eat right

You’ve heard it all before, eat right and exercise and your body will thank you, but did you know your brain will too? This probably comes as no surprise, but studies show eating right and exercising can improve happiness. Epidemiologist, Felice N. Jacka, studied 67 subjects with depression to measure if switching to a healthy diet would have a therapeutic impact. Some were taking antidepressants, some were treated with psychotherapy, and some were treated with both. Of those subjects, half participated in nutritional consulting sessions and the other half received one-on-one social support (someone who accompanied and engaged in social activities with them), which has been successful in treating depression before. The research concluded the group who changed their diet was happier than the group with social support by the end of the study.¹

& exercise

Exercise is proven to boost your mood both during and after a workout. This is because our bodies release serotonin and dopamine during physical activities, and these are the chemicals responsible for regulating our mood. When exercising, our hearts pump more oxygen to the brain enabling us to better manage depression and anxiety.² Moreover, exercise is proven to be beneficial for cognition, specifically when it comes to memory and learning processes, and it’s also shown to have anti-depressant effects.³ Physical exercise therefore, can cause hippocampal neurogenesis: the growing of new neurons in the brain.⁴ I mean who wouldn’t want fresh new brain cells for the easy tradeoff of sweat and brief bodily pain, right?

ACTIVITY

This week I want you to exercise for at least an hour everyday. I’ve listed some forms of exercise you can try below:

outdoor

• Walking (I really mean it,
exercise doesn’t have to be
super hard to work!)
• Sports such as tennis, soccer,
basketball, volleyball, etc.
• Running
• Biking

indoor

• HIIT (high intensity interval training)
• Yoga
• Pilates
• Dance workouts
• Barre
• Lifting weights
• Bodyweight exercises

If you’re looking to follow some at-home workouts with no equipment on Youtube, I recommend:

• Chloe Ting for beginners
• Pamela and Blogilates for intermediate
• Natacha Océane and Lilly Sabri for advanced

And yes men, you can try it too! You might find they’re harder than they look.

Seeing as I’m no doctor or dietitian, I’ll leave it up to doctor Mike Evans to teach you more about healthy eating in the video below. Take this week to evaluate your eating habits and see where you could improve. Although we're focusing on improving our well-being, it’s common for our minds to drift to how it’ll affect our bodies too. So I want to remind you that trying to lose weight quickly with fad diets is ineffective and you’ll ultimately mess up your metabolism leading to even more weight gain once your weight inevitably bounces back.⁵ Sustainable, long term lifestyle changes always work best for both your mind and body.

If you suspect you may be suffering from an eating disorder, I urge you to see a doctor because it’s impossible to manage on your own.

what's the best diet? healthy eating 101

Well, that’s it for Week 4! Amazing job for making it this far. Motivation is a tricky thing, so you should be proud of yourself for making it all the way here. Even if life got busy and you’ve returned after a long break, that’s okay too. Positive change is a long process and you have the rest of your life to figure it out and try again.

WEEK 4