Exercise and Mood Regulation: Set your Intentions!
It has been well established that exercise helps to regulate our mood on an acute basis (Edwards et al., 2017). Our body has a short-term response to the stimulus of exercise and the short-term response can become a chronic response if we remain active consistently long term. But the important question to ask ourselves related to exercise and mood regulation is: Should our ONLY goal/expectation from our exercise routine be mood regulation?
The reason this question is important is dependent on how an individual is using exercise to regulate their mood. If the only tool in someone’s toolbox to regulate their mood is exercise this can be problematic dependent on what this individual means when they say ‘exercise’. When most people claim that exercise benefits their mood regulation, they typically mean some type of moderate to vigorous intensity cardiovascular exercise or resistance training. The problem is if our only means of mood regulation is dependent on moderate/vigorous intensity cardiovascular exercise or resistance training we are typically not able to engage in this form of exercise every day! For example, if I am having a tough day at work I cannot depend on moderate/vigorous intensity cardiovascular exercise/resistance training to be my ONLY tool to cope with the day. I cannot run a flights of stairs every time I am stressed at work. I cannot run sprints on a treadmill EVERY day. I am not demonizing vigorous exercise, but there is a reason a sold exercise routine has proper periodization within it and looks at variables like frequency, intensity, duration/time, type of activity. We cannot engage in vigorous exercise everyday/all year because the regulation of our mood requires it! We need to have other tools in our toolbox for those moments when we need to be able to regulate our mood.
A great way to consider mood regulation and exercise is not to have the sole goal/purpose of an exercise routine to be mood regulation, but to understand a great consequence of being active is a more regulated mood.
Having a balanced exercise routine with flexibility/mobility and less demanding activities is important. There have been studies that have investigated aerobic exercise in coordination with mindfulness-based yoga and found mood regulation to be improved (Zhang et al., 2019).
I always tell clients that exercise is synonymous with stress (exercise=stress). We stress our body a little bit and our body adapts to this overload over time with the right balance of recovery between bouts of stress/exercise. Knowing that exercise is a form of stress to our body helps to understand that moderate/vigorous exercise cannot be conducted every day or every time we feel we need to regulate our mood. Over emphasizing mood regulation solely from exercise can lead to viewing exercise in a compulsive manner, which I have defined in an earlier blog post and will continue to discuss in future posts. A common symptom of overtraining is mood dysregulation. Just think, if our sole goal of an exercise routine is mood regulation and due to lack of other tools to regulate our mood, we over depend on the exercise leading to overtraining. The consequence of overtraining gives us the exact opposite of mood regulation, which was the original goal.
Also, consider someone who might have an underlying mood disorder in which their mood may be a little more dysregulated during a typical day. If someone with a mood disorder is depending solely on exercise this can very quickly lead to viewing exercise compulsively. Set the intentions of the exercise routine before you begin!
To summarize, a great consequence of being active is regulation of our mood, but solely depending on exercise for a stable mood can lead to viewing exercise in a compulsive manner. Compulsive exercise can lead to overtraining with negative physical/mental consequences from the stimulus of exercise. I will post future blogs regarding some of the interesting physiology at play with exercise and mood regulation.
References
Edwards, M. K., Rhodes, R. E., & Loprinzi, P. D. (2017). A Randomized Control Intervention Investigating the Effects of Acute Exercise on Emotional Regulation. American journal of health behavior, 41(5), 534–543. https://doi.org/10.5993/AJHB.41.5.2
Zhang, Y., Fu, R., Sun, L., Gong, Y., & Tang, D. (2019). How Does Exercise Improve Implicit Emotion Regulation Ability: Preliminary Evidence of Mind-Body Exercise Intervention Combined With Aerobic Jogging and Mindfulness-Based Yoga. Frontiers in psychology, 10, 1888. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01888