How Running Every Day Is Improving My Mental Health
By: Ryan Fan
Tags: Health, Mental Health, Fitness, Lifestyle, Mindfulness

How Running Every Day Is Improving My Mental Health

If you think you’re too busy to exercise, running can help you cope with stress

From alan9187 on Pixabay

In the past 21 days, I have run every day. I don’t want to make it sound like a bigger accomplishment than it really is. I’ve been running since I was 12 and pretty seriously and competitively at that.

Running every day has been special this time because it’s improving my mental health. I’m sleeping better, more relaxed, less stressed, and my anxiety is significantly less prevalent than it usually is. According to Bella Mackie at The Guardian, running improves mental health, and one theory links the hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible devoted to memory, directly with mental health. People with depression have decreased volume in the hippocampus, which exercise helps counteract.

A study of 14,000 people from Asics found that 82% of UK runners said running helps clear their mind, and 78% of people feel saner and in control because they’d been running. The same study found that running helps increase activity in the anterior cortex, especially in young people. The anterior cortex is a key part of the brain linked to problem-solving and emotional resilience.

However, most of the benefits of running every day on my mental health have been difficult to explain. I’ve simply been happier, and it’s hard to put words on the phenomenon. Currently, I am managing a full-time job as a teacher in a virtual setting, graduate school doing my Master’s in special education at Johns Hopkins University, and my side hustle of writing and editing. Some days a couple of weeks ago, I felt like I was absolutely drowning in stress. I stared at my computer screen for hours at end, doing absolutely nothing — I didn’t know where to start.

About a week and a half into running every day, I felt less stressed. Running isn’t a cure-all solution that’s going to change your life. Maybe it is if you pick up the habit, but I’m simply trying to be more consistent for no other reason than running, helping me feel better daily. I have felt far less of those moments where I’ve been so stressed I could barely think.

Also, since I’ve increased the intensity of some of my runs, running has helped me concentrate more and be more focused on whatever I have to do. I don’t know whether I’m more productive or not, because after all, running is a significant expenditure of both time and energy. However, I feel more in a flow state whenever I am working on a day I ran. It’s a more sustainable way forward to prioritize both my mental and physical health instead of powering my way through an incredibly stressful job, graduate school, and a side hustle.

Conveniently, running every day has coincided with finally going back to therapy again. I’ve only had one session where I’m still introducing my stressors and haven’t spoken that deeply about my life, but I’m excited to see what the future holds. Also, because I’ve been running every day, I’ve been drinking less and felt like I didn’t need the beer or two after a stressful day of work than usual.

As for running, not every run has been long. Not every run has been hard. I have plenty of easy runs a week where I talk the whole run and am not breathing hard at all. On runs of higher intensity, however, there are times I feel like a sheer zombie and can barely function for a couple of hours.

But running has been beneficial for me simply because it’s a time to tune everything else out and reset. For 30 minutes, an hour, or even 90 minutes on a given day, running is time for me. It’s not a time where I have to be productive. It’s not a time where I have to check my e-mail and constantly get something done — it’s just time for me to put one foot in front of another.

And having a streak of days I’ve spent running means I’ve not only rebuilt my habit, but accomplished something. No matter what goes wrong in teaching or anything else on a given day, I will have run that day. I intend to keep the streak the whole year barring injury — so yes, I’ll run on New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day, Christmas, or any other day. It’s not like running is something that takes up the whole day.

I used to have a toxic relationship with running. I obsessed over my times on the track or in cross country and focused on my performance as the sole determination of my identity. Running every day is the goal, and I’ve accomplished it for 21 days — and for running just to be fun, and just something that makes me feel better has gotten me to enjoy it again.

Takeaways

I’m not saying running every day is for everyone. Running is a luxury that requires significant time, effort, and energy. I couldn’t run every day when I worked my summer job at Amazon — I simply couldn’t because my physically intensive job made me not want to do anything else physically. But it’s been working well for me since I spent about 15 hours a day in front of a computer screen between work and everything else.

For me, running’s pros have drastically outweighed the cons. There are times I didn’t always feel like that was true, but in the hectic time of a pandemic and mounting obligations, running, or whatever exercise you prefer, is the escape into a world free of all the stressors thrown at you daily.

If you think you’re too busy to exercise, like I do so much of the time, know that exercise improving your mood, pumping your endorphins, and reducing the negative effects of stress can help you cope.