Today’s National Walking Day. It’s also April Fool’s Day, which is a holiday that I think should be taken out to the barn and shot, but never mind about that. Here in southeastern PA today is gloriously sunny and in the low 70s; temps are forecasted to retreat into the 40s this weekend with a possibility of snow (SNOW!). There’s never been a better day for a nice, brisk walk.
Here, I present unto you the health benefits of walking and most pressing reasons to put on some pants and get outside:
Walking gets your blood flowing.
A recent Ball State study found that Americans generally spend 64% of waking hours in a sedentary position. Now, granted, Americans also don’t get enough sleep, so there’s not a lot of not-waking hours, but it’s still a sobering statistic. Even if you’re going to the gym after work every day for an hour of exercise, that isn’t enough to counteract the adverse effects of sitting all day long. While in a seated position, your lungs aren’t expanding fully, your circulation is compromised (it’s even worse if you have bad posture) and therefore the amount of oxygen being moved throughout your body is lessened. This means physical weakening and mental fuzziness.
Whenever you get the opportunity throughout the day, you should get up and walk around, stretch, do something to get that blood flowing to rejuvenate your mind and body.
You’ll live longer.
Physical activity lengthens our telomeres, the caps at the ends of chromosomes that are tied to aging and stress. On the flip side, a sedentary lifestyle is connected to increased mortality rates, from reasons spanning from colon and breast cancer (one study indicated those who were inactive were 40% more likely to die from their cancers) to insulin resistance to stroke and heart attack.
You’ll feel better.
Sedentary people are more likely to be depressed, although it’s hard to say whether being inactive leads to depression or if those who are depressed are less inclined to be active. However, there’s a good body of evidence showing that the endorphins produced from exercise helps to lift spirits, and that being out in nature lowers blood levels in the parts of the brain associated with rumination. In other words, going outside for a walk forces you out of your own head so that you’re not dwelling on the negative; in fact it can instead bring on a meditative state with all its positive effects.
You’ll be more creative.
Walking exposes us to new stimuli and allows our minds to wander: these unfettered thought and associations are the perfect prescription for creativity. Meanwhile, the exercise distracts the prefrontal cortex (right brain thinking) letting the left side of the brain take over a bit, plus it increases that blood flow to the brain, enlarging the hippocampus (which moves information from short-term to long-term memory). One Stanford study found that walking increased creative output by 60%!
You’ll probably lose weight over time.
For those who are currently sedentary or aren’t already committed to a weight loss regime, walking is a great place to start. It’s easy on the joints. It doesn’t involve any special equipment, upfront costs or new skills. It’s low pressure and not as intimidating as walking into a weight room or Zumba class. And for most people, it’s sustainable because it’s enjoyable: a chance to get out into the open air, bask in the sunshine, catch up with a friend.
If just walking doesn’t feel like a significant enough form of exercise to make a difference, consider this: for those with obesity who are trying to lose weight, the greatest health benefits come from losing just 5 percent of their body weight: according to a new study, that relatively small weight loss notably lowered risk for diabetes and cardiovascular disease. It also improved metabolic function in liver, fat and muscle tissue.
To get the most weight loss benefits from walking, you’ll want to keep the pace brisk and heart rate elevated. Also, try walking immediately after meals— it helps to slow digestion and improve your circadian rhythyms (messed up circadian rhythms can make it more difficult for your body to let go of fat). And yes, you will need to look at your calorie intake. All the walking in the world can’t overrule basic math.
It’s just nice.
It IS.
I know it’s so much easier to stay where you are. But going for a walk is such a simple pleasure. Why deprive yourself of that, especially when it’s so good for you?
I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.
Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re Doing Something.
So that’s my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody’s ever made before. Don’t freeze, don’t stop, don’t worry that it isn’t good enough, or it isn’t perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.
Whatever it is you’re scared of doing, Do it.
Make your mistakes, next year and forever.
― Neil Gaiman
God, I love Neil Gaiman.
He breaks my heart, in a beautiful way. He makes me want to write, to create, to populate new worlds with starlight and yearning and well dressed woodland creatures and dusty whispers from worlds gone by. At the same time, every time I read anything of his, I am so deeply aware that nothing I’d put to paper would ever come close to touching how gorgeous his darkness is that I give up before I’ve begun.
