When you think of a personal trainer, what personality traits tend to come to mind? Cheerful, energetic, enthusiastic, right? For some people, the bubbly exterior comes naturally, and they barely have to work at it. For others, keeping it up can be draining, and they come home exhausted at the end of the day.

I struggled with depression for 15 years, without realizing why I was feeling the way I did. When I was 12 and 13, my family said it was puberty and my hormones. In high school, my grades were good and I was on the cheerleading squad, so the times that I completely broke down were chalked up to stress and working too hard. In college, I would completely shut people out; I was a ghost in the dorm, and would hide out in the library, even while I knew that what I was doing was ridiculous and uncalled for.

After college, things really spiraled out of control. My anxiety and depression were ruling and ruining my life. I would wake up on beautiful, sunny days and not be able to pull myself out of bed. Rainy days and bad weather were actually painful. I would cry over the tiniest things, and sometimes for no reason at all. I pushed everyone away, because I thought they shouldn’t have to be exposed to me when I didn’t even want to be around myself.

The End of My Rope

When I finally decided to ask for help, I was completely, 100%, down to my last thread of sanity. I was desperate. The doctor’s office told me I would have to wait over a month to see someone. I called every day for two weeks, begging for help, sobbing into the phone asking for someone, anyone, to please fix me. I can still remember my doctor asking me if I had considered suicide, and feeling the embarrassed tears run down my face as I turned to look out the window because there was no way I could look at her or her expression as I nodded my head yes.

For me to have these problems made no sense. I was a personal trainer! I was in the gym six days a week, encouraging people to reach their goals. I was doing and trying everything to make myself feel better—where were my endorphins, my happy hormones, my runner’s high? I was pushing myself harder and harder, in the hopes that exercise would prevent me from falling into another life-sucking black hole.

Despite all this, some people told me that if I chose to get medicated, it was basically a form of addiction, and I wasn’t trying or looking hard enough to find another solution. But they couldn’t possibly comprehend what I was feeling. Nobody else knew how much of a struggle it was to get through each day, the negative thoughts I constantly battled. I was physically and mentally exhausted. I wasn’t sleeping well, my brain never stopped, and nothing was working. I was at the end of my rope, and the weeks I had to wait to see a doctor were agonizing and exhausting.

Don’t Go It Alone

For some people, seeking help is the first step toward finding the right balance of medication. I was one of the lucky ones that found the proper prescription on the first try. The clarity in my head was a new sensation. For the first time, I could sit and just be, and not think about anything. No thoughts of what I needed to do, what I should have done, or what I could be doing. I could sit, drink my coffee, and think about absolutely nothing.

I definitely still have days that are harder than others, but nothing like what they used to be. I’m able to get up in the morning and look forward to whatever the day might bring. Prior to seeking help, I’ll be the first to tell you that I was in a terrible place and was struggling daily to deal with my issues. I’m still the same person I was before, except now I have the ability to breathe during stressful situations. Instead of hiding from the world, I prefer to get out of bed and be outdoors.

You might be like me, doing all the right things and still struggling every day. If you’re in a bad place, ask for help. There’s no shame in it. Don’t give up. Keep asking, be persistent, and stay strong.

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In 2015 I ran my first half marathon. I went through the literal blood, sweat, and tears that one does in such a test of willpower, and when I came out the other side, absolutely amazed at what I had just been through, I knew that the power of fitness was something I needed to share.

I soon came to realize that while people had dedicated many national holidays to things as holy as the potato chip and yet, despite the increase in half marathoners, boutique fitness-goers, and athleisure aficionados alongside me, no one had yet thought to put National Fitness Day on the calendar. So I took it upon myself and named a single day to celebrate strength and empowerment through fitness that began just last year.

Having been thrown into the deep-end of the fitness industry, I can’t help but notice that today, rather than talking about fitness as a means of getting harder, better, faster, and stronger, many of the trends in the industry continue to center around either bulking up or achieving the perfect bikini body.

