Posted by Ktemene on January 25, 2005, at 20:14:41
In reply to Excercise Backfire., posted by Bob on January 24, 2005, at 12:13:41
> Why is it that everyone says exercise is good for depression and anxiety, but whenever I try to do something physical, the next day I have a 'reaction' and feel worse than ever. Yesterday I forced myself to take a walk - a rare occurrence indeed - and today I feel angry and unhappy. I also didn't sleep well last night, which seem paradoxical. I almost never have any physical energy or motivation to do exercise, but even the slightest bit, and there's hell to pay.
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I have had the same experience. About five years ago I had a terrible depressive slump that went on for two years. I didn't think I would live through it; I have never felt so intensely miserably for that long before. One of the strange things about that episode is that in the first few months I lost a lot of muscle mass. This was not just the effect of not exercising; muscle mass just melted off me. So I was left *very weak* and *very depressed*. I knew it was supposed to be good to exercise, so I tried to exercise a few minutes at moderate intensity, but the next day I felt as if a truck had hit me. I ached all over and my depression seemed to double in severity. Then I decided that I needed to start at a much lower level of exercise and keep track of the minutes I spent exercising and of the intensity level. So I got a heart monitor and exercised on my rowing machine at very low intensity for ONE minute. I am not kidding; I used a stop watch and did exactly one minute's worth of rowing. I waited 48 hours. And then I exercised TWO minutes. I waited another 48 hours. And then exercised THREE minutes. I got very impatient. And I didn't tell anyone because it felt so humiliating to be exercising for just a couple of minutes and then having to quit. But, it worked. After I had built up to exercising ten minutes at a time, I started added two minutes to each exercise session instead of one minute. After a couple of months, I was able to exercise 30 minutes at moderate intensity. And a couple of months later I was regularly exercising 50 minutes at fairly high intensity. But I always had to be careful to increase either the length or the intensity of the exercise session by no more than a tiny increment, or I ended up in complete misery the next day. I found it was necessary to keep a chart of which days I exercises at what length and intensity. Otherwise I forgot and hurt myself. Of course, YMMV, as always. But what worked for me was to be very unambitious. My exercise moto is: No Pain, Not Any, Ever. It worked for aerobic exercise, and when I started weight lifting the same method worked just as well. I started with the lightest weights in the gym, and I got a set of fishing weights, and added 1/8 of a pound at each exercise session. Eventually, I was stepping past the big hulky men who were using the thirty pound dumbbells, so that I could grab the thirty-five pound dumbbells. (I must admit, doing shoulder presses with heavier dumbells than most of the men used was the best part of going to the gym for me.) So my two cents worth of advice is that the secret to success in exercise is lack of ambition and keeping track. And, by the way, exercise did help my mood, just as everyone had always told me it would.
poster:Ktemene
thread:446790
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20050124/msgs/447720.html