Mental and Emotional Impact on Exercising

I’ve come to realize how my mental and emotional state impacts how I exercise. When I’m happy and energetic I feel like I can do ANYTHING!!! Like running a ridiculous amount. I’m also great at motivating myself to start exercising and continuing to exercise. Other times, when I’m depressed and/or tired, I don’t even want to exercise. It takes me forever to start and when I finally push myself to start exercising, I can’t keep myself going even though I know I can do it. Once I was running a 5.5 K route and I just stopped around 3 K. I knew I could physically complete it because I’ve done it before but I was tired and depressed and I just didn’t want to do anymore. So I stopped and walked back home.

The past few weeks have been up and down and I can see how this affects my exercising schedule. Around my birthday a few weeks ago, I was so happy and excited because there were so many things going on. Even though I wanted to, I didn’t have much time to exercise but I did a little and it went really, really well. But the past bit has been the complete opposite. Once when I did the ever-dreaded Plyometrics from P90x, I had to really push myself to start it and then I didn’t even want to do it. I thought about stopping so many times and had to take more breaks than usual. At least near the end I figured I already did 40 mins of this, so I better just finish the last 20 mins. Lately I’ve been stressed, tired and depressed over my new teaching job and occasionally over this guy I’m dating. This guy can make me so incredibly happy sometimes (and I can jog a lot!) but he can also make me depressed and frustrated.

I hate being in a “down” state. And not only does it affect the quantity and quality of exercising I do but also my eating habits. I don’t eat as healthily and regularly. These are times when I’ll binge eat chocolate and Nutella late at night. Overall I just become messed up. When my mental and emotional state is bad I also become physically “bad” as I don’t exercise as much or eat as well.  Overall I just become crappy and that sucks.