Improving Your Mental Health: Both Challenging and Possible

Living Well

Written by: Meg Sharp, Fitness & Wellbeing Consultant, Cambridge Group of Clubs

We’re knowledgeable, experienced, well-read, highly motivated people. And making behavioural decisions in favour of better mental and physical health is sometimes – often – elusive. 

More specifically: We want to feel better. We want to feel vital, energetic, strong, fulfilled, satisfied, powerful, clear headed, happier. These benefits impact our physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing. We know – for the most part – exactly what we need to do to set course on a journey that will facilitate these things. That we will enjoy amazing payoffs immediately and some more significant ones further down the road.

Here’s the question: Why then can it be so hard to implement those changes?

It’s a doozy of a question. I swam and occasionally drowned in some pretty deep waters for years fighting to complete a meaningful graduate thesis exploring this very topic. And, for the decades since, I continue to grapple with all the complicated challenges.

Over the course of this year, I’ll dive into different aspects of this with the goal of helping you accomplish your various aspirations.

Today, I’d like to focus on mental health: We know that behaviour – exercise, sleep, nutrition, alcohol consumption, connecting with people and work, and mindset – has both an immediate and long-term impact on our mental being. That there is a very powerful relationship between all of these behaviours and our brain health: Specifically, a person’s struggles with depression and anxiety are impacted in a meaningful way by these behaviours.

A quick review of what we know including strategies and steps to help you – or someone you care about – so they can experience less mental and emotional anguish and pain.

1. Mental health challenges – big and small – are complex and multifactorial. They are typically neurobiological, environmental, and behavioural in nature. 
    
2. Exercise helps. Through distraction, decreases in cortisol, lowering sensitivity in our amygdala (the fight or flight center of our brains), offering sense of purpose and achievement, increasing oxygen flow to the brain, changing neural activity, improving self-esteem…the list is endless.
    
3. Often, when depressed, undertaking something like a workout will seem impossibly difficult. Even though we know something will make us feel better, summoning the effort – any effort – can seem insurmountable. Please also know that making the tiniest effort – the one that IS manageable – will start to create some positive momentum.
    
4. To that end: Every step counts. 

• Encourage yourself or your loved on to put on a pair of shoes and walk around the block. Exercising with company doubles the benefit for some.
• Create ways of making the activity purposeful. Whether it’s walking to the mailbox every day, walking the dog, or ensuring you do 5 minutes of activity that raises your heart rate and checking these things off. You could put it in your calendar too.
• Perform a set of 10 squats and 10 counter push-ups in the kitchen as you prepare breakfast. 
• Pace, power walk, or spin during ZOOM or conference calls.
• Download the audio version of a book you’ve been wanting to read and walk, hike, move while you move through the chapters.
• Find someone you care about who also wants to start exercising more. Even if you don’t workout together, you can become daily accountability partners. It’s an interesting phenomenon: While it may be too tough to rally for ourselves, we figure out how to do so for others.

5. Sleep is vital. The cells throughout our body – including the brain – regenerate most significantly when we are sleeping. Low quality and quantity of sleep – both immediate and long-term – are associated with increased depression and anxiety. Daily challenges – both chronic and unexpected – are seen through very different lenses whether we are well rested or not. 
    
6. To that end: Prioritize your sleep.

• Avoid all screens at least 90 minutes before bedtime. Leave your phone OUT OF YOUR BEDROOM!
• Keep your bedroom dark and cool.
• Avoid caffeine after 12pm. Remember: Caffeine has a half life of 5 hours. So 130mg of caffeine (a 12-ounce cup of coffee) ingested at 2pm will leave 65mg of caffeine in your system at 7pm. 32.5mg is still kicking around 5 hours after that. It’s like having a shot of espresso at midnight and expecting to have a good night’s sleep.
• Try to establish a relaxing, regular bedtime routine including dim lights and mellow music. Stretching and meditation. Warm baths or showers and a paper book. Ideally plan on getting into bed at least an hour before midnight and establish the same sleep and wake-up times throughout the week.

7. Limit Alcohol. Alcohol feels like a calming solution after a stressful, trying day. The rebound the next morning is often sharp and unforgiving. Alcohol is known to increase depressive symptoms. As importantly, it inhibits your ability to sleep restfully. As such, you will wake more fatigued and struggle with higher levels of cortisol, inflammation, and erratic blood sugar levels. All of this will create neurobiological challenges that exacerbate feelings of depression and anxiety. Moreover, making healthier choices – like eating nutritious foods and exercising – are tougher to wrestle. Choose evenings every week where you avoid alcoholic beverages completely. Pay attention to how you feel the next day.
    
8. Add lean protein, vegetables, and fiber to your meals. These foods help keep blood sugars stable, energy higher, and inflammation down. 

9. Remember struggling with depression is not your fault, and you can take steps to help yourself: A person with diabetes can no more create insulin by “trying harder” than a person with depression can make their brain change. That said, a person with diabetes can meaningfully manage their symptoms through exercise, adequate sleep, and healthy nutrition. We know that exercise physically changes the brain in people who struggle with depression in powerful, positive ways. It takes time, work, and patience. And it can be transformational.

Does it help to know that making more positive choices can be really, really tough? That when we’re feeling good or great, it’s so much easier to do the things that reinforce that state. That when we’re feeling hopeless and overwhelmed, the things that would help seem almost out of reach. On the plus side, people who are motivated to make lifestyle changes based on how it will make them feel – in lieu of how it will make them look – are far more likely to stick with those positive behaviour changes. 

Never stop reaching. Never stop trying. When we’re down and blue, sometimes it can also be tougher to feel the benefits in the moment. Try whenever possible to find activities and healthy foods that you enjoy. Know, that each effort, however small, is making a difference. That the payoff will be noticeable – if not today – then in a few days or weeks. Your brain is changing. In small, powerful ways. Don’t give up.

Final point:

Be kind to yourself. Speak to yourself as if you were your own best friend. Positive reinforcement is far more powerful at encouraging positive habit change than negative. So, the 2 minutes of exercise you do today? Bravo. I’m not kidding. Try to change the voice in your head if you can: “Really great job. You can do this.”