Get those muscles moving....

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We all know it and every doctor will tell us that exercise is good for us. And if we suffer from depression exercise is really, really good for us and plays a major part in managing depression successfully.


Research has shown that physical activity has the same effect as antidepressants. Getting the heart pumping and moving those muscles stimulates neurotransmitters in our brain to produce serotonin, an endorphin that makes us feel good. It is nature’s antidepressant. It works instantly and guaranteed every time you feel down. And exercise, unlike antidepressants, has no negative side effects.


I’ve tested it time and time again. Whenever my mood seemed to sink I hit the gym and after about 10 to 15 minutes I started feeling better again. I’ve also noticed that the harder I work out the faster my mood improves. Now I’ve incorporated a visit to the gym in my daily routine. I work out about five days a week for about an hour. I do a combination of cardiovascular and strength training exercises to build muscles (as you can see from the pictures). The result is that my depression only rarely surfaces. I am more able to deal with the daily stresses and am more relaxed and calm.

Exercise has allowed me to reduce my medication by 50% and I am working at bringing that down even further. Apart from improving my emotional wellbeing I have toned my body, kept my weight at a healthy level and improved my overall physical health and appearance, which again makes me feel better about myself. Today I am fitter and more confident than I was at any stage of my life.


Now you don’t have to become a gym-junkie to test this theory. Starting off with a regular walk in the neighbourhood for at least 30 minutes a day will already have a positive impact. If you take your kids and/or your dog with you it will be more interesting and you’ll spend some quality time with the kids and the dog will happy too. Once you’ve established a routine you can take it up a notch.

It is not surprising that with the alarming increase in body weight and obesity, the occurrence of depression has also skyrocketed at the same time.

Applying the moodometer

When embarking upon a project it is advisable to gather as much relevant information as we can with which we can make more informative choices. This also applies to the management of our depression. The more we know about our moods the better we can deal with them. That is why I created the ‘moodometer’. I am sure you’re going to ask “What on earth is a moodometer?” I sort of got the idea from a thermometer, except instead of measuring the temperature the moodometer measures moods. But it’s not a fancy gadget you stick in your ear or put under your tongue and you can’t go to the local pharmacy and buy it. If you ask for a moodometer expect to get some funny looks.

It is a simple record of our moods during the course of the day. I take a sheet of paper (graph paper with horizontal and vertical lines if possible). Down the side (vertically) I place the numbers 10 to 1. These numbers reflect my moods. "10" is a ‘being on top of the world’ mood and "1" is a ‘totally down in the dumps’ mood. The number "5" is being ‘nicely balanced’ - the mood to strive for - so at the number 5 we draw a line across the sheet. Anything above the line is a good mood and anything below is a negative mood. At the bottom of the sheet (horizontally) I write the hours of the day. We are all more or less creatures of habit and tend to get up and go to bed around the same time on most days. I get up around 6 am and go to bed around 10.30 pm. So I wrote down the hours from 6 am to 10 pm.


On this chart we can record our mood at hourly intervals during an average day. If we do this every day for about a week we get a fairly accurate picture of our average emotional wellbeing. We will discover that we have distinct downtimes and uptimes with only slight variances from day to day. So how can this help us? Well we can plan our day according to our down and uptimes.

As you can see from my chart my mood dips in the morning around 8 to 9 am and then later in the afternoon again. I am self-employed and my work is mainly creative. On top of that I work from home. So I need to have a certain amount of self-discipline. Now I find it difficult to be creative at the start of the day, which may explain my downtime then. Therefore I schedule more mundane and routine tasks - where I don’t have to think too much - for that time. My uptimes are between 10am and 3.30 pm and that is when I do my most challenging work. I have another downtime at around 4 pm, this is probably because I am tired by then and need a break.

If you know your down and uptimes during the day you can organise your time accordingly. For example do something you enjoy during the downtimes, something that doesn’t demand too much from you. Make a list of little things that cheer you up and then pick one when the mood sinks. Alternatively take advantage of your uptimes and do the difficult things then. You will find by knowing your up and downtimes you life will run a lot smoother, which in turn will make you happier. Of course, any extraordinary circumstances - like a death in the family or meeting the love of your life - are going to have a significant impact on your moods. But if we can cope with normal times better we will be stronger and better able to cope with extraordinary events.