Summary: The best way to find the right kind of exercise to improve your mental health is by identifying your level of physical fitness and deciding what kind of exercise – or physical activity – you like, then starting easy and building slowly.
Key Points:
- Staying active is an integral aspect of total health, including your psychological and emotional health.
- Doing too much, too fast, of something you don’t really like is the best way not to find a sustainable exercise or activity routine for your mental health.
- Experts report that a little exercise is better than no exercise at all: if you can handle ten minutes of walking, start with ten minutes of walking.
Practicing self-care during mental health treatment can be very simple. In fact, one tried-and-true self-care strategy that promotes recovery is something we all know about: exercise.
We know you’ve heard this before:
A regular exercise routine keeps you healthy, strong, emotionally and psychologically balanced, and can help you live a long, happy life.
Experts in child development recommend at least an hour of outdoor activity a day for children as they’re growing up. The same experts recommend roughly the same amount for adults. Your age or life circumstance don’t change the fact that for optimal health, you need some form of exercise or activity every day.
The type of activity matters, too. We need a healthy combination of low intensity, moderate intensity, and high intensity exercise. Those intensities are related to you and your current level of fitness, of course. High intensity for a 50-year-old might be moderate for a 30-year-old, or low for an energetic 18-year-old. You determine your intensity levels, which depend on your personal relationship with exercise, the last time you had an exercise routine, and your personal health history.
Your routine to improve your mental health should be something specific to you but also meet the requirements – or get close to meeting the requirements – suggested by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). The benefits of a consistent exercise/activity routine, outlined in detail by the CDC and in the peer-reviewed journal article “Role of Physical Activity on Mental Health and Well-Being: A Review, include, but are not limited to the following:
- Improved heart health
- Improves muscular strength, endurance, and efficiency
- Release of chemicals in the brain that improve mood
- Improved memory and cognition
- Increased bone strength
- Enhanced quality of life
- Decreased stress
- Improved sleep
- Increased energy
- Prevention of weight gain/promotion of weight loss
- Improvement/prevention of diabetes and hypertension
- Long-term joint mobility and health
- Enhanced immunity/immune response
It’s hard to argue with those benefits: they’re things we all want, not just people in mental health treatment. In the sections below, we’ll discuss how you can choose an exercise /activity you won’t get bored with and quit before you experience the benefits.
What Works for You? Exercise to Improve Mental Health
Finding the kind of exercise that’s best for your mental health depends on one thing: you.
We encourage you to be creative. You can find something you enjoy, then design your routine in a way that makes sense to you. When you make your routine, the long-term goal is about one hour a day of a combination of low, moderate, and high intensity activities – but don’t let those rules prevent you from getting started. You don’t need a personal trainer to understand these activity levels – and you don’t have to exercise in any way you don’t like.
For example, if you love working in the yard, that can be your exercise. If you enjoy walks in the morning or after dinner, that can be your exercise. And if you love working on projects around/in the house, then that can be your exercise.
It’s not nearly as hard as you think, and it’s definitely not rocket science. To make sure we’re on the same page, we’ll review what we mean by low, moderate, and high intensity activity.
Low Intensity
This means you’re active and in motion, but you’re not working too hard. Your heart rate increases slightly, and talking is easy.
Moderate Intensity
This means performing an activity at a level of effort that you can keep up for about ten to twenty minutes. Your heart rate increases, and you can talk, but it’s not easy.
High Intensity
This means performing an activity at your maximum level of effort, but not for long. This is known as high intensity interval training, or HIIT: short periods of effort at maximum intensity, separated by short recovery periods.
Here are some examples of low, moderate, and high-intensity activities you can do at home:
Gardening
- Low: thirty minutes of light weeding
- Moderate: half an hour of mowing
- High: digging a new flower bed/planting shrubs/carrying heavy items from the garden store
Walking
- Low: a 20-minute walk after dinner
- Moderate: a quick, energetic walk first thing in the morning
- High: on any walk, go fast up hills, and easy on flat ground – it’s an easy way to do interval training
Home Projects
- Low: cleaning/dusting
- Moderate: rearranging/moving (not heavy) furniture
- High: carrying boxes up and down stairs – another novel approach to interval training
Own It: Make it Yours
There’s no need to hire a personal trainer or buy fancy home workout equipment. There’s also no need to do what other people consider exercise, either.
What do you need?
- Something you enjoy.
- Something that fits your lifestyle.
- Something you feel better after doing.
When you find an activity or routine that checks those three boxes, you’re on your way to making a healthy exercise routine part of your life. Maybe daily, maybe not. What matters is exercising more days than not exercising. A regular exercise/activity routine can help you manage stress and keep your body healthy as you age. And most importantly, it’s exactly the type of self-care that promotes long-term, sustainable mental health and wellbeing.
Gianna Melendez
Jodie Dahl, CpHT