That said, these are things that Neil has wished for us, his readers, over the years. Two weeks into the new year, I’m somehow more ready to let them land.
Write them on your mirror, hang them on your heart… do what you need to remind yourself to make all the mistakes, to put something out there into the world that only you could ever contribute.
May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art — write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.
…I hope you will have a wonderful year, that you’ll dream dangerously and outrageously, that you’ll make something that didn’t exist before you made it, that you will be loved and that you will be liked, and that you will have people to love and to like in return. And, most importantly (because I think there should be more kindness and more wisdom in the world right now), that you will, when you need to be, be wise, and that you will always be kind.
It’s a New Year and with it comes a fresh opportunity to shape our world.
So this is my wish, a wish for me as much as it is a wish for you: in the world to come, let us be brave – let us walk into the dark without fear, and step into the unknown with smiles on our faces, even if we’re faking them.
And whatever happens to us, whatever we make, whatever we learn, let us take joy in it. We can find joy in the world if it’s joy we’re looking for, we can take joy in the act of creation.
So that is my wish for you, and for me. Bravery and joy.
Be kind to yourself in the year ahead.
Remember to forgive yourself, and to forgive others. It’s too easy to be outraged these days, so much harder to change things, to reach out, to understand.
Try to make your time matter: minutes and hours and days and weeks can blow away like dead leaves, with nothing to show but time you spent not quite ever doing things, or time you spent waiting to begin.
Meet new people and talk to them. Make new things and show them to people who might enjoy them.
Hug too much. Smile too much. And, when you can, love.
For the third year in a row, we ran Spartan Race Citizens Bank Park, and for the third year in a row, we were totally not prepared for it.
The first year we just didn’t know what to expect. The past two years we just didn’t train properly, despite the best of intentions, so it felt harder than it needed to be and I knew perfectly well I coulda shoulda done a whole lot better.
Don’t we look happy and accomplished in that picture up there? Yeah. This picture here is a more accurate representation of how I felt most of that day.
Miserable. It was cold and windy and that stadium is like a wind tunnel. By the time it came for us to run, we’d been frozen stiff; it literally took half the race before my legs started to feel warmed up properly.
The wait did mean we got to spectate a bit, which was nice. Amazingly, I happened to notice when one of our CrossFit coaches went across the monkey bars— that’s her with her hair in a bun, in the middle.
Those monkey bars are no joke. They’re wide in diameter and far apart, and you have to be careful to keep your feet off the mats. Touch down and you’re done.
After cheering Coach Mik across the monkey bars we went and waited for her to deal with the traverse wall. This sucker is one of many obstacles at Spartan Race that is harder than it looks; it requires a fair amount of finger grip strength and getting around the curves is rough.
Another deceptive obstacle, a new one this year. It looked like it was going to be fun. All you had to do was keep your feet on the skates and “walk” across on your hands, spin around, then come back the same way.
But, the wheels were like the ones on shopping carts in that they swung every which way, and liked to pull hard to the left, and sometimes my feet would randomly overrun my hands. It was not easy.
I guess it was sort of fun.
Seriously, I look like a psycho. A cold, windblown, miserable psycho.
My yearly dugout photo. I look happy here because I’m out of the wind and in the homestretch.
I really struggled with the walls this year, which is disappointing because I don’t usually. My upper body strength is not where it used to be.
And for the third year in the row I still didn’t ring that damn bell at the top of the rope. I’ve got the technique pretty much down, but I get scared at a certain point. Also, the knots actually make it harder and these ropes are well worn; the ones at my gym have a lot more grip to them.
I don’t know. Next year, I hope.
Another year down. I’d say I gave a solid… like… 65% of my best effort. So if you’re wondering if you can manage Spartan Race, the answer is YES. Yes, you can, and you should. Because even though it was cold, and miserable, and I wasn’t ready, I enjoyed it as always.
Last weekend we “fell back” for Daylight Saving, the unofficial start of Seasonal Affective Disorder season as we are forced to cope with shorter days, longer evenings.
