A blog where I extol the virtues of exercise on my mental health!
I was sat there at my laptop a few evenings ago, when I suddenly became aware that I had this wonderful overall feeling of great contentment. Allover my body and mind I felt this extreme happiness. I was close to happy tears such was my amazing mood. I sat there reasoning to myself that I couldn’t possibly feel any happier than this. It felt like I had just won the lottery when in fact all I had done that afternoon was go to the gym!
Exercise is well known now for being good for your mental health. However, I don’t think I’d truly realised just how much this to be true until these last few weeks. You see, at the age of twenty-one years old I became very poorly with a prostate infection(chronic bacterial prostatitis). This left me with chronic pelvic pain and so I just stopped doing all forms of strenuous exercise. It was a massive blow to me because I loved going to the gym as well as playing sports. Then, in the last ten years my contamination OCD got that bad, that this also stopped me going to the gym!
I recently met up with a dear friend of mine and seeing how fat I deemed myself to look in the photos afterwards, it made me think about going to the gym once again. My OCD has really started improving of late so I wondered if this could be my next CBT/exposure challenge. I also wondered if the physio treatment that I’ve been having for my pelvis recently would enable me to go to the gym now too. I guess there was only one way to find out so I booked myself in for an induction at my local gym.
To my amazement the pelvic pain hasn’t been that bad after going to the gym. In fact, I’m doing more at the gym now than I ever thought I would be capable of. I want to come back though now to this buzz that I’m getting from going. I don’t mean the happiness of looking a bit slimmer already. I mean these feelings of happiness that I’m getting throughout my entire being.
I have heard all of the stories about how exercise is supposed to be good for you because it releases endorphins. Nevertheless, I never really knew if this was true or whether this was just a load of old hogwash. I now know this isn’t nonsense because this week I’ve been to the gym twice and never had a feeling like it afterwards. The feelings of wellbeing have been that strong that it feels like I have taken a new mental health medication. I sit there feeling thankful of being alive. I sit there thinking I will indeed conquer my mental health issues. I sit there thinking that I don’t want to go to bed because I want these feelings of euphoria to stay with me forever.
If you suffer with mental health issues but don’t exercise strenuously, then I implore you to do so. Deciding to go to the gym is the best decision that I have made this year without a shadow of a doubt. Exercise will make you feel wonderful because exercise is the gift that keeps on giving!