You can hardly scroll through Instagram without being subjected to a fitness celebrity six-pack, or transformation photo from someone who has completed a program. Most worrisome is that research has shown that photos like the ones found on many social media outlets actually make us feel just as bad, if not worse, than images of traditionally thin fashion models in the media.¹ While images like these are meant to show certain results, I want to ask: what “results” are we really going for?

When we focus so much on working out as a way to lose weight or look good for someone else in bed, we overlook some of the remarkable mental, emotional, and long-term benefits of fitness. So I have put together five reasons you should care about fitness that have absolutely nothing to do with your thigh gap.

1. It Makes You Happier

When you work out, your body naturally increases the release of serotonin, dopamine, and endorphins–the chemicals that are responsible for producing the same euphoric feelings as morphine in your brain.² Just a short jog can instantly boost your mood, increase your energy, and even give you a newfound sense of perspective.

But above and beyond a quick runner’s high, exercise has proven in study after study to reduce long-term depression and anxiety just as effectively as drugs and other forms of therapy. In 2000, a team of researchers at Duke University found that not only was exercise just as effective as drugs in relieving depressive symptoms in the short-term, but patients who exercised were also significantly less likely to see their depression return than those on anti-depressants after six months.³

Somehow we’ve managed to give our workouts a terrible reputation as a sort of chore or punishment for how we ate over the weekend. So I don’t care if it’s Zumba, surfing, or dancing around in your underwear, find a workout you love. Because at the end of the day, it should be making you smile.

2. It Makes You Smarter

Aerobic exercise increases the flow of blood, and consequently oxygen, directly to the brain. This increases activity in the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for executive processes such as planning, decision-making, problem-solving, and attention.⁴ At some point you may have experienced firsthand how just getting your heart rate up can do wonders to boost your sense of focus and straighten out your thinking.

What’s more, aerobic exercise literally changes the structure of the brain, resulting in an increase of overall gray matter, and neurons are produced through a process called neurogenesis—something that until relatively recently was widely believed stopped by a certain age. ^{5, 6}

So the next time you’re working through a problem, stuck on a creative task, or just need a boost in focus, get your blood flowing. After all, as legend has it, even Albert Einstein thought of the theory of general relatively while riding his bicycle.⁷

3. Your Older Self Will Thank You

Today over one third of Americans have obesity—a two and three-fold increase among adults and children, respectively, since the 1980s.⁸ And spending the majority of our day stationary at a desk or in front of our smartphones isn’t helping either.

When it comes to long-term health, research has proposed that the right type of physical activity can help reduce your risk of almost two dozen chronic health conditions including, but not limited to, heart disease, diabetes, stroke, certain types of cancer, arthritis, osteoporosis, and, for the guys out there, erectile dysfunction.⁹

Exercise doesn’t just help preserve your physical health. It’s undeniably connected to your long-term mental health, too. A study from 2014 found that running 15 miles per week decreased the risk of Alzheimer’s by 40%.¹⁰ Even more remarkable? Recent research has shown that a high level of physical activity could decrease the risk of dementia in women almost 90%.¹¹

4. It Makes You Stronger

The hashtag #strongnotskinny has been used on Instagram over six million times to-date. But when you look closely, more often than not these posts continue to serve as little more than a new way to suggest how your body should look, only this time it has muscles.

I want to get away from the idea of looking strong, and start focusing on fitness as a way to feel strong.

If you’re anything like me before I started training for my half marathon, then you probably couldn’t run to save your life. After about four minutes you’d start running out of breath, and from there you would be on your way to a slow and unpleasant death.

But, it’s also because you wouldn’t have gone running since your traumatic experiences with the middle school mile—and your legs and your lungs are simply weak as heck. Once you start building strength in the right places, run after run you start getting just a bit faster and going incrementally farther.

The human body is more amazing than you might realize. Scientists theorize that we were built for long-distance running as an evolutionary advantage, citing enduring indigenous cultures such as the Tarahumara in Mexico, who often run over 100 miles in a day.¹²

Now, I’m not proposing we all need to add ultra marathons to our regular workout routines, but you know the feeling when you finish something and feel like you could keep going? I think we all could use a little more of that. By looking at fitness as a way to strengthen our bodies, and celebrate what they can do, fitness can be a remarkable source of empowerment.

