Walk away the blues!

Dr. Tami discusses how walking can have a positive impact on mood and how you can incorporate this into your lifestyle. 

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Transcript

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Dr. Tami: Boozhoo, this is Dr. Tami, your host of PsychologistsSay…, a podcast where we talk about the psychology of everyday living. Today we're going to be focusing on walking and the benefits of getting physical activity. We're really focusing on walking because I think it's a really great place to start having a discussion, especially for those listeners who may really kind of struggle with meeting their movement goals or trying to be more active. I would say in all of my years of working as a psychologist, doing a lot of work in the area of health psychology, that being active is one of the areas that most people tend to struggle with. It's not that they don't have a desire. Many people, if all people would like to be more active, they would like to be more physically fit, maybe have weight loss. There's a lot that goes into setting some health goals like being active, yet it's also an area where people can really tend to struggle to get it done. 

A lot of the research is showing that just getting out and moving and even doing moderate intervals of engaging in walking, getting yourself to move more, can have a big impact on your mood and your health. So I want you to, especially if you're a person who would like to be more active. I really want to focus on how increasing some of your daily activity and trying to fit it into maybe some things that you're already doing can make you start to build a confidence in this area that you can get it done. So overall, the CDC Center for Disease Control recommends that we should get about 150 minutes of moderate activity weekly. So moderate would be something where your heart rate is increasing. There's a really good test that you can take. It's called a talk test. So if you're breathing hard but you can still have a conversation pretty easily that's you engaging in what we call a moderate activity. So going out for a nice, brisk walk, and you're able to have a conversation. Maybe if you're walking with somebody and you're able to carry on that conversation, you're not fully out of breath. You're not working up a huge sweat, but you know that you're moving, and you're having some of that increased of the heart rate, breathing a little bit more. You know your body's getting warmed up, and it's working. And the other thing is, there's vigorous activity. Now, this is where they're recommending that you should have at least an hour and 15 minutes or 75 minutes of engaging in some kind of vigorous. So you could either try to look for how do I do 150 minutes of moderate where I'm able to be comfortable and talk back and forth, or I can look at getting this done in 75 minutes of vigorous activity. And how you would know that is if you can only say a few words. Now, this is going back to that talk test, and this would be, I guess I'm thinking of myself jogging with a partner, and if they're in better shape than I am, or maybe this is considered moderate for their level. They're trying to have a conversation with me, and I'm having trouble really giving them more than a couple of words before trying to catch my breath. That's how you would know that you're engaged in something that your body considers vigorous. 

So those are really good ways for you to say, okay, how do I know what type of activity and how hard I'm working? And how do I start to try to look at starting where I'm at? And so looking at this moderate activity, you can break that down. So 150 minutes, ultimately, when you think about the week, to some people that may seem like a lot to others, you may think, okay, that's doable. There's seven days in a week, and you can divide this, you can break it down into smaller pieces. You can do 30 minutes. You can break down those 30 minutes into ten minutes. So trying to really focus on what you're doing. So if it's a walk, you can try to take the ten minute walk break and really be focused on that moderate activity that you should be able to have a conversation, but you're fully engaged in that walking experience for that ten minutes. And so this is looking at, let's say if it's a busier day, you may have time for a jog where you're getting more vigorous, but you're tracking all of this time. So let's even say you jog for ten minutes. Then you're able to say, well, this week, wow, I did ten minutes of moderate and I did ten minutes of vigorous and total, I've done 20 minutes of physical activity this week. So it's looking at trying to break down and take whatever you can do to just feel like you're getting started and compare it to weeks before or even the day before. So this is something that can really help us feel like we're already achieving our success. Maybe you have to trick yourself or your brain to say, we don't have to be so rigid. We don't have to say, well, I'm going to do the 150 minutes. Instead, it's saying, well, this week I want to do more minutes than I did last week. Just sit. And I wanted you to take a second and think about how much time you were engaged in direct physical activity where you knew your body was working and it was moderate or it was vigorous. And I want you to kind of add that up in your head, and that's your starting point. That's what we call your baseline. 

Some people may think, boy, I wasn't really active. I've been active for maybe a total of 20 minutes last week. Or maybe some people are like, I really didn't move more than my lifestyle. Like getting up, going to work, maybe sitting at my desk. So some of you may have a baseline where you're starting off with zero or ten minutes. And the big thing is, do not feel bad about that, that's many people. I think the more we can be honest with ourselves, the more room we have to build up that motivation. When you start the next week, anything that is building on that is an improvement. So maybe the long-term goal is looking at how do I get my 150 minutes in this week? 

Another thing that's recommended is to break that down into the cardiovascular where you're moving, you're walking, you're running, you're jogging, you're swimming vigorously, whatever kind of activities get your heart rate up. And then to look at two days of weight training or some kind of resistance to build up the muscle. So it's a strength training. They recommend doing that for two days out of your week in addition to making sure that you have that time of your regular walking and your aerobic activity. Overall, when we're talking about it may seem like a lot. Some of you may start thinking, okay, maybe this is not as much as I thought. Sometimes we tend to overwhelm ourselves with our lack of full awareness. We may think we have to be exercising an hour every single day just to feel like we're keeping up. And now what this is really showing us is that's not how we need to start off thinking about this. We can now start off to say, how can I break this down into manageable steps? And to know that even five minutes, even three minutes, these mini or micro exercise bursts are going to have a positive impact on your body. 

