Epiphany

OK, so it's taken me a lot of years to discover the one thing that has helped my depression more than anything, more than even antidepressants. And that's exercise. Hear me out. It's one very specific type of exercise. Not just any will do. And years ago, before I embraced my current active lifestyle, when therapists would tell me to exercise, "it helps depression!", I would want to punch them in the face. I believe any sufferer has to come to the realization on their own, that exercise helps. No amount of well-meaning suggestions from others is gonna help. It might just get you a punch in the face.

The exercise I do is running intervals. And I finally have a theory as to why this particular exercise works when nothing else does. I believe it's about getting my heartrate up high, but briefly, then being allowed to catch my breath, doing that a handful of times, for a short workout duration. Derby NEVER helped my depression, and those were 2-3 hours of high heartrate exercise. I've done hour long aerobics sessions, those don't help. A long walk doesn't work. It's got to get my heartrate way up but not be too strenuous.

I've even played around with the number of intervals. I've settled on five. I've tried three intervals, eight, ten. Five seems to be the minimum, for maximum results. More doesn't really result in better. Less doesn't work as well.

The thing is, I've had this theory about this specific exercise for over a year now. And yet...I quit running intervals in August. I was really trying to kick start weight loss. Again. And wanted to do long, incline walks to burn more calories. I'm talking an incline of like 8-10%. For an hour, hour and a half, depending on the show or movie I was watching on my laptop. (A laptop on a treadmill is a godsend.)

So I was walking, not running, in Sep/Oct. Remember September? I do. I had the biggest lyra meltdown. I nearly quit. I had emailed my teacher, cancel my private track please. She thankfully asked for feedback in a way that suggested she wasn't judging my decision or even the why. And through talking to her, I calmed down, got off the ledge, so to speak. I didn't quit. But it was dark in my brain for awhile there.

I've since started back with the running intervals, the last week in October, so it's been about four weeks now. And my mood has dramatically improved/stabilized. Wowzers!

But it hit me. Just last night. The reason my depression was getting so much worse...I wasn't doing my running intervals. It's not steady state running. Fuck that noise. I run for 1min. By the time I really start hating the running, it's time to walk. I walk for 2mins. By the time I've just caught my breath, it's time to start running again. Repeat 5x.

Granted, when I FIRST started running intervals, it was in 2013 with derby and C25K. I wasn't even able to run for a full minute. I built to that. Then, I kept getting stuck in the C25K program around week 4/5. Until I just decided to do my own intervals and not worry about increasing my running time. Instead, I increase the speed when it's starting to feel too easy. I started running at 4.5mph, I have short legs. I'm now running at 6mph. I was blogging back then and started noticing a pattern when I was running regularly vs my moods. Magic data.

I'm going to mention this to my lyra teacher at our next lesson. I don't think she holds any judgment against me for September. But I want to let her know my epiphany. Now I know. Now I REALLY know. I will have to run forever. I've found 3-4x/week is sufficient. More doesn't seem to give more. Twice a week, not so much. It's like taking medicine.

And in September, I went off my meds...