Jog On: How Running Saved My Life

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Despite the unbearable sadness, the end of her marriage provided a tipping point. “When he left it was a catalyst. I had to move forward and break out of this,” Bella explains. Anxious even as a very small child, I had let my worries fester, take control, and dominate my life. Mental health problems had stunted my own growth, leaving me too scared to take on challenges. I quit things when they got hard. I turned down opportunities that would push me, or give me independence. I preferred being small. 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. In an effort to feel safe, she began evading areas that made her panic. However, as the years went by, this signified she couldn’t go to most of the city where she stayed, or go to her local stores, or even go to the closest park near her. When she became married, Bella was dodging from everything –such as planes, freeways, elevators, and subway.

I like to be on my own, and have never understood what weakness exists in people who crave the company of others all the time.” 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.Friday! I stupidly invited eleven people over for dinner when we don't even have eleven chairs or even forks. I got over excited about adult entertaining (not that kind of entertaining, settle down) and forgot that I can't really cook, only bake, which I do with wildly over enthusiastic gusto. So I've made three desserts and not thought about the main course. I run blindly towards Islington, assuming everyone has dinner parties there every night and hope that I can end my jog there and buy overpriced cauliflower and some seed bread, which I do. At home, I make enough vegetable lasagne to feed every New Labour plotter circa 1997 and offer up enough of the weird bread and good wine that the dessert is only half heartedly eaten. The garden chairs came in very handy.” Saturday

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. 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.” Podcasts and music help They distract me when I get bored, or tired. More importantly, at the beginning, they made my brain concentrate on something other than worry.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.

Wear something comfortable to run in: You don’t need any fancy kit, just choose something unrestrictive. 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! Truth - I actually nearly stopped reading this with a 2 chapters left because for some reason it didn't really resonate with me.However, the sedentary group hadn’t formed these connections. This shows that, at a neurological level, exercise prepares us to deal with stress better. It definitely assisted Bella. At worst, I’ve looked in the mirror at my own face and not recognised it to be me, and not just because I had terrible hair and bad skin that morning. It’s a strange and awful experience. When I was trapped in a fug of anxiety and depression in my early 20s, disassociation made it feel as though the people around me were actors in a bad reality show. I couldