Sports and healthy lifestyle against stress

 Good thoughts create good feelings and good feelings fight against stress and stimulate the immune system.
But what if the mind is so bitter that good thoughts cannot be created? This is where movement helps. The more active you are, the more good-mood hormones are created, even though your mood was depressing before. People, who are used to exercising on a daily basis generally have lower level of stress and are less likely depressed. However, by bigger depression, they may not feel well after their regular workout, because they are used to workout. So a little more effort like quicker running or some other training, like dancing for example, would help out. I run every day and since it is good to run faster sometimes and then calmly again, then good music has a positive effect on the senses and, with extra effort, there is a greater production of welfare hormones. And if you find an exciting goal, that you want to accomplish, it will, for example, lead to dopamine production. So during at least a couple of hours after training, it will be much better.
Healthy fresh food also has a stimulating effect on the body and mind. Instant pleasures like chocolate, coffee, pies, and other fast foods, also smoking and alcohol, provide short-term enjoyment, that can be devastating in long term. Of course, a lot of people have ups and downs by trying to be healthier, but there are little tips that can be helpful, for example, drinking water every time you want to snack and not a couple of sips of water, but enough to drive away the desire to eat something unhealthy. It is especially good to drink water with lemon. Similarly, going for a run or walk will save you from eating.
It is often stress that drives us to eat. However, there are a number of useful tricks against it, such as planning a nice event to look forward to each week, as this kind of planning and joyful expectation will also lead to dopamine production.
For many people with a fast pace of life, waiting is really stressful and i don´t mean here the joyful anticipation and excitement that precedes a great event, but, for example, sitting in a traffic jam in the morning. These situations can be solved by always having some activities, for which there would be otherwise difficult to find time, such as meditation exercises or listening to audio books.
In addition, people have a natural mechanism for turning off bad feelings. Negative feelings create stress hormones, because they would be needed in fight or escape situations to move faster, but after a direct threat, we can actually turn them off with a little bit of willpower. People with lower level of stress, who practice relaxing things, such as yoga and meditation or calming breathing techniques, are able to switch quickly after a stressful situation. Organizing your emotions is a matter of brief moment. If during this short moment you fail to understand the inappropriateness of fear or sadness, negative feelings can begin to live their own life just like a growing avalanche. If the negative thoughts keep spinning in your head, the emotions will grow over your head and then it will be much harder to calm down than it would have been at first because the nerves are already strained. It helps here, that negative emotions can be controlled as they arise. It can be done so, that we are aware of our feelings for a moment, then discard them and move on to other activities. In the old days it was thought, that in such situations, crying and outbursts of anger would be a relief, but newer studies have long disproved them. Rage can increase anger and crying can lead to depression.
If you do daily soothing breathing exercises or meditation and yoga plus some physical training, then your mind is generally calmer and you don`t overreact so much to stressful situations and you will overcome quicker sad or frustrating situations.
I have featured here on Cam.TV blog several books explaining the impact of sports and healthy eating on our mental and physical health. I recommend reading them to learn about stress, a healthy lifestyle and many other truths and studies, but also to get inspired.