As they say, it never gets easier, you just get stronger.

5. You Will Grow In Unexpected Ways

The residual effects of fitness are vast. Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit, goes as far as to call exercise a “keystone habit,” given its ability to positively influence so many other areas of your life, such as better eating, and even higher productivity at work.¹³

When we work out, we don’t just strengthen our bodies. We strengthen our sense of growth and resilience.

Stanford University professor Carol Dweck has studied children’s attitudes about failure for over 30 years, and concludes that there are two types of mindsets we see the world through: a fixed mindset (“I’m naturally smart,” “I’m not a runner,”) and a growth mindset (“If I work at it, I can get better.”).¹⁴

Fitness provides an observable and often quantifiable way of measuring our progress. Each time we run a bit farther or we add a bit more weight to our barbell, we also learn that when things get hard, we don’t just quit, or believe it’s because we can’t do it. We keep working at it because we believe that we are strong, and we are just as capable as the next person.

I want to call for us to stop selling fitness through the promise of a bikini body, and to start working out to be good to our bodies, to feel strong and empowered in our bodies, and to be grateful for what our bodies can do.

This May 5, 2018 we’ll celebrate our second annual National Fitness Day in the US. I hope you’ll join us in getting some endorphins in, sharing your own journey with #NationalFitnessDay, and spread the word about what fitness can really do for you.

References:

1. University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia. “‘Fitspiration’ Photos Cause Body Image Strain“. Accessed April 15, 2018.

2. Stoppler, Melissa C., MD. “Endorphins: Natural Pain and Stress Fighters“. Medicine Net. Accessed April 15, 2018.

3. “Study: Exercise Has Long-Lasting Effect on Depression“. Duke Today. Accessed April 15, 2018.

4. Tsujii, T., K. Komatsu, and K. Sakatani. “Acute Effects of Physical Exercise on Prefrontal Cortex Activity in Older Adults: A Functional Near-infrared Spectroscopy Study“. Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology. Accessed April 15, 2018.

5. “Study: Aerobic Exercise Leads to Remarkable Brain Changes”. Psychology Today. Accessed April 15, 2018.

6. Reynolds, Gretchen. “Which Type of Exercise Is Best for the Brain?” The New York Times. February 17, 2016. Accessed April 15, 2018.

7. “Cycling Is Good for You“. Albert Einstein and Bicycles. January 01, 1970. Accessed April 15, 2018.

8. “Obesity Rates & Trends Overview“. Obesity Rates & Trends Overview – The State of Obesity. Accessed April 15, 2018.

9. “Regular Exercise Reduces Large Number of Health Risks including Dementia and Some Cancers, Study Finds“. ScienceDaily. November 16, 2010. Accessed April 15, 2018.

10. Burn, Daily. “Running 15 Miles a Week Could Slash Alzheimer’s Risk” The Daily Beast. December 12, 2014. Accessed April 15, 2018.

11. Howard, Jacqueline. “Your Dementia Risk Tied to How Fit You Are“. CNN. March 14, 2018. Accessed April 15, 2018.

12. Parker-Pope, Tara. “The Human Body Is Built for Distance“. The New York Times. October 26, 2009. Accessed April 15, 2018.

13. Benna, Steven. “8 Keystone Habits That Can Transform Your Life“. Business Insider. August 06, 2015. Accessed April 15, 2018.

14. Dweck, Carol. “The Power of Believing That You Can Improve“. TED: Ideas worth Spreading. Accessed April 15, 2018.

The post 5 Reasons to Work Out that Have Nothing to Do With a Bikini Body appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

The effects of eating disorders on the body are very visible—everything from drastic weight loss to pale skin to noticeable frailty. But did you know that eating disorders also take a toll on the mind? According to one study, eating disorders can affect the way your brain controls your need to eat.

A team of researchers at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus found that women with eating disorders have the ability to override the neurological imperative to eat. They studied over 50 women—half of whom had eating disorders—to see how their brains reacted to sugary flavors.

