Jog On: How Running Saved My Life

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MyHome.ie (Opens in new window) • Top 1000 • The Gloss (Opens in new window) • Recruit Ireland (Opens in new window) • Irish Times Training (Opens in new window) Anxiety affects everyone differently. You may experience intrusive and out-of-proportion thoughts, prolonged feelings of intense panic, fear and worry, but also physical symptoms of sweating, palpitations, and breathlessness, a change in appetite, tension headaches, dizziness and insomnia. Normally I was writing from about 9pm 'til 2am every day. Most of the day is taken up by other things, my husband goes to bed really early and I can't sleep until about 2am. So, when he goes to bed, I have a glass of wine, start writing and I don’t go to bed until really late. It's ridiculous and it’s not a normal way of living your life, but that’s how I wrote Jog On as well. It’s the only way I can do it and it’s the time of day when my head is quiet enough. And for this book, it worked quite nicely weirdly - writing a book about murder sitting there in the dark on your own. What role does reading play in your life? There’s also too much politics and talk of privilege that I didn’t really come to the book to read, and to be honest… a skinny white middle class woman writing a book about exercise complaining that most of the representation of exercise from online content comes from skinny middle class women I found a bit irritating. Truth - I actually nearly stopped reading this with a 2 chapters left because for some reason it didn't really resonate with me.

We go to a Yoga class given by a family friend. My mum, sister, Greg and I hurtle there late, feeling very frazzled and are taken into a dark room to stretch. I've never done Yoga because I have the attention span of a much younger millennial, but two hours without my phone doing deep breathing is actually quite nice, though I insist on running home because I'm still unsure if what I did would count as exercise. I am a brainwashed running idiot. At home, I eat pitta and hummus and imbibe my life-giving Diet Coke before we go out for dinner, where I eat so much truffle pasta and tiramisu that I fall into an uncomfortable indigestion sleep where I dream about moving to Richmond. I have never wanted to move to Richmond. It probably means I want a baby. I assume every dream post-35 means I subconsciously want a baby.” SundayI didn’t mind the recounting my own life so much as I just had this desperate need to get the facts right for Jog On. With mental health you obviously feel a huge responsibility to get it right and I didn’t want to misrepresent anything or offer bad advice. I also wanted it to be inclusive and not just about me. To do that justice took a lot of research which I found quite daunting, whereas with this I could basically just write from my head. At first it felt really unnerving - I was like, ‘Is this ok? Do I have to research this?’ But after a while, it actually felt like a bit of a weight off and much more freeing than non-fiction where you’ve got to get it right. Did How To Kill Your Family involve any research? I’m still giving it four stars though as it was very well written, with lots of interesting statistics on how running and exercise really does improve your well being and written in a humorous way to lighten the statistics and research load. If you suffer from anxiety and are looking for something in your day to day life that will help change your mindset, then I’d strongly recommend this book. Wear something comfortable to run in: You don’t need any fancy kit, just choose something unrestrictive. I've forgotten to drink water so I drink about eight glasses and then wonder why I need to pee so much during the night' Friday As we can notice, not the entire obstacles that hinder people from running can be stopped by just willpower. Some of them need institutions as well as policymakers to think of how workout can be made accessible to everyone.

Enjoy the beauty around you Your anxiety can make you introverted, forcing your brain to see negative, scary things instead of your surroundings. Nearly every time I go for a run, I stop to take a longer look at a building, a poster, a sunset. My phone is full of photos of weird street names, beautiful views, and dogs I see along the way.However, what can be done if you stay in a city or town? Don’t stress–various studies have revealed that you don’t constantly have to work out in nature to get the advantages of it. Extraordinarily, research done by the University of Essex has discovered that just viewing images of lush, natural landscapes while you work out is sufficient to increase your self-esteem and decrease your blood pressure! I got shin splints, which hurt like hell. I ran too fast and had to stop after wheezing uncontrollably. Photograph: Thomas Butler/The Guardian Think of current research from Stanford University, whereby some participants took a long nature walk, whereas the other participants strolled through an urban surrounding. The researchers discovered that the participants who walked in nature used less time thinking about their sad or negative thoughts. In the years that followed, Bella’s anxiety escalated and she became bound by rituals; avoiding particular letters, numbers, colours and songs, and only travelling to self-designated ‘safe’ places. “There were loads of places I couldn’t go because I would panic on my own. You then become slightly agoraphobic – the world outside feels scary-unsafe,” she explains.

