Reduce Stress with Exercise This Holiday Season

What is the connection between exercise and your mood?  The overall feeling of doing something helps you be motivated and feel you are achieving something.  Even something as simple as taking a walk might help release your mind and body of much despised stress.  Making exercise a regular habit is well known in promoting optimal health.

  The mood-boosting effects of exercise may be the result of chemical increases in the brain. These chemicals include: endorphins, serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine. Exercise releases the natural chemical endorphins, which have been shown to be associated with less stress. Endorphins are those chemicals that help us with feelings of euphoria, commonly referred to as "runner's high".

Studies have shown that one 30-minute session of moderate-intensity exercise can help ease tension, distress, self-duress, depression, tension and anger.  This might not cross your mind when you are working up a sweat or feeling soreness after doing that last set of pushups during that 30-45 minute workout, but in the end, deep down you know it is paying off.

Don't give up on your goals.  There are just a few days left in the year and you have just a few more workouts to finish! Get ready for the New Beginnings for yourself in 2014!

Zeke Samples, IFA, CSN, CPR, IDEA

Surreal Body Solutions, LLC

803.322.7649

www.SurrealBodySolutions.com 

& contributing health and exercise author

Personal Training | Nutrition | Supplements | Motivation