The Journey to Fitness and a Better Mental health
Throughout the years of my life, I’ve always wanted to feel confident and good about myself. Everyone wants high expectations of themselves. I wanted to have a high self esteem and a physique and mental health whom I would be content with. But that always wasn’t the case. For most, physique is considered to be one of the most important aspects of our lives. We all want to feel a certain way about ourselves; yet that being having a nice physical appearance or having a satisfactory mentality. Therefore, fitness and living a healthy lifestyle has guided me through my journey with living a better life. It hasn’t been an easy experience. There have been many obstacles along the way of me trying to make a change in me but without these obstacles, it wouldn’t have led me where I stand today.
When it comes to fitness, we all like to think about working out, living a good and healthy lifestyle just for us to have the body that we want. We have this idea in our heads that we are what we eat, therefore, we have to eat healthy. For me, consistency was a burden and something difficult that I had to follow through, because whenever I would want to workout, I would not be as consistent as I should have been, which led me to not be as motivated in my fitness experience. This came to the realization that every time I would not workout, I would tend to enter a phase of depression and feel some sort of guilt upon myself. I would feel this way because I would look at myself and I would not be happy with what i saw. But then I realized that in order for me to want a better version of myself , I didn’t have to go to the gym and workout. Being at home would also help me by performing physical activities that would make myself feel good. In the text, “Healthier Minds in Fitter Bodies”, the author Cristina Cadenas-Sanchez states, “A number of recent reviews have linked physical activity to mental health, promoting physical activity as an effective tool to improve mental health”. (par.3 line 1-2). This clearly depicts the fact that physical activities are a major key factor into keeping a healthy and balanced lifestyle and mental health. Physical activity doesn’t always have to be considered part of being at the gym and actually working out every single day. Physical activity can consist of just being active, that is jogging, walking, or keeping your mind busy at home by doing chores. So that is exactly what I did. I kept my mind busy and performed activities like dancing, or even going out and running by myself. This definitely helped me a lot and made me realize how important it is to keep your mind awake and keep your physique active. This would most likely improve your mental health and tend to take you out of the state of being in depression.
Over the course of fitness, many people have helped others pursue and improve their mental health. People helping others also helps the ones who are dealing with self contradiction and people who doubt themselves. As for me, I used to tend to doubt myself whenever I couldn’t perform something or simply when I didn’t feel like working on myself. But thankfully, I had other people who helped me and pushed me towards working on things that made me a better person. I would have friends who would talk to me and come up with things that would help me keep my fitness journey alive. Mostly, I wanted to work on my mental health more. Don’t get me wrong, I did care about what my image looked like, but I also wanted to feel good emotionally and mentally. I wanted to think good and positive thoughts of myself. But in order for me to do that, I had to be pleased with my body image. According to “Parenting and Mental Needs of Young, Maltreated Parents, “Prevention programming needs to help parents of young children understand and develop skills in how to promote positive body image, healthy eating patterns and healthy weight- management strategies”. Parents are trying to come up with solutions where their young ones feel good about themselves and keep a good physical lifestyle. As stated before, it bears to be more common that young people won’t perform physical activities. They have to be motivated by others, such as their parents. But it’s not always young kids who are the ones who need help. Young mothers also go through it. They go through depression and anxiety as they experience postpartum. This tends to have a negative outcome because their mental health can deteriorate and become worse. But because of this, people are trying to come up with solutions in order for this to not be an issue any longer. Spending time doing things they love, like making social connections, learning new skills or like discussed, being physically active. This would all help a mental health improve drastically.