My Honey Badger Revolution co-contributor intimately describes how SAD affects her here; going through old posts on my green blog I can hear my enthusiasm for nature, exercise, being outside, writing, or life in general being tuned way down as soon as November hits. It’s really hard to enjoy fall, beautiful as it is, when you’re all too aware that the starkness and isolation of winter follows.
She and I are far from alone. Between 4% and 6% of Americans suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder; an additional 10-20% experience a milder winter-onset SAD. Three of four SAD sufferers are women.
Seasonal affective disorder is a subtype of major depression that comes and goes based on seasons. So symptoms of major depression may be part of SAD, such as:
Feeling depressed most of the day, nearly every day
Feeling hopeless or worthless
Having low energy
Losing interest in activities you once enjoyed
Having problems with sleeping
Experiencing changes in your appetite or weight
Feeling sluggish or agitated
Having difficulty concentrating
Having frequent thoughts of death or suicide
Fall and winter SAD Symptoms specific to winter-onset SAD, sometimes called winter depression, may include:
Irritability
Tiredness or low energy
Problems getting along with other people
Hypersensitivity to rejection
Heavy, “leaden” feeling in the arms or legs
Oversleeping
Appetite changes, especially a craving for foods high in carbohydrates
Weight gain
A SAD diagnosis is likely if you’ve gone through this at least three times and your symptoms go away in spring and summer. (If anything, I become a bit manic in the spring. And if you asked my family to describe me right now this list would be frighteningly accurate.)
If you’ve recognized a pattern of SAD in your life, a visit to your doctor is in order. They can talk you through treatments and if necessary prescribe something to smooth out the rough patches. There is no shame in not wanting to be depressed, much like there is no shame in tapping out on fully experiencing the pain of childbirth. I’ve weathered both and it doesn’t make me any better than anyone else. There’s no need to play the hero here, and the longer you wait the harder it will get to seek treatment.
Some years have been better than others for me. I think the severity of the weather probably plays a part, and it’s possible I’m “growing out of it”— it appears that the risk of SAD lessens as you age. But I thought it would be helpful to share the common sense steps I take to fight Seasonal Affective Disorder every year; some are backed by science, some may be no more than the placebo effect, but that’s ok with me. Whatever works, right?
In full disclosure, I’ve included some Amazon affiliate links to the products I use below; if you decide to click through and buy anything, I’ll get a few cents on the dollar.
Blogging/Journaling
If I’ve learned anything after nearly a decade of blogging, it’s that my seasonal sadz are so cyclical and predictable I can practically set a watch by them. By Thanksgiving I’m cranky and already tired of the Christmas chaos. I tend to rally some Yuletide cheer and hope for the future for the last week of the year, then go silent for a while other than to bitch about a groundhog and the nonsense that is Valentine’s Day. March is always rough. After months of being cold and unmotivated, the relentless grey rain of March nearly breaks me every year.
Obviously I didn’t start blogging to track my depressive symptoms, but being able to see my mood change predictably year to year has been very helpful; it gets me through the worst of it knowing that relief will come in the spring.
Phototherapy
SAD is likely caused by our circadian rhythms being thrown out of whack from less exposure to sunlight (exacerbated by Daylight Saving and the fact that most people spend these shortened daylight hours in a windowless corporate environment).
I turn on this Seasonal Affective Disorder light in the morning for 20 minutes or so before I wake my daughter up and it definitely jolts me awake physically and mentally; I’m not nearly so tempted to nap and massively screw up my sleep cycle even more. It’s small, so I can move it from room to room; you could also easily toss it into a carry-on bag for traveling.
Outdoor Time and Vitamin D
Vitamin D is the “sunshine vitamin,” and studies suggest that about half of the world’s population is Vitamin D deficient. Research also indicates a link between D deficiency and depression, although causality isn’t certain (does the deficiency make us depressed, or does depression somehow render us unable to absorb or use the vitamin?). Given that SAD is linked to less exposure to sunshine and disrupted circadian rhythms, plus the general health benefits of being in nature, it makes sense to make an effort to soak up the sun as much as possible during the fall and winter months.
