Tag Archive for: mood

The Default Is Always Exercise

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Ever have one of those days? For no particular reason at all, you don’t really want to bother watching what you eat or doing any exercise. What do you do?

Get on the floor and do five or ten push-ups or sit-ups, or get on your exercise bike and get your legs going for one minute. Then re-assess: what’s next? Maybe you stick with floor exercise. Maybe you put on some walking shoes and walk around the yard. Then you decide it’s a nice day so you’ll go for a longer walk. Or bike ride.

Or maybe you’ll just stop. That’s okay as well. Exercise is always the default to get yourself moving in the right direction. Maybe you’ll find out you can do more sit-ups than you thought.

It’s important that you think about why you didn’t care about your exercise or meal plan. Are you coming down with something? I’m currently battling a Supercold, so I know how that can sap your good intentions. Are you feeling down about something? Is it a small setback? Or is depression slipping up on you? Whatever the reason, being active beats sitting and thinking you’re not worth anything. When it’s one of those days, getting the blood moving is the way to get going.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Can Cutting Calories Improve Your Mood?

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In research like the CALERIE study, there’s a tendency to focus on physical changes but what about mood, depression, and quality of life (QOL)? Did researchers find changes in those variables as well? Let’s take a look. While the two-year span of the data analyzed varied slightly from other phases of the study, physiological results were virtually identical to the other phases I’ve talked about in previous Memos.

Testing Procedures

For those readers familiar with the assessment tools typically used in measuring psychological variables, here’s a list of the instruments they used.

Mood: Beck Depression Inventory-II [BDI-II] and the Profile of Mood States [POMS]

QOL: Rand 36-Item Short Form and Perceived Stress Scale

Sleep: Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index [PSQI]

Sexual function: Derogatis Interview for Sexual Function Self-report

Results

For simplicity’s sake, I won’t use numbers to report the results, because unless one is familiar with the scale for each assessment it wouldn’t be meaningful. Every following relationship was statistically significant or correlated. Compared with the ad libitum (AL) group, the caloric restriction (CR) group had significantly improved mood, reduced tension, and improved general health and sexual drive at month 24. Sleep duration had improved by month 12 and was sustained through month 24.

Greater percent weight loss in the CR group at month 24 was associated with increased vigor and less mood disturbance, improved general health, and better sleep quality. The researchers concluded that there was no negative impact of CR on psychological variables in normal-weight people.

I have a tendency to put more faith in measurable variables such as blood pressure or heart rate than inventories and questionnaires, but the results demonstrated that all measures moved in a positive direction when restricting calories: better perception of mood, health, QOL, more and better sleep, and even sexual vigor. There are indications that CR may be beneficial even in people who are normal weight.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Reference: JAMA Intern Med. 2016 Jun 1;176(6):743-52.