many times, but it wasn’t until I was laid off for 6 months that it finally stuck. I had a friend who went to the gym every day in the middle of the day so I didn’t really have a reason not to go. 6 months was long enough for the habit to stick and fast forward years later and I still have the habit. It’s been so good that I regularly think about how good it was that I had the opportunity to be laid off.
econ 9mo ago
I hear ice swimming also works.
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
lightbulbish 9mo ago
That is true. And motivation is not a fixed variable. It is possible to get increased motivation by a better plan, resulting in increased self efficacy. From studies like this, maybe more awareness and perhaps funding to solutions providing smaller steps Shameless plug, I am building one: Low friction mini games, social, squats/situps/pushups. Feelgoodcrew.com
mnky9800n 9mo ago
i think what is missing from this narrative is not whether or not people have a routine, it is that exercise elevates your mood away from the depressed state, therapy encourages you to question your thoughts and decisions through out your day that might lead you away from a depressed state. to put it a different way, whats the point of exercising every day if you continue the thoughts and habits that are less than satisfactory to you without any self awareness?
darkhorse222 9mo ago
My two cents on this topic is to create short term, superficial incentives to help create the practices that yield the long term incentives. For me this is paying extra for a gym with a hot tub, sauna, and cold plunge. Now I derive relaxation from the workout, but before that I also received a lot of support from the knowledge that the amenities afterwards were waiting for me. I'm not a big believer in discipline.
is_true 9mo ago
If you are or you know some that is depressed one of the best things you can do is start exercising with someone.
- pinkmuffinere 9mo ago
  I really like this advice. When I'm sad I don't want to leave the house, and certainly won't have the motivation to do much exercise on my own. But having friends peer-pressure me into making good choices would (and has) helped a lot.
singpolyma3 9mo ago
One thing that worked well for me is I switched my transportation to almost exclusively bicycle. Do I always want to exercise? Do I always want to get on my bike when it's below zero in active weather? No, not always. But if I want to get where I'm going that's my option and I get the exercise in the process (and save a buttload of money too)
baby 9mo ago
I think we also approach exercise the wrong way. And IMO this is true with sleep too (which also impacts depression). We're using the wrong metrics. The most important thing to get started with working out is just to start doing some exercise. You can start on one push up a day or something. It's all about creating momentum and habit. Once you do it, then you can increase the time and the intensity and optimize exercise and all. But doing sport should be about doing one push up a day and thats it. About starting as slow as you can. Sleep is the same in that we try to sleep as much as we can, and get as much REM and deep sleep, and these are not the right metrics for most people. The most important is just to go to bed and wake up at the same time everyday. That's it. People are obsessed with trying to go to sleep at some point in time. Don't. Go to sleep when you're tired, wake up sleep deprived at the right time, the next evening it'll be easier to sleep at the right time
jimnotgym 9mo ago
I always wondered if this kind of research was just finding that depressed people motivated to exercise are already in a recovery mindset
vlod 9mo ago
“Action precedes motivation.” ― Robert McKain This seems to work for me at least. If I start trying to reason with myself why I should get out of bed at 5am to go to the gym rather than excuse XYZ, I will talk myself out of it. If I simply start "moving" and start doing "stuff" without engaging my brain, things happen and within a short space of time, I'm pumping iron and feeling great.
NedF 9mo ago
[dead]
_DeadFred_ 9mo ago
Fun fact, people suffering from loss of quality of life issues don't lack motivation. Lots of these people are in great pain, constantly, every day. My mother had a hip issue where the pain could instantly shoot up so bad she couldn't move (from just the normal, constant, almost in tears pain). She couldn't risk going somewhere to exercise, she would be stuck. She couldn't risk exercising on days where she needed to work the next day. Some days she would break down crying going to the grocery store because she had gotten stuck there the previous time she went. A LOT of quiet unassuming people are INSPIRINGLY motivated to push through INCREDIBLE pain and obstacles, every day. Many that prevent them from 'just exercising until life gets better'. It is bullshit to say they lack motivation/character/willpower.

by cheald 9mo ago

zaptheimpaler 9mo ago

It doesn't have to take deep discipline. I started my routine by just going for short walk after dinner everyday and it built up from there. It's intimidating to have to start at gym for 60 minutes 3x/week. Just do whatever little you like - a few pushups, a walk, a dance and stop when its not enjoyable. It tends to naturally build up.