Keep in mind that you don’t reap the same benefits sitting inside in a splash of sunlight; sunshine doesn’t penetrate glass that way. Nor can it penetrate properly applied sunscreen. Also, the angle of the sun is different at this time of year and depending on how far north you are, you may need more time in those rays.
Be conscious of how much vitamin D you get via your diet (eggs with yolks and fatty fish like salmon, mackerel and tuna) and consider a supplement as well.
Get Up, Stay Up
DON’T HIT THE SNOOZE BUTTON.
I know, it’s so freaking hard to get up in the morning when you’re not feeling awesome, and that goes double triple when it’s cold and dark. But hitting the snooze button just adds another layer of dread to your morning, and every time it goes off your adrenaline goes through the roof. When you drift off for a couple of minutes only to be jolted awake again, you’re pulling your brain and body out of sleep during a disadvantageous period, causing a sleep inertia that can take hours to recover from. That means sluggishness, impaired memory, poor decision making, disruption of your body’s circadian rhythms and pretty much wasting your morning and making you feel bad about your life.
The ideal situation here is to wake up naturally at the end of an REM cycle— when I’m in a good sleep routine, I find I wake up a minute or two before the alarm. Since most of us have a non-negotiable time we need to be up by, start with that, count backwards 7 hours, and then keep pushing your bedtime a little earlier until you find your sweet spot.
Once it’s time to get up JUST GET UP. I swear, it’s worth it.
Other Vitamins
The studies on taking vitamin supplements are mixed— generally speaking, people who take vitamins tend to be healthier overall, but that may be because if you’re the type of person who dependably takes a vitamin, you probably also have other healthy habits in place. So in theory you should aim to be the type of person who takes vitamins but save the money.
That said, I like to think of myself as a vitamin taking type but if I’m being honest I know my day-to-day diet is lacking. I take a multi and during the fall and winter months I’ll also take additional supplements on the days that I remember. (Worth noting: I take them in gummy form because I hate pills.) These are the ones I felt made a difference in regards to Seasonal Affective Disorder.
Magnesium deficiency is another state that is linked to depression and anxiety. Magnesium suppresses the release of stress hormones from the hippocampus and can help block stress hormones into the brain; stress causes us to waste the magnesium we do have. Magnesium also helps reduce blood pressure and keeps your digestive system moving. Good food sources are nuts and seeds, dark green veggies like broccoli and spinach, whole grains, bananas. I’ve not yet found a gummy magnesium; I go with Nature Made for this one.
Vitamin B12 helps to regulate the nervous system, and deficiency has also been linked to depression and stress. It’s needed to convert carbs into glucose— so taking B12 serves to fight fatigue and increase energy. Vitamin B12 is found in animal foods, so meat, dairy, fish, eggs. Also, these gummy B12 vitamins are my favorite. They’re really tasty.
Melatonin regulates your sleep and wake cycles; levels in your body are affected by the amount of light you receive. Not enough light leads to lowered melatonin, which leads to disrupted circadian rhythms and, you guessed it, depression. Taking melatonin 20 minutes before bedtime helps you to fall asleep faster and stay asleep better; better sleep almost always makes for a better morning. I don’t take these all the time, just at the beginning of the season or on nights I suspect I’m going to have a hard time falling asleep for whatever reason.
Exercise Often
Exercise clears your head and releases those feel good hormones short term, and pushes you to feel better about yourself when you stick with it long term. It helps us to sleep better and can strengthen circadian rhythm, although you may need to experiment to find the best time of day for you (some people will find it harder to fall asleep too soon after exercising). AND, a pertinent Seasonal Affective Disorder benefit: exercising for one hour outside, even under cloudy skies, is as beneficial as 2.5 hours of indoor light treatment.
Get Dressed to Shoes
This is a phrase I learned from the FlyLady a long time ago and it’s always stuck in my mind. I can’t quite remember her exact reasoning for it, but here’s mine:
The best part of going to a party is choosing what to wear and getting ready to go.
When you look good you feel good.
