this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
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I was in a similar boat and I really can’t overstate how much working your way into an exercise routine will help. It feels impossible to start at first, but if you just commit to 30 minutes daily of walking/stretching/yoga, you’ll be amazed how quickly it goes from being an awful chore that takes tons of willpower, to a regular part of your routine that feels weird to skip.
Exercise is like a weird super power that genuinely makes you more confident, gives you more energy for mental tasks, and makes the rest of your life better. When I think back on my adult life, my mental health has always tended to go down when I would stop exercising, and it’s only when I would start again that things started getting better
I'd like to add to that that if you have ADHD the "quickly goes from chore to regular part of your routine" might never happen. That's not your fault, you are not lazy, you are just not able to form routine habits.
Well, fuck.
30 minutes was too much for me to even contemplate when I was at my most depressed, so I started at 5 minutes of just doing arm rotations, hip rotations, and ankle rotations.
Still helped, and I didn’t have the added physical fatigue of a full workout on top of my anhedonia. And eventually, since I was already out of my bed, it also got me thinking about what else I could do in 5 minute intervals.
I’m not saying it cured my depression, cleared my skin, and did my taxes. But the 5 minutes of dedicated movement of my body every day was my first step in managing my mood and tackling the monster depression had become in my life.