WackyFighter 9mo ago

Much like the sibling comment I started walking around the local park before spending more time hiking. I live semi rurally though and wouldn't want to walk in an urban environment. I normally feel much better after walking and cycling. Also I think doing something repetitive like walking allows you to think, tune out of other things.

wk_end 9mo ago
Everyone is different, so I say this not to tell you how to feel but just to offer a different perspective: Walking in urban environments can be its own sort of joy. Cities (well, good ones anyway) are full of life and energy and humanity, have unexpected nooks and crannies, and a rich sense of dynamism and excitement. Even late at night (as long as you're safe), a quiet city can be a source of serenity and melancholic beauty. Writers like Baudelaire and Benjamin described at great lengths the pleasures of flânerie. Nature is wonderful too, of course! I love a good hike through the forests and mountains...but I also love a good stroll downtown.
- WackyFighter 9mo ago
  No. Urban environments suck to walk around. What you wrote is utter drivel. If one needs to justify it by quoting authors, that suggests it isn't self evident and they are just trying to justify something that they know isn't good.
  - wk_end 9mo ago
    What an unnecessarily hostile comment. "Utter drivel"? I was talking about how I personally feel. Am I just imagining enjoying the things that I enjoy? Writers have, obviously, written about how walking in nature is nice. Does me saying that now mean that walking in nature is awful? Maybe you're doing other people a favour by staying away from them, sheesh.
    - WackyFighter 9mo ago
      > What an unnecessarily hostile comment. "Utter drivel"? I was talking about how I personally feel. Am I just imagining enjoying the things that I enjoy? No it isn't. Anytime you make an fairly straight forward statement on any website you get some unnecessary contrarian response. There are a bunch of downsides to doing any sort of outdoor activity in an urban environment. That is just a fact. It is noisier, often there it nothing to look at, repetitive (in a bad way) etc. etc. Therefore I would not recommend walking as a form of exercise in that environment as the vast majority of people wouldn't enjoy it. Whimsical writings by 19th century French poets aren't relevant to those facts. > Maybe you're doing other people a favour by staying away from them, sheesh. What an unnecessary comment to make. I never said anything about what you are like.
  - tailspin2019 9mo ago
    What a bizarre response.
    - WackyFighter 9mo ago
      Not at all. It was a contrarian response. Walking in an urban environment is generally not very pleasant. It is often repetitive (in the bad way), noisy and there is little to look at. It the reason they often carve out space for parks and commons.

HauntingPin 9mo ago

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.

2muchcoffeeman 9mo ago
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.
- PaulHoule 9mo ago
  I'd argue that depression kills and optimal therapy is: anti-depressants, exercise AND talking therapy and the time to start is NOW. I wouldn't knock the effectiveness of any of them with the caveats that: (1) you can get anti-depressants from you primary care doc, the best practice is to start on something, ramp up your dose and try something different if it is not working or you don't like the sides. I really thought Vanlafaxine was a comfortable ride but it raised my blood pressure to the "go to the ER" range. Call on the phone and lean in about adjusting your meds. (2) Getting an appointment for talk therapy can take a while these days. (3) In a hard case you can get a more complex medication cocktail from a psychiatrist but the wait could be worse than the talk therapy. (4) People in the military do insane amounts of cardio because it helps dealing with insane amounts of stress. 2 hours a day of cardio helped me deal with a business development process that went on for years before ultimately failing.
  - stuffn 9mo ago
    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 to fix a problem 98% of people can fix other ways if they tried. I do not understand this intense desire to be medicated. Exercise, go outside, talk to people. Get good sleep. Once the rest of your life is squared away get some meds if necessary. Psychiatrists and psychologist walk the razors edge of quackery every single day. Talk therapy is a program to take tremendous amount of money from people and funnel it into their account. It’s absolutely nuts the average talk therapist bills at over 300 dollars an Hour. There is no reproducibility in mental health. in their “science”. Therefore, there’s no reason to believe their magical pills will fix problems they barely understand at a biological level. As a final note people in the military do a ton of cardio because running and rucking is hard work you train for. It is certainly not to “stay sane”.