There is no way that movement and getting your body going is going to be something that is not going to give you some sort of boost in your chemicals and your hormone levels that can impact your mood and your wellness. So overall, in the next sessions and episodes, we'll be talking a lot about different brain chemicals. It's definitely more than I want to talk about today. I wish I could get it all in here, but I want to make sure that I just get you on a track of thinking, how can I start by setting a goal maybe this week, knowing that even just moderate bouts of activity can start to help improve my mood, my outlook. It can help to get your body flowing, the blood flowing, the circulation. It can start to help with blood pressure and giving you more of this body awareness that there's so much connection between our brain and our body and our movement, our skeletal muscles, that can start to really be enhanced with something as simple as going for a brisk walk for ten minutes. That this moderate amount of movement can really start to get our body communicating in ways and releasing our body's chemical messengers, which are our hormones, our serotonin, which is our mood booster, our endorphins, our natural painkillers. 

All of these things that can help our body start to release stress and start to enhance and help us control these stress hormones that can definitely impact things like our blood pressure, our heart health, our sleep, and how well we're sleeping and resting. So I want to just give you a few things that you can think about. What are some tips to help me to just get to move more? One of them I already talked about is starting with you really taking an honest look at how much you're moving now. And it's good to look at even yesterday, the day before, the past week, the past month, it's always good before you set any kind of physical activity. Goal is to take a good look at where am I starting so I can measure some of my improvement or I can measure if I'm not making change. Those are some of the things where you should start off with a very realistic assessment. 

It's something that you do not have to share with other people. Sometimes we do share that can help motivate us. It's like this accountability piece, yet it can also add to just another level. Some of us may feel like if we share this, we might add more stress, we might have to be an overachiever in this. And so really that's an individual call. If you want to tell somebody that you want to do this, I would say right now, just try to focus on setting your goal for this next week, maybe the next day, and looking at increasing from just even a little bit from what you did the last week or the last month. And then to keep this idea of moderate, these moderate breaks and you got 150 minutes throughout the week. How can I break that down? How can I break that down if I don't have 30 minutes? If I can do ten minutes three times a day for how many days? How do I add in muscle and strength training to what I'm already doing? Some ideas are adding resistance bands. Some ideas are having some weights by your desk. If you take a break but you can't get up and move, but you can sit and lift some weights or lift something that is heavy objects that are in your office. 

And just to start, focus on building the muscles and taking these brief times to add that weight resistance into your training. Knowing that you only have to do so much of that a couple of times of the week, that's really going to help enhance that. When you're getting out and you're walking, and when I say you're getting out, that's another thing. You do not have to be outside to walk. Of course there are a lot of benefits of doing that, but walking means moving. So if you are able to get up and walk around your work area or if you're able to walk in your house, around in hallways or at the mall, wherever you're able to get and do that consistently and focus on it. The other thing is to say what are some things that I do anyway during the day that I can be more mindful of and turn that into more of my time where I'm doing exercise. So some of that stuff may be cleaning, doing laundry. 

One thing you can do is put on your walking shoes, your tennis shoes, dress in a way that prepares you mentally to feel like when you're doing this, it's more of a workout. It's more focused on the movement of the activities, getting that heart rate up a bit, and that this movement is part of you breaking down and going for ten minutes. I counted my mopping and sweeping of my house or the vacuuming or whatever you were doing that you knew was really part of your talk test, that you knew you were engaged in this activity, and you can count it towards that. So those are some of the things to just help you get started. And using a tracker is something that some people find very helpful. It's that accountability piece. It can be motivating. It's not necessary. But a lot of the phones have health apps that will track your movement throughout the day. And so sometimes we're actually moving more than we think we are. And the trackers can help us really motivate and give us that feedback that we may not be aware of. It's taking the time to make sure you're really using the app, looking at it, and then not getting discouraged on days when you maybe have low movement days. 

Those are great days to say, okay, so set a goal for tomorrow to just increase that a bit and to look at it overall and say, if you're struggling with movement, if there's barriers, of course you want to know your own physical limitations. And always consult your doctor before you want to change anything up. But knowing how you can get started and that it is not an easy thing. This is one of the most common areas I hear people struggle with. Individuals who have depression can really struggle with having the energy and the motivation or the ability to engage in activity. So sometimes this can be something that our mood may be fighting us on. Yet one of the things that can really help enhance and help us ward off some of the depression or the feelings of the blahs or the feeling stuck. And so it's something that if you're struggling with that, that's why it's good to really know that it can be very small steps of getting started and building up, knowing that every time you do that Serotonin, that anytime we move, we get that mood booster. And sometimes those of us who are really in an area where we're struggling or my patients, I'll say, if they're on medications, I'll let them know that this is that self medicine of movement can help enhance and build up that Serotonin. And that's something that we have to really sit and think about that we cannot see it happening. We can't see all of this chemical release and exchange in our bloodstream that's helping us. 

But I'm hoping us having these conversations on this podcast can help, you know that the research, the science has been done, the behaviors of this movement has been studied and that it's definitely an area where sometimes we feel like maybe it's just common sense that we should just be doing this. But it is a challenging area to start. And I think that talking about starting small and knowing that just moderate bouts of this exercise and movement and walking can art may then help build up the confidence of those listeners who would really like to get started on doing something like this for themselves. So miigwetch for checking in with us today and thank you for listening. If you're new, welcome. If you're a return listener, thanks for keeping up with us.