It’s soooooo easy to fall into a trap of not caring what you look like because you have nowhere to go and no one to impress, and next thing you know you feel like hell because you haven’t showered in days and it feels like such an effort to even bother. Nope. Put some thought into an outfit— not just your cleanest sweats— including some kickass shoes. Do your face and hair. Even if, maybe especially if, you have no place to go.
Are the days of winter sunshine just as sad for you, too? When it is misty, in the evenings, and I am out walking by myself, it seems to me that the rain is falling through my heart and causing it to crumble into ruins.
―Gustave Flaubert
Now Go Somewhere
You need that sunshiney outdoor time, remember? But I’m taking it a step further. Plan out your week and put something outside of the house on the schedule for every day. It doesn’t have to be a big deal: go to a park to take pictures, hit the library and take out some magazines, try a new takeout place, visit a museum, see a movie. One or more should be plans with friends or family so you can’t back out. Exercise counts but you need to mix it up— 30 minutes doing the same thing at the gym every day doesn’t break up the monotony effectively. At least twice a month there should be something you’re genuinely looking forward to.
For me, the real slide into depression comes when the days all feel the same and start running into each other and the voice I hear most is the one inside my head. The inertia becomes more and more difficult to overcome and at my worst I become overwhelmed by fullblown agoraphobia.
Maybe you won’t get out every day as planned, and that’s not something to add to your plate of self-recrimination. We all have off days. The act of planning reminds you that it’s in your power to keep moving, and that you deserve to enjoy yourself, and that it doesn’t take a whole lot to add something good to your day. But a whole lot of the time, it does help your mindset if you literally change your perspective.
For sound evolutionary reasons, most of us are not nearly as good at dwelling on good events as we are at analyzing bad events. Those of our ancestors who spent a lot of time basking in the sunshine of good events, when they should have been preparing for disaster, did not survive the Ice Age. So to overcome our brains’ natural catastrophic bent, we need to work on and practice this skill of thinking about what went well.
Studies have shown that a daily ritual of practicing gratitude can chip away at depression. It makes sense; when you consistently look at the down side of events, it becomes habitual; you physically carve a neural pathway. It takes a lot of work to carve a new one, to have a less dismal outlook become your default. It’s a skill that requires training.
It’s suggested that you keep a gratitude journal where you list three things you are grateful for, or three things that went right that day, before you go to bed. It’s going to feel dumb but I promise you’ll get used to it. Or, another idea along the same vein is Gretchen Rubin’s One Sentence Journal, which gives you a quote to reflect on each day and then you write one sentence about your day. The nice thing about her journal is that it goes for five years but you return to the same page each year, so you can quickly see how much you change, how much you stay the same.
Drink Lots of Water and Limit Alcohol
I like a glass of wine or bottle of beer as much as anyone, but while it can take the edge off the sadz it’s seriously not your friend. Alcohol can intensify emotion or dull your existence even further. It makes you foggy in the morning. It can pull you deeper into isolation. It inhibits your ability to absorb or activate Vitamins D, B12 and magnesium. And it can disrupt your restful sleep and your body’s response to light and dark (therefore affecting circadian rhythms).
Being dehydrated can lead to fatigue, mental fuzziness and perceiving everything as more difficult. It can increase tension, moodiness and anxiety, and these changes are more acutely felt in women. I always chug a big glass of water before bed because I feel like crap in the morning and it’s a struggle to get out of bed if I don’t.
60% of your body is water. Your brain is about 75% water. Water moves nutrients around the body and flushes out toxins. This is one of the easiest changes to make to feel better and yet, for me, one of the hardest.
Hang in there. You are not alone.
I want to stress again: if you’re suffering from depression, seasonal or otherwise, please talk to your doctor about it. I find mine to be manageable now, but I spent many years struggling with crushing sadness and paralysis, and self-loathing from feeling that way. If I could go back and be counseled on a way to avoid that, I would.
Depression is real and not to be taken lightly. I’ve been through enough cycles at this point in my lifetime that I now usually recognize the signs that I’m in danger of sliding down deep. These are just the common sense ways I employ to stay above the waterline throughout the year, and I double down through the fall and winter.
If you have more tips for fighting Seasonal Affective Disorder, I’d love to hear them.
Robin Elton is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.
, Martin Seligman says that