4fterd4rk 9mo ago

Well... sure. I've had trouble with anxiety and it's actually an incredibly anxiety provoking thing for me to go to therapy. But I read enough information telling me that therapy is good for anxiety so I finally went. I think there's people out there who need to know that exercise is helpful for depression, even if the depression makes it difficult.

boplicity 9mo ago

We have a certain amount of "willpower" that can overcome motivational barriers. This willpower is limited, though. It's very helpful to have clear guidance on where to allocate this very limited resources, especially in situations where people are otherwise struggling. All of which is to say -- these exhortations can play a useful role. :)

LorenPechtel 9mo ago
Yup, which is why diets fail. People who are fat generally do not have enough available willpower to lose weight.
- CrossVR 9mo ago
  This has more to do with hunger requiring a tremendous amount of willpower to ignore rather than fat people having less willpower than people of average weight.
  - PeterStuer 9mo ago
    It feels very different. Depressed people lack the motivation/energy to start exercise, fat people seem more in line with addiction in not being inclined to overcome short term craving for more feed. While at a certain level of abstraction you can reduce both to A -> !B -> C, that generalization seems to obfuscate specific important differences that impact pathways to treatment. Craving is not the same as lacking energy. Craving, while subversive, energizes, depression does not.
  - browningstreet 9mo ago
    If you eat poorly, those foods will not satiate and the "hunger" (it's not the hunger of a body starved of calories) persists. Eat for sustenance and the hunger you may feel will be different. I also know that if I overeat, I have a strong urge to keep feeding (more chips, more pizza, more chipsahoy). Whereas when I eat a proper meal, I'm fine when the eating of that meal ends.
    - 9mo ago

oldpersonintx 9mo ago

[dead]

refulgentis 9mo ago

This is 100% true, and what I'm about to describe isn't an attempt to falsify it: took me 11 years and 3 cities to figure it out. You don't have to exercise so much as get moving. I'm the best I've been in 37 years, and it's because in August I started forcing myself to just keep walking whenever I went out to have a cigarette. I was in Boston, and would end up ~nowhere and exhausted. Then started doing random stuff: "might as well walk to Harvard Square instead of the bike path again" "might as well go to a bookstore instead of somewhere random" "I should use the skate park, I don't fit in*, but I miss rollerblading from middle school" Then my dog died, 2 days later I severely sprained my ankle at the skate park and couldn't walk anywhere substantive for a couple weeks. By the time I'm able to do a sustained 10m+ walk it's winter. Went to visit California as a not-tech-employee for the first time, so I saw San Luis Obispo and Los Angeles for the first time. And the same habit kicked in, in SLO I ended up hiking for the first time on what I find out later was not a real trail, end up hiking every day that week. Get to LA and it's nothing like I would have thought. Egalitarian, tons of stuff to do, and Waymo is a godsend. Whenever I get antsy there's somewhere to go and a way to get there. 2 weeks later, I got an apartment in LA, moving away from Northeast for the first time in my life. I could see me just spending another 4 months decaying in Boston until its barely warm enough out to take a 30m walk, and I'm tired of that cycle.. All that to say, I'm fit, I had a great career in high school sports, I played basketball occasionally, but couldn't really get active consistently. Treadmill was never stimulating enough to keep my attention on anything other than being bored. In retrospect, I really wish I heard this old saw ~all of us know and heard it as "moving around" instead of exercise. (n.b. this was all under active mental health care x medications spanning a decade+. It's not that the mental health care was useless, I don't think I could have done what I did without it. But it couldn't "fix" me on it's lonesome, only enable me to get moving.) * in retrospect this was wrong, plenty of newbies, and one of the most welcoming social environments I've been in. just people out there all trying to do the same thing and supporting each other.

cheald 9mo ago
That's a great way to think about it. "Get moving" is a lot less intimidating and feels more achievable than "exercise" which conjures images of marathons and four-plate squats.

Insanity 9mo ago

Nail on the head. I know that exercise will make me feel better, but during a period of depression/grief I could not even get out the house.

AnthonBerg 9mo ago
To my surprise, it has been my experience that this turns out to be pulmonary. It was always the chicken-and-egg of... breathing. Seems like this has been my story: Severe prolonged stress floored me. Turns out that the autonomous control of bronchoconstriction and dilation had gone out of wack, into dysregulation. My lungs were basically clamped shut. (Muscular tension and sundry dysregulation from severe prolonged stress makes sense, right? Applies to the lungs too!) Exercise worked when I could get myself to do it... because exercise forces lungs to open. And the nervous system and brain, well it requires lots of oxygen. In order to learn. And unlearn. — edit: Also interesting: Ketamine therapy worked. And... ketamine is a bronchodilator!
- ambicapter 9mo ago
  That's interesting. I've noticed when I go for a long-enough run and my body warms up to an optimal state, breathing feels easy and effective. I wish I could breathe like that all the time.

cultofmetatron 9mo ago

its amazing that we haven't found anyone dualwielding the skill of therapist and personal trainer. we already have things like sex surrogacy (https://www.webmd.com/sex/what-is-sexual-surrogacy https://www.webmd.com/sex/what-is-sexual-surrogacy) so its not like it would be that weird by comparison.