Now that we’ve discussed how fitness has helped people pursue their body image and improved their mental health, these things aren’t the only things that people want to have a healthier lifestyle. People actually do it for their health. Studies have proved that if one isn’t as active, they can suffer from serious diseases in the present or future.These chronic diseases can lead to death. According to “Effects of Outdoor Equipment Exercise and Walking Exercise on Fitness and Body Image in Middle Aged Women”, the author Jong-Hyuck Kim states “cardiovascular exercise which helps to burn the fat stored in the body and resistance exercise which increases basal metabolism by bulking up the muscle mass are mainly considered to make up a combined exercise program to treat obesity”. (pg 945). Many people suffer from very serious and chronic diseases and this could be due to them not being as active as they should be. Not being physically active can lead to obesity, heart problems and/or other diseases that can be considered to be life threatening. When I started my fitness journey, I would encourage myself to watch videos of how people’s lives changed for the better after they tried working out. Obesity is one of the most common diseases that people suffer from not exercising. People will get overweight as they eat and not exercise and this will lead to being obese and developing heart diseases, which can be one disease that can be considered life threatening. Another life threatening disease that can appear to people who aren’t performing physical activities is diabetes. Diabetes is a chronic disease which is left untreated, it can lead to many unfortunate results, such as amputations. But, this disease can easily be treated with a healthy diet and performing fitness. Like said before, diabetes can affect people who are more obese than others. That is why doctors recommend people who are overweight to exercise on a daily basis. It is important for them to perform at least 30 minutes to 1 hour of physical activity to help reduce fat. Therefore, when one takes care of themselves, they want to keep going. This then leads to a much refined mentality. It will improve and release stress that you’ve been carrying on.
Consistency is key to success. If one does not have consistency, it’s most likely going to be hard to where you want to get. In that case, it was me. I had a problem with consistency and not having a proper routine when it came to my fitness journey. This immediately led to me not having any type of motivation or the urge to workout. That is why having a routine before actually starting your fitness is believed to be important. In the article, “A Look at my Fitness journey and How it Changed Me”, the author states, “To keep myself motivated, I created a schedule for my workouts and strictly started following it until it became natural to me. After 4 months of workouts, I feel stronger, motivated and happy. So what changed in the last 4 months, let’s talk about it.” (par. 10). Having an organized schedule is very advised when it comes to having a routine in your workout. It is to be said that not having a routine in your fitness can discourage you from actually keeping going. It can bring your self esteem down, which leads you to not doing fitness at all. Therefore, it’s important to come up with a routine before actually trying fitness. Being focused on yourself is also very very important. When I started, I used to care about what other people thought about me and what they would think as I worked out at the gym. This sort of brought my motivation down and made me not want to work on myself any longer. But then, I said to myself how what I was doing was to be happy with me, not for others to be happy. I wanted to change for me only. Having self-confidence in public places should be considered by people who deal with anxiety. Gym anxiety is real and many people have been through it, including myself. The feeling of being judged and talked about has crossed my mind several times. In the article, “A Reflection on my Fitness Journey”, Bri Healthy says, “During exercise, I can completely clear my mind and be 100% in the moment. I focus on the moves that I am performing, and in those moments, nothing else matters other than how I feel physically and how proud I am of myself”.(par 5). At the end of the day, the only person who’s going to celebrate your success is going to be yourself. Having your focus 100% on yourself will lead to you becoming successful and actually getting to where you want to be. When I became more confident, I did realize how important it is to not care about other people’s thoughts. You do what you think it’s best for you and what makes you happy at the end of the day.
In conclusion, my journey to live a better life has been aided by fitness and a healthy lifestyle. Being active and performing physical activities has immensely changed my mental health. Keeping your focus on yourself will help you gain confidence and trust in yourself. Fitness doesn’t always have to be performed just for your physique or just because you want to look a certain way. Working out is considered to help reduce the amount of people that later on suffer from diseases. Anything you want to pursue will come only if you put the effort in. But giving up, will not.
SOURCES CITED
Source 1
Cristina Cadenas-Sanchez, Healthier Minds in Fitter Bodies: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of the Association between Physical Fitness and Mental Health in Youth 27, July, 2021
Source 2
“Parenting and Mental Needs of Young, Maltreated Parents https://web-s-ebscohost-com.ccny-proxy1.libr.ccny.cuny.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=0&sid=089cedea-e7a3-414d-9266-5cfbc8d6d6d0%40redis
Source 3
Jong-Hyuck Kim, Effects of Outdoor Equipment Exercise and Walking Exercise on Fitness and Body Image in Middle Aged Women 15, December, 2020
Source 4
A look at My fitness Journey and How it changed Me 25, September, 2020
Source 5
Bri Healthy, A Reflection on my Fitness Journey 13, March, 2018