This book was ok. I'm generally not that much of an nonfiction reader so I guess me not being the biggest fan of this memoir isn't all that surprising. Well, it has more to do with a hormone known as cortisol. Cortisol is a stress hormone you’re your body produces when its fight or flight response is activated. Scientists have discovered that when you workout, your cortisol levels reduce, making you feel less stressed later. All of a sudden, she didn’t just saw alone; however, she also felt the beauty of her environments– the sea, the waves, a mountain. While running, she felt little but not unimportant. She understood that she was connected to the natural world, even though her place in it was tiny. As she paused to pay attention to the waves and feel the sun on her face, she was not thinking about the past or stressing about the future. Rather, she was eventually living in the here and now.As someone who has grappled with anxiety for several years, and has found running to be a really effective way of managing the symptoms, I was naturally drawn to this book. And indeed, though the author's experiences of anxiety differ from my own, there was so much that I found myself agreeing with (and thinking 'thank goodness someone else knows how it feels!'). As a matter of fact, OCD begins with worrying thoughts. A mother that has OCD might unexpectedly reason, “What if I killed my daughter?” Now, though thoughts such as these are alarming, they are not abnormal. As a matter of fact, various studies reveal that every one of us experiences random negative feelings such as this occasionally. Five years since that first run, Bella is a confirmed runner for life. “I hope I’ll carry on running until my knees nally give out. Running is a life-long love for me now.” Aged 29 Bella was married, but having trouble doing anything on her own. “I literally wouldn’t go to the corner shop,” she says. “I was at a terrible place with my anxiety.” Her world imploded when her husband walked out on their marriage after eight months, blindsiding her. “That was the worst moment, really. It was incredibly difficult.” I procrastinate for an hour, then I head out to run. I don't eat breakfast, because I've experimented with this before running and it doesn't make me run faster or longer. It just makes me hungry halfway through. I chew bubblegum throughout my runs, which are typically about 12k. I run like Forrest Gump – no planned route, just meandering through bits of London I've not seen in a while. Sometimes that means a loop, mostly it means running somewhere stupidly far away and having to get the tube home.

Together with the hormonal as well as cognitive advantages, there’s also proof that exercise transforms us on a much deeper, neurological level. A current study examined mice that lived in a stressful surrounding. So, some of these mice were permitted to exercise regularly, whereas the other mice were not allowed to exercise at all. Later, the researchers found out that, the active stressed mice had formed new connections in their hippocampus – the part of the brain in charge of emotions. At times, the sufferer develops compulsive behaviors as well–thinking that these behaviors are the only means to stop bad thoughts from becoming a reality. Bella used to think that the only means to stop her mom from dying was to switch off light switches in a certain manner. This made Bella use hours turning lights on and off until she sensed she had done it properly. I line up a book promo and write a chunk of my novel in the afternoon. Saying ‘my novel’ is ridiculous since really only my mum has read it so far. When I get jittery from Diet Coke and sitting down for too long, I go into our junk room (the size of a toilet and filled with stuff we don't know where to put anywhere else) and retrieve some dumbbells and a CMT device, which is basically a dumbbell with handles and filled with ball bearings. I try and do three rounds of five different arm exercises and then some sporadic shaking with the CMT. Then I'll push through a run – same 12k. When she discusses how jogging transformed her life, some individuals are cynical. Some people mention that she might have gotten better notwithstanding. However, science claims that workout does have an actual and useful effect on mental health.

What does it feel like when someone has anxiety? If you haven’t felt it yourself, you might assume that you have a really good understanding. When Bella mentioned about her mental health issues to people, they would usually say, “I completely understand, I’m a worrier as well!” These people really meant well; however, they really had small knowledge of how devastating anxiety can be. Then I do 100 squats and lunges, with weights. I have done this for five years and my bum still doesn't look any different, but I feel like maybe now I'm just holding it up so I can't quit them. I use a kettlebell and swing it about a bit and then I drink Diet Coke to wake me up. I can't make coffee. I have about ten different machines and pots and still every cup of coffee I make myself tastes like manure, so I drink Diet Coke (which I am addicted to) and drink a Berocca. I also have cold green tea, which I make the night before. Again, this seems to do nothing for me but I'm scared to stop in case it's literally holding my metabolism together by a thread. A photo posted by on Was it a more relaxing writing experience not having to recount your own life? The big question is, who is this book for? I personally feel that if you're an anxious person (or suffer from any other mental health issues), then you'll find this insightful. It explains really well how that particular form of exercise can help you to detach from your problems (for a while); how it almost becomes a form of mindfulness and a welcome break from all the things that are dragging you down.