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Exercise was my means to eliminate depression and build self-confidence within myself in my teenage years.
In a time where most will focus on drugs and alcohol for escape, I found my sanctuary in exercise. Exercise was my battlefield, and everything good is worth fighting for!
Encountering and overcoming the pain and progress from exercise allowed me to strive towards being a better person, and reaching my greatest potential.
In this article, I am going to talk about how exercise helped my mental health. I will give you scientific and personal examples to support what I have to say.
So with that, let's dive in!
Exercise is and has always been a catalyst to a greater potential. It allows you to exceed your expectations - to be a better you.
I personally like to treat the gym as my warzone: it's the battlefield. It allows me to embrace the present moment while challenging me to be better.
This helps me come out of the gym even better than before - Reforged.
The gym is a metaphorical life teacher.
Now if my personal anecdote isn't convincing, I'd love to share some science behind exercise and mental health.
Exercise has been shown to improve mental health through means of reducing anxiety, depression, and more. This study also reinforces my personal experience with exercise, stating: "exercise has also been found to alleviate symptoms such as low self-esteem and social withdrawal."
When people embark on their journey towards exercise, they also tend to develop better eating habits. Nutrition has a huge impact on mood, as the nutrient-dense foods you consume provide various health and cognitive benefits.
While there are plenty of diets to implement, one of the best diets is the Mediterranean Diet. According to one study, the Mediterranean Diet helped reduced depressive symptoms in older adults over time.
To read more about Mediterranean-Styled diets, click here!
Better nutrition choices come as a result of introducing exercise to your body. At the end of a workout, we tend to fixate on eating foods that will benefit us.
This is why we believe exercise to be the ultimate habit-builder.
As I've mentioned in our Melatonin and Serotonin article, exercise also helps build "sleep pressure", which is defined as the pressure needed to help you fall asleep.
Better quality of sleep allows for better recovery, mood, energy, and more. With that, we can argue that exercise is an incredible "habit-builder".
Personally, exercise has helped me overcome depression, anxiety, and sleep deprivation. Introducing myself to exercise allowed me to stack positive habits on top of each other:
With my personal example, I truly believe that fitness is the catalyst to a greater potential.
According to one study, exercise lowered depression, despite what levels of depression the individual was facing. So with that, the CDC created some guidelines that you can follow for exercise.
The following are recommendations for exercise for physical and mental health:
Simply put: a combination of resistance (weight training) and cardiovascular exercise will benefit you physically and mentally.
With Reforged, we tend to prioritize weight lifting over cardiovascular exercise for the reason that resistance training builds significantly more muscle.
Here's our take on exercise:
While these guidelines are solid recommendations, we wanted to dive in further with an example of a simple workout program for physical and mental health.
This program is a 5 day a week program: 3 weight training days and 2 cardio days. It's a program for people who are just getting into exercise for the physical and mental health benefits.
Here are a few guidelines to consider:
With that, let's get into the program!
As you can see here, this program is a simple program that helps you get started on your journey. If you follow a specific program already, be sure that you practice consistency over everything!
Your goal is to build a confident and happier you, and you can only do that with consistency!
At Reforged, our goal is to show you all the same love we have for exercise. Fitness helped us physically and mentally, allowing us to do our best work.
We are very passionate about helping others get through their mental challenges because we have been there. Fitness helped us go beyond, and we want to share that with you.
To simplify this post: exercise not only just improves your body, but it improves your mind as well! We were meant to move, to progress, and to be stronger.
There's a reason why our bodies and minds grow and adapt. We are meant to be better.
Thanks for reading Reforged Legion! If you have any questions or recommendations on content you would like to see, email me at tony@reforgedperformance.com.
Now, go out there and reforge yourself with exercise!
Exercise can feel like a chore, and even if you know it’s good for your health, the motivation to get moving sometimes just isn’t there.
But it doesn’t have to be a burden - by making exercise meaningful to you, it can become something fun and rewarding!
Here are five ways to make exercise more meaningful!
Men, I know what it is like to be overweight and depressed.
Not having the energy to do anything but relax and sleep.
While relaxation and sleep are incredibly important, they can make us feel like we are not making progress in our lives.
And when depression hits, it’s very difficult to push through with exercise and weight loss.
But did you know that even though it takes time and some effort, you don’t need to get obsessively crazy over it?
In fact, with just a few small adjustments, you can lose weight, fight back against depression, and take your life back.
If you're serious about shedding pounds and pushing away those depression demons, here are five tips that can help get you started.
A few weeks ago, my buddy Grant and I talked about nutrition.
We talked about how he's lost over 120 pounds so far with the weight loss progress he's been making.
This is all because he has been making healthier decisions over time.
One of the newest challenges he's facing right now is he's got a new job. He's working 10 to 12 hour days with physical demanding labor.
And what's been happening for him is that he's been super exhausted, he's not motivated to meal prep, he's having trouble trying to sit down and cook foods doesn't have the energy doesn't have the time.
So what I propose is five tips that you can use to live a more on the go fast food healthy eating lifestyle.