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In a recent column, I wrote about the morning protocol I employ and recommend to increase well-being and manage negative affect (low mood). Part of that protocol involves starting the day with vigorous exercise. This recommendation provoked a lot of questions from readers: What kind of exercise is best for well-being? How often do you need to do it, and how long should it last? And what’s the best way to get started? I’ll answer these questions this week.
No official standards exist for the amount of exercise to optimize happiness, but if they did, most Americans would almost certainly fall below them—because most people don’t exercise enough, if at all. Only 24 percent of adults meet the federal guidelines for aerobic and muscle-strengthening activities. These guidelines do not exactly enter “gym rat” territory: at least 150 minutes a week (that’s about 21 minutes a day) of moderate activity such as brisk walking, plus a few body-weight exercises on different muscle groups (such as sit-ups or push-ups), at least twice a week.
The good news, then, is that the bar is reasonably low—you don’t need to train like an Olympic athlete to get the benefits of exercising. Most people have plenty of opportunity to get healthier and happier by doing something that involves no drugs or therapists, just a willingness to exert a little physical effort. For my excellent, curious readers, let me share what the science tells us works best for well-being.
Exercise has a good many different categories. Aerobic workouts, also known as endurance or cardio, involve such activities as running, cycling, and swimming. Strength or resistance training involves lifting weights. Flexibility encompasses yoga and stretching. Then there are any number of sports that one can play alone or with others. The categorization of exercise has evolved over time. For example, in a 1785 letter to his nephew recommending physical exertion, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “As to the species of exercise, I advise the gun.” (One assumes he was referring to hunting, which—besides marksmanship—generally involved tramping for miles through field and forest.)
Jefferson went on to explain why “the gun” was good: “While this gives a moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprize, and independence to the mind.” Jefferson knew from experience what researchers later showed with data and experiments: Exercise strongly improves well-being—thanks, in part, to the positive effects on three neurochemicals that are associated with mood balance. These are the brain-derived neurotropic factor (which is lower in people with depression), serotonin (which modulates anxiety and mood), and beta-endorphin (a natural pain-managing peptide). Researchers have found that all forms of exercise are good for stimulating these neurochemical systems, but aerobic activity seems to have the strongest influence.
These mood-modifying brain effects are not the only well-being benefit of exercise. Yoga, for example, has been shown to be especially beneficial for the management of stress. Weight lifting can lead to increased confidence, regardless of gender and age—no doubt because it enhances a person’s physical appearance, as well as endowing them with a sense of greater strength. Most people who exercise regularly derive an improved feeling of community and accomplishment. Indeed, for many, being athletic becomes central to their identity.
So much for the dedicated exercisers, but those who can benefit most from adding exercise to their routine are exactly those you might expect: sedentary people. In other words, the person who can get the maximum happiness from exercise is the one who goes from nothing to something. In former non-exercisers, 12 weeks of regular aerobic activity lowered depressive symptoms by a third; feelings of hostility were also reduced (by 15 percent). Even among fairly fit people, adding more exercise to their routine has a positive impact on well-being. When moderate exercisers added a few extra workouts per week, their level of depressive symptoms after three months was 19 percent lower than a control group of people who didn’t add any workout.
In general, doing more exercise is better—though, at some point, adding more exercise becomes too much. When people continue to work out in spite of physical injury, personal inconvenience, or the strain that doing so may place on relationships, that is considered a behavioral addiction. I have met people who suffer considerable mental distress when they miss a day in the gym. And I have known people who neglected their partner in their pursuit of an extreme level of fitness. (You may have heard the joke that a partner’s sudden surge of gym activity is an early warning that they’re going to leave you.)
Exercise addiction is directly correlated with perfectionism, body dissatisfaction, depression, eating disorders, and obsessive-compulsive disorders. This syndrome is almost certainly exacerbated by social-media use, which reinforces unreasonable fitness and beauty standards that drive vulnerable people to unhealthy behaviors. In men, in particular, this chimerical pursuit can lead to the use of anabolic steroids, which can drive up depression and anxiety and carries the risk of a host of physical harms.
In short, the relationship between exercise and happiness is an inverted U curve: The benefits from starting out are very large, and they increase as one improves in fitness; at some point, however, the improvements flatten out, and start to fall. Here are three ways to use the research, no matter where you are in your fitness.
1. Acquire the habit.
The problem most people have when starting an exercise routine is sticking to it. Gyms famously have a flood of new members every January, but then see a significant drop-off in a matter of weeks—because people fail to make exercise habitual. Canadian researchers studying this phenomenon have found that success in establishing an exercise regimen requires about six weeks of adherence, at an average of four workouts a week. The likelihood of success is also highest when workouts are simple, on a consistent schedule, and free of judgment.
Figure out the best time of day for your timetable, choose four days each week, and block these out in your calendar for the next six weeks. Find the one cardio exercise you like best, at a convenient and nonjudgmental gym, and work out for 30 minutes each time. At the end of the six-week period, you will most likely have created the habit; then you can start changing times and exercises.
2. Design the workout to meet your emotional objective.
Once you have established the routine, ask yourself what challenge you most want to address. If that is negative mood, start doing cardio and up the dose as desired. If it is stress, try yoga. If your issue is self-confidence, lift weights. Play sports if you are looking for comradery and fun. Experiment with different techniques and types of exercise, and keep careful records on how each one is changing your well-being. You might want to devise a balanced, adjustable approach to fitness: I usually do resistance and cardio in equal proportion, but then scale one or the other depending on my well-being challenges at any time.
3. Do all things in moderation.
Good things easily become bad things in life if you exaggerate and overdo them—and that applies even to healthy behaviors such as exercise. I have heard many stories from people who suffered from dangerous addictions—to substances, certainly, and to destructive behaviors (perfectionism, workaholism)—and then used working out to help turn their life around, only to start exhibiting the same behavioral pattern in their exercise. If you are a hard-core gym buff, a couple of questions to consider are: whether not exercising gives you anxiety and whether working out is harming or crowding out your relationships. These are clues that you have ended up on the wrong side of the exercise-happiness benefit curve.
Over the years, I have found that I give one piece of advice more often than any other about this topic. One kind of exercise that nearly everyone can do, starting today; costs nothing; takes almost no skill; and has an exceptionally high impact on negative mood: going for a walk. Research has shown again and again that walking every day lowers depression and anxiety. It is also one of the safest forms of exercise because it rarely leads to injury from repetitive stress or accidents.
Some people believe that walking even transcends the physical and carries one into the metaphysical, which is why pilgrims walk long distances in many religious traditions. Regardless of whether you’re a religious person, try this tomorrow morning: Rise before dawn and hit the trail for an hour. Time your walk so that, near the end, you witness the sunrise. The pilgrimage that is the rest of your life will have begun.
The post The Ultimate Happiness Workout appeared first on The Atlantic.