Brain scans showed that the women suffering from eating disorders suffered from noticeable alterations in the brain pathways that governed appetite and taste-reward. The white matter in the brain and the hypothalamus of these women was significantly different from the healthy women, with weaker influence on the body and opposing directions of brain signals.

The hypothalamus is one of the appetite centers of the brain, so one of its jobs is to ensure that you get enough food to survive. In the cases of women with bulimia and anorexia, their brains had been rewritten by their eating disorders. Their avoidance of sweet foods (seen as “rewards” but also perceived as the foods most likely to cause weight gain) not only led to mental conditioning, but actually rewrote the circuits in their brain responsible for controlling food intake and appetite. Fear of eating certain foods may negatively affect the hypothalamus.

Click to enlarge

It makes sense that so many women with eating disorders also suffer from mood and anxiety disorders. The hypothalamus plays a central role in your emotional state. If that part of the brain is being rewritten as a result of the eating disorder, it stands to reason that the changes go beyond just your desire to eat.

Reference:

1. G K W Frank, M E Shott, J Riederer, T L Pryor. “Altered structural and effective connectivity in anorexia and bulimia nervosa in circuits that regulate energy and reward homeostasis“. Translational Psychiatry, 2016; 6 (11): e932 DOI: 10.1038/tp.2016.199.

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A recent study in PLOS ONE considered whether possible improvements in decision-making ability may arise from hunger.

What the research says:

• Subjects who were hungry made better long-term choices than sated subjects.
• Subjects who were hungry and had smaller appetites fared best on gambling tests.

Background

The researchers were particularly interested in fasting’s frequently reported effect of greater focus and mental acuity. From a primitive perspective, the theory that not eating might increase the willingness to take on greater risk makes sense. I’m hungry and my hunger leads me to make ever more perilous decisions to obtain food. It’s possible this intuitive decision-making might even apply to a broader range of activities. If I’m hungry, maybe I’ll be better at making risky financial decisions, too.

The researchers of the study noted delaying eating can put a person in what they referred to as a hot state. A hot state is one in which either emotions or physical drives (like hunger) are piqued. For example, people have reported a powerful desire for money while hungry.

“The researchers indicated that these circumstances in which our innate drives are primed cause us to rely on our gut. This primal instinct tends to support accurate decision-making.”

Hot states have a long clinical history of increasing impulsivity, which then affects the ability to make decisions. The researchers in this study proposed an alternate viewpoint. They hypothesized that in a certain set of circumstances, a hot state may actually improve decision-making. In some situations, we need to make complex decisions that do not have certain outcomes. Many financial and business decisions are like this. Hunger has never before been tested on these specific types of decisions.

RELATED: 4 Things Other Than Food You Might Be Craving

Study Design

The new research was a combination of three different studies:

1. Study One: A gambling task that compared hungry participants to sated participants (30 subjects total).
2. Study Two: A gambling task that compared participants with big appetites to subjects with smaller appetities (50 subjects total).
3. Study Three: Hungry and sated subjects were compared once again, but in this case the researchers looked at 27 situations. The subjects chose a monetary reward that was either immediate or delayed.

Results

Hunger outperformed a fed state in complex decisionmaking with uncertain outcomes. The researchers indicated that these are circumstances in which our innate drives cause us to rely on our gut. This primal instinct supported accurate decision-making.

In the first two studies, the gambling task was performed better by the hungry people and those with smaller appetites. In the third study, the hungry subjects proved to be better at resisting large and tempting fiscal rewards that weren’t beneficial in the long run.

So, as the title of the study – Always Gamble on an Empty Stomach – implies, you might be better at making complex decisions when you are hungry. Bear in mind, an empty stomach alone might not be enough. The actual state of desiring food or having a big appetite along with hunger is most important.

References:

1. Denise de Ridder, et. al., “Always Gamble on an Empty Stomach: Hunger Is Associated with Advantageous Decision Making,” PLoS ONE 2014, 9(10)

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

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