Beat The Winter Blues

January 6, 2020 Posted in: ADJUSTMENTS

More advantages to staying active in the cold.

A daily workout releases feel-good, de-stress brain chemicals, gives you a break from the daily grind and helps ease depression. Plus, if you combine exercise with the great outdoors you can cheer yourself up even more!

Increase your tolerance – Ask your body to regularly perform under more extreme circumstances, both physically and otherwise; certainly, cold weather fits that bill, and increases the body’s ability to handle and do the hard things. Physically, the body can withstand more — and mentally and emotionally you gain strength as well. It takes grit to exercise regularly in the cold temperatures and do what we don’t actually want to do. There is a mental aspect that we work regularly and this grit translates to every other area of your life. When more focus is required than usual in your daily life, you can use that “toughness muscle” it takes to get up and go out when it is 25 degrees outside. When your body is called on for an unusually lengthy day, you can call on the reserves it takes when pumping out that last one mile of a five-mile run in the 31-degree weather. The grit translates; use it.

Get more Vitamin D – Most of us need more Vitamin D. Natural Vitamin D obtained by spending time in sunlight can feel hard to come by in the winter months. Vitamin D is an essential component of health on many levels in the body from bone health to calcium absorption to optimal mental health and feeling good. Most folks see the sun a whole lot less in the winter time. If you can create runs or exercise outside during the daytime and get 15-20 minutes of sunlight while you’re at it, you’re doing your body and mind a world of good, likely beyond your knowing.