KellyCriterion 9mo ago

You can also have a "deeply-disciplined routine" and get thrown out of it and hit depression because exactly by that one impact. Source: Myself.

gloxkiqcza 9mo ago
I’m not sure if you need to hear this but in case you do: There’s only one way to get back to it and the sooner you do it, the easier it is. First week is hardest, then the positive feedback loop starts kicking in. Do not to think about it, just get it done.
- undeveloper 9mo ago
  reread what you replied to
- KellyCriterion 9mo ago
  What most people without this "experience" never understand: you just _cant_ If you've seen a distinct "low bar", its nearly impossible to get straight up above this bar

heavyset_go 9mo ago

> Exhortation to develop those good habits in the good times, I suppose. This is what medication for more severe cases of things like depression is supposed to offer: an opportunity to learn, usually through therapy, to cope with the condition in a healthy way.

hu3 9mo ago
Yup! Same thing for ADHD. Medication helps having willpower/focus to develop better habits and realize you are not a useless dumb human. It's just that your brain is a little finicky to get going sometimes. In fact the few diagnosed ADHD people I know are wicked smart. It's just that their brain overclocks to unproductive levels without medication.

yomismoaqui 9mo ago

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 time and I have to do it, period. The nice thing about routine is that the first times it is hard, but after some repetitions your mind (and body) begin to get used and it transforms into a routine and then it's like it's written in stone. That time period of that day X is for Y and it is what it is. Routine can be used for bad things but also for good things.

jjtheblunt 9mo ago
I bet simply having a dog needing walking tips the scales into an exercise routine at some level.
- multiplegeorges 9mo ago
  It did for me. You have to be truly heartless to see a dog being sad about not going outside. So you take it for a walk, then another and another. Soon enough you're researching hiking trails in your region and getting healthier. Dogs are the best.
  - jjtheblunt 9mo ago
    agreed, with an addendum : we have rescue cats too, and they too are like "nope, off the computer, time to play". And perhaps because we have both, they all will play games together (and with us humans): the cats are like dogs who can do gymnastics. the cats will walk outside on leashes but look annoyed and embarrassed. however our feral ancestry dog is like having Richard Simmons on meth...and makes me amused at people who are like "a border collie is a handful". i'm like tell it to her paw.
- specproc 9mo ago
  God yeah. So much healthier and happier in my forties than my thirties, and it's all down to my executive assistant.

mustaphah 9mo ago

Once exercise becomes a habit, it's very easy to do even on days when your mood is terrible. A strict routine (initially) is the trick to making things easier forever. You definitely want to build that habit when you're at your best.

hannob 9mo ago

True, but the same is true for therapy. Finding a good therapist isn't easy, and having depression certainly doesn't make it easier.

baincs 9mo ago

That may be true if you're severely depressed, but I think it can save you if you're starting to get depressed. That's what happened to me at one point, and an online comment saved me. I was like 60% depressed but on my way there. I just took my first computer science class in college but I was overly ambitious when I participated in an undergrad CS research. The stress and imposter syndrome was shoving me to the downward spiral. I posted some gloomy thoughts on an online forum. It was long ago, but I remember the post contained how I could kind of relate to the villain while watching the movie The Dark Knight Rises. Some online person advised me "lift weights". I had never tried seriously lifting weights, but I was living in a student apartment 10 minutes away from the student gym, so I decided to give it a try. I can't forget the sensation when I did a set of bench press. After a period of amassing so much stress, each rep felt like I was reaching my hand into my brain, directly scooping out the waste and tossing it away. I became much more active after that, and successfully finished the research and the degree. It's like how homelessness is more reversible for people who became homeless less than a year ago, and why organizations focus on those groups.

eudamoniac 9mo ago
If psychiatrists could mind control their depressive patients into doing 2-3 weeks of heavy compound lifts, I'm certain more than half would be cured.

iamacyborg 9mo ago

Motivation generally follows action, not the other way around.

