5 in 5 Part 2, Be physically active

Being active is not only great for your physical health and fitness. Evidence also shows it can also improve your mental wellbeing by:

• raising your self-esteem
• helping you to set goals or challenges and achieve them
• causing chemical changes in your brain which can help to positively change your mood
• find free activities to help you get fit
• if you have a disability or long-term health condition, find out about getting active with a disability
• start running with our couch to 5k podcasts
• find out how to start swimming, cycling or dancing
• find out about getting started with exercise

Find out more about getting active

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Transcript

Carl Fessenden: 1:20

Welcome to the drunken worm podcast. Each week, I will be bringing you dynamic content that will educate and inspire. This podcast was created to talk to mental health professionals about addiction recovery and their own personal stories that can help inspire us to become better people and live healthier lives. Happy Friday, from the drunk and warm podcast, my name is Carl, the host and creator of this show, and you are listening to the bonus content of five and five. This is where we're going to take five episodes and air them over a course of five days. The topic that we're discussing in these episodes is five steps to mental well being. We first talked about in our first episode, the connection with other people. And in today's episode, we're going to be talking about being physically active. How is fiscal activity going to improve our mental health and fitness? Evidence shows that we can improve our own mental well being by raising our self esteem, helping you set goals or challenges to achieve them, and causing chemical changes in our brain, which can help to positively change our mood. So we're going to be diving into that during this episode. So let me ask you guys a question. What do you do for yourself on a daily basis that would help you with physical activity?

Unknown: 2:51

Do you go on a walk for 30 minutes? Do you go to the gym?

Carl Fessenden: 2:57

You know, a lot of us are starting to go back to work in our offices. And so now, you know, we have jobs where we're sitting at desks for a long amounts of time. And we're not being as physically active, as maybe we were when we were working from home. And we had the ability to take a break and we could go outside and we could walk the neighborhood. Or maybe we could take a break and go to the gym for a few minutes and get a workout in. We had a lot of flexibility with at home jobs, that we are now going to start to see that that flexibility is going to go away because of the demands of us coming back into the workplace. So what can we do? If you go to your doctor, they are going to suggest that you start some type of physical activity. Now, I understand that some of us might have limitations to what we can do physically. And it is important for you to consult your primary care physician before starting any new workouts or diets. Again, it is important for you to consult your primary physician before you start any new workouts or diets. We need to be aware of our limitations. You know, I'm 43 I'm not gonna go climb Everest, I might have when I was 21. Well, no, that's a lie because I don't like heights. But you know, I had the capability of doing it probably when I was 21 before I started my addiction. But now at 43. No, I'm not going to be up there climbing Everest. But what I can do is I can work within the limits that my body is saying that I have right now. So it's medically proven that people who do regular physical activity have a lower risk of heart disease and stroke, type two diabetes, bowel cancer, breast cancer in women, early death falls among older adults, depression and dementia. So ask yourself, What are you doing for your physical activity? How are you tracking your physical activity? What does it mean for you to be physically active? I loved doing water aerobics, because when I came into recovery, I was morbidly obese. The drugs were having the opposite effect on me. In fact, it was causing me to hold water because I was diagnosed with congestive heart failure. So I had to be very careful when I first started coming into recovery and thinking about working out starting on a low workout regimen. And what does that mean? That meant that I was out walking for 30 minutes a day. That meant that I would go to the gym and do water aerobics. And if you guys haven't tried water aerobics, Don't knock it until you try it. Because that's actually a really good workout. But even if we just walk for a few minutes a day, what are we doing? We're helping our cardiovascular system. We're helping our respiratory system, and we're also helping the dopamine fire inside of our brains and all of these connections that we have going on up here and we're making our brain stronger oregon.One of the things you can do is to find free activities to help you get fit. I know I have a lot of listeners within the Solano County area in Fairfield, Vacaville Sassoon, Dixon, Vallejo, what about going out to lagoon Valley Lake, walking around the lake. I really like walking around out in nature, because it takes me away from the boring, you know, walking around the Solano mall over here, or you know, doing that, although that is a really great workout because you have elevations that you have to go up and down. And it's about a mile and a half. So it takes you about 30 minutes to walk it. But you know, doing that day after day, gets boring after a while. So we got to switch it up on ourselves, we got to get our mind interested in doing it. Also, start out with small, achievable goals. I can't tell you how many people I talked to, and they're like, oh, man, I'm gonna go to the gym four days a week, and this is my new routine. And I'm gonna get up at 5am in the morning. And I'm thinking to myself, bro, you're not even a morning person. Why are you killing yourself with this routine, and jerk enough not follow through. Like, it doesn't make any sense. But they want to, they want to succeed at this. But I think that we're just setting ourselves up for failure a lot of times. So start with small, achievable goals. If you are not working out right now, maybe an achievable goal for you would be to work out or walk twice a week. Another great advice for you walk with somebody else. I found this was really helpful, especially when I was going to meetings, and I wouldn't really want to go to meetings, but it was just kind of like I had to because I have commitments had them and stuff. But I told my friend I said, Hey, I've got this commitment at the meeting, you want to go with me and it will make it fun, right? This is early in recovery. I love going to meetings, right? Because I always get something out of a meeting. I don't want to say always, but I would say probably 95% of the time I get something out of going to a meeting. But we have to start with small, achievable goals. Once we build that habit of doing that small achievable goal and then becomes part of our routine, then we can evaluate to see if we want to expand on that. There are a lot of really great podcasts out there that can help coach you help coach you walking can help coach you in running in to help coach you in cycling. I mean, all of these different things out there that we can get our bodies moving. Take up martial arts, that's a really great workout. You know. So one thing that you don't want to do is you don't want to spend hours at the gym. It is best for you guys to find activities that you enjoy, and make them part of your life. You don't want this to feel like a chore. You want this to feel normal for you. Be like yeah, man, cool. I walked 10 miles today. You know, maybe you have a job at Amazon. My friend works at Amazon and Damn, she walks almost 10 miles a day. And she's part time. I'm like, holy crap, you don't even need a gym membership. You got your fitness track right there walking around the warehouse. So guys, what I want you to think about today is I want you to think about what can you do to be physically active? How are you tracking your physical activity? What are your activity goals, and again, we need to make them achievable. And we need to start out small. Also, if you have not exercised or you're wanting to change a diet while you're exercising, please consult with your primary care physician. A lot of doctors offices have the means of contacting them remotely, sending an email, making a phone call, contacting the advice nurse. These are all great ways that we can start to implement the health care system that we're paying for into our daily lives. So I want to thank everybody for joining us for today's episode. And again, get out there and be physically active.