Exercise

One of the hardest things to accept when you are diagnosed with a mental illness (especially at a young age) is accepting the changes you must make to your lifestyle. Yes, being mentally ill pushes us to change to a healthier lifestyle; there's no point in fighting it. These lifestyle posts will talk about these changes, sometimes with baby but very brave steps. 

Exercise

Oh, yes, the many many benefits of working out; the XXI-century-media-obsession with being skinny and fit. Exercise is wonderful:

• Improved sleep
• Increased sex drive
• Stress relief
• Increased energy and stamina
• Weight reduction
• Increase mental alertness
• Improved cardiovascular fitness
• Improved physical endurance
• Resilience
• Reduced cholesterol (Sharma, 2006)

But, there's a whole list of excuses I found online as to why people don't work out:

• The naggy ones: "I hate sweating","I hate sore muscles", "I hate being out of breath", "I hate people in the gym", "I hate waking up early", "I hate rain", "I hate hot weather", "I hate cold weather", "I hate getting dirty", "I hate blisters". 
• The justifications: "I have no time", "I have no energy", "It's not a priority", "I haven't developed the habit", "Current physical condition/injury".
• The unfaithful veterans: "I didn't have the results I wanted", "I lost the habit".

I have something to say about these previous ones, can you tell they're all somehow linked to an expectation? The expectation of how it's supposed to be, how they should look to work out, how their work out should result, how everything should work out. 

• The most sincere ones: Negative school experiences, anxiety in unfamiliar surrounds, lack of social networks, conflict of identity, lack of role models (Ledbetter, SF.)

How to get over it?
We need to get over the myth of what we see on the internet, it's so annoying. They are fake! First of all, most of those people were blessed with a wonderful metabolism and the rest have busted their balls to get ripped. I'm not going to go on and on about how to get super extra fit and lose all those extra pounds. Go look for a fitness blog. I'm talking about some basic changes in lifestyle to improve mental health. That's it. This isn't "How to look f**cking amazing in 30 seconds without any grind" for otherwise mentally healthy people, this is "how to make your personal hell a little bit less horrible" for people who battle against their minds every day.

So, speaking from a mental health perspective and the science behind it:

• Aerobic exercises reduce stress, anxiety, and depression. The increased blood circulation with the influence of certain hormones stimulates the areas of the brain responsible for motivation, mood, fear, stress, and memory (Sharma, 2006). ADHD is also commonly treated with aerobic exercise because the physical activity boosts brain chemistry to regulate chemicals like serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine. 
• The basic synchronicity of the body and the mind: Valerie Andrews wrote in her wonderful book "the psychic power of running" about the relationship between emotions and body feelings. Backed by Wilhelm Reich who argues that undischarged emotions are kept hidden in sections of the body, blocking energy flows, which make mental health possible and early emotional insecurities trigger body responses; also called psychosomatic diseases. This theory has been talked among different areas of psychology, along with Alice Miller, who argues that trauma gets stored in the body. 
• Exercise and PTSD. The physical sensation of exercise and recognition of your body in movement helps with releasing the nervous system (Lawrence, 2017).  

The amount of exercise necessary to receive the chemical benefits is a lot less than what you might think. 30 minutes of aerobic exercise three times a week is enough to promote your mental health.