javanissen 9mo ago

I think the real exhortation is to develop a multi-pronged strategy for managing depression. I didn't feel like my depressed life got durably better until I had both exercise and therapy, and there are still times where things aren't going well with no clear discernible reason. I suspect that adding a low dose of medication on top would help. Every additional coping mechanism you add, that works well for you, provides defense in depth.

broof 9mo ago

Also the bad times can be a great time to build good habits. I’ve tried and failed to develop an exercise routine many times, but it wasn’t until I was laid off for 6 months that it finally stuck. I had a friend who went to the gym every day in the middle of the day so I didn’t really have a reason not to go. 6 months was long enough for the habit to stick and fast forward years later and I still have the habit. It’s been so good that I regularly think about how good it was that I had the opportunity to be laid off.

econ 9mo ago

I hear ice swimming also works.

deleted 9mo ago

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lightbulbish 9mo ago

That is true. And motivation is not a fixed variable. It is possible to get increased motivation by a better plan, resulting in increased self efficacy. From studies like this, maybe more awareness and perhaps funding to solutions providing smaller steps Shameless plug, I am building one: Low friction mini games, social, squats/situps/pushups. Feelgoodcrew.com

mnky9800n 9mo ago

i think what is missing from this narrative is not whether or not people have a routine, it is that exercise elevates your mood away from the depressed state, therapy encourages you to question your thoughts and decisions through out your day that might lead you away from a depressed state. to put it a different way, whats the point of exercising every day if you continue the thoughts and habits that are less than satisfactory to you without any self awareness?

darkhorse222 9mo ago

My two cents on this topic is to create short term, superficial incentives to help create the practices that yield the long term incentives. For me this is paying extra for a gym with a hot tub, sauna, and cold plunge. Now I derive relaxation from the workout, but before that I also received a lot of support from the knowledge that the amenities afterwards were waiting for me. I'm not a big believer in discipline.

is_true 9mo ago

If you are or you know some that is depressed one of the best things you can do is start exercising with someone.

pinkmuffinere 9mo ago
I really like this advice. When I'm sad I don't want to leave the house, and certainly won't have the motivation to do much exercise on my own. But having friends peer-pressure me into making good choices would (and has) helped a lot.

singpolyma3 9mo ago

One thing that worked well for me is I switched my transportation to almost exclusively bicycle. Do I always want to exercise? Do I always want to get on my bike when it's below zero in active weather? No, not always. But if I want to get where I'm going that's my option and I get the exercise in the process (and save a buttload of money too)

baby 9mo ago

I think we also approach exercise the wrong way. And IMO this is true with sleep too (which also impacts depression). We're using the wrong metrics. The most important thing to get started with working out is just to start doing some exercise. You can start on one push up a day or something. It's all about creating momentum and habit. Once you do it, then you can increase the time and the intensity and optimize exercise and all. But doing sport should be about doing one push up a day and thats it. About starting as slow as you can. Sleep is the same in that we try to sleep as much as we can, and get as much REM and deep sleep, and these are not the right metrics for most people. The most important is just to go to bed and wake up at the same time everyday. That's it. People are obsessed with trying to go to sleep at some point in time. Don't. Go to sleep when you're tired, wake up sleep deprived at the right time, the next evening it'll be easier to sleep at the right time

jimnotgym 9mo ago

I always wondered if this kind of research was just finding that depressed people motivated to exercise are already in a recovery mindset

vlod 9mo ago

“Action precedes motivation.” ― Robert McKain This seems to work for me at least. If I start trying to reason with myself why I should get out of bed at 5am to go to the gym rather than excuse XYZ, I will talk myself out of it. If I simply start "moving" and start doing "stuff" without engaging my brain, things happen and within a short space of time, I'm pumping iron and feeling great.

NedF 9mo ago

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_DeadFred_ 9mo ago

Fun fact, people suffering from loss of quality of life issues don't lack motivation. Lots of these people are in great pain, constantly, every day. My mother had a hip issue where the pain could instantly shoot up so bad she couldn't move (from just the normal, constant, almost in tears pain). She couldn't risk going somewhere to exercise, she would be stuck. She couldn't risk exercising on days where she needed to work the next day. Some days she would break down crying going to the grocery store because she had gotten stuck there the previous time she went. A LOT of quiet unassuming people are INSPIRINGLY motivated to push through INCREDIBLE pain and obstacles, every day. Many that prevent them from 'just exercising until life gets better'. It is bullshit to say they lack motivation/character/willpower.