How do you bounce back to fitness after a bad mental health day/week/month/year?

[anna67]

@christineleex3 Are you me? Like exactly me? I was 68kgs in 2017. Then I consistently lost weight and ended up with 54kg in mid-2019. Come pandemic, and I slowly gained my weight back to 65kgs. I have ADHD, and depression, and they aren't a great combo. I am dealing with grief (Lost 2 of my grandparents, and had a really really bad "breakup" with one of my best friends). I have no major ideas, I just wanted to let you know you are not alone and you can do this. Even if an episode sucks, you do not such, and you are strong to be going through this.

The small ideas I have:

1. Make it easier to exercise. Get a stationary bike at your place if that would help.
2. Choose an activity that you love doing. It might also give a serotonin boost that would help with depression a bit. Rock-climbing, dancing, boxing are some options.
3. Have a partner or assign a activity to walking, i.e., I will call my best best friend while walking.
4. My ADHD brain requires me to track everything in life, so I track every minute detail. Please don't do this if it makes you uncomfortable.
5. Celebrate/Reward yourself when you do get something done. Maybe chocolate? Maybe an extra 30 minutes of netflix?
6. Get a treadmill desk and walk at 1kmph at 5 incline for a few hours while you work.

If you want any help or just want to talk about how you feel, I would be happy to chat. For me loneliness has been a major factor in losing track in life and talking to people who can relate helps.

 

[richard22]

@anna67 I swear sometimes it motivates me to do an activity because I know I can put it into Strava afterwards and complete the challenges. It's like when you were in elementary school and got little gold stars (do they still do that anymore lol?). I also was listening to a podcast and the woman (who has anxiety and depression) was talking about how she tells herself she just needs to do some sort of physical activity for 12 minutes. If she's still not feeling it, then she can stop. But usually by that time the endorphins kick in and you want to keep going. It's always overcoming that initial inertia that's the hard part.

 

[semprul123]

@christineleex3 I have bipolar disorder so my workouts are not always consistent, during low moods and depressive episodes it’s definitely a balance between allowing myself to rest and using exercise to feel better. When I find myself feeling low or weak but desiring to move I start with the absolute bare minimum. Can I do one set of push ups? No? Can I go for a walk? No? Can I put on my shoes? I find that breaking it down into tiny pieces helps me find motivation and even ending up doing more than I planned.

 

[dawn16]

@semprul123 The tiny steps thing is sooo helpful for me!

 

[christineleex3]

@semprul123 Asking yourself what is the absolute bare minimum— super into this concept. Totally makes sense for how my brain works, will try to use that!

 

[mangalnmbs]

@christineleex3 Incrementally! Focus on doing things that you find fun. Maybe you like roller skating or dancing or biking or running or whatever. Find something that sometimes makes you just smile while you're doing it.

Focus on how you feel and don't put yourself down if you aren't meeting some arbitrary standards. People tend to get all or nothing with fitness and it should be more seen as every time you do fitness it is a plus and not doing it isn't a negative.

I would also recommend finding a realistic time to do it. If you like working out in the morning; do that, personally, I cannot wake up early enough so I prefer doing fitness things in the early afternoon / before dinner.

Make sure you're fueling your body. You're not going to feel good working out if you're not drinking enough water or eating enough food

 

[bibleexplorer]

@mangalnmbs I might be a little late to the party, i wanted to chime in as I also have ADHD and while I haven't had something like the loss of my mother, I may be able to provide a perspective that might help. Now that my classically adhd preface and run on sentence is over, I'll get to it...

A while back I saw a psychiatrist who thought for sure I had bipolar 2. They put me on anti-psychotics, took my off my ADHD/ssri meds and sent me off. Long story short, I got worse and worse until I became nearly suicidal. My dr helped me wean off them and start ADHD/ssri meds.

After all of this, I was so emotionally raw it was hard to function. ADHD made it hard to do things, RS made me feel personally attacked... I knew I needed to workout somehow, but I felt overwhelmed by weightloss goals and having lost my previous strength gains. I wanted to squat 150lbs again, or run 5km without a break.

I decided that more than anything, I needed feel good again. To feel any kind of semblance of happy. So I started working out with only that in mind.

I didn't follow anything in particular at first, and bounced around some different YouTube HIIT videos. I went back to fitness blender, and added workouts to my calendar to make my own schedule so I didn't have to worry about choice paralysis.

The only goal everyday was workout to feel happy. After about a month of 4 - 5 days/week I felt a difference. I felt happier, and like I wanted to eat better. Then I upped my game and added more weights, saw a PT for my back and rediscovered the complexity of pilates.

Dear OP, if you get anything out of this, choosing a workout that makes you happy is a worthy goal to getting your shoes on everyday. Some days, it's still the only reason I put my shoes on.

As a side, that psychiatrist was wrong, I learned about PMDD and my dr got me a diagnosis nearly immediately.

TL;DR psychiatrist put me on antipsychotics as a misdiagnosis for bp2. I went suicidal after a few months, went back to ADHD meds, worked out ONLY to feel happy, and it changed my life.

 

[huffygal]

@mangalnmbs This is the answer. For a long time I had the all-or-nothing mindset which in times of stress leaned heavily to the "nothing" side of things.

I now like to give myself options. I have my ideal "feeling good" fitness routine with lifting and reps and sets and goals, but I also have a handful of shows downloaded for streaming on my phone at the ready for my "life is too much" days. Giving myself permission to just watch TV for 20 minutes while walking on a treadmill makes it a lot easier to get myself to the gym. Once there, I sometimes feel motivated to do more than that. But if I don't, that's OK too. I just pick up where I left off with the lifting whenever I start feeling better. The illusion of fitness "progress" takes a back seat to my mental health, and I feel good about that.

Be kind to yourself OP.

 

[christineleex3]

@mangalnmbs The all or nothing mindset is so hard to step away from sometimes, woof.

Things that seem obvious and straight forward don’t always come to mind, so I appreciate the reminders here!

 

[kgotlaor]

@christineleex3 The all or nothing mindset is your ADHD coming out to shine. If you're easily excited by shiny new things, check out places like Groupon or Facebook marketplace. You might find discount pole dancing classes and end up pole dancing for four years like I did. Or you might find some lightly used roller skates and decide you want to be a speed demon. I don't wanna condone frivolous spending but it's fun to try something new

I know you wanna work on your fitness because you gained weight (me too) but remember finding joy in it is the important part. You could start as simple as setting up weekly walks with a friend for some accountability.

 

[sherribennettblog]

@kgotlaor Seconding—dance is one thing I look forward to no matter how I feel. I can sit out at socials but also dance when I feel like it.

 

[god_helpmesavemyjohn]

@kgotlaor This is a great idea. Use those hyperfixations!

 

[ojima]

@kgotlaor Seconding that black-and-white thinking is also your CPTSD at play. Watch out for it, it gets me often!!

And I wanna say “Completely dismissing fitness goals” doesn’t mean you weren’t taking care of yourself. Attending to your mental health, especially as someone w CPTSD, is a crucial part of creating the conditions in your body necessary to get through the day, never mind something like losing weight, running a 10k, whatever. Making it through that dark period meant you were taking care of yourself! And any time along the way that you went for a walk, did a stretch, ate some fresh fruits and veggies, stayed hydrated, or got a full night’s sleep along the way — that was you taking care of your physical body. Give yourself some credit for that too. The diet-culture infused aspirations of fitness and weight loss hold us to an often impossible standard so I just wanna remind you of the importance of compassion and recognizing the small things you may have already been doing. With CPTSD and grief to boot, these things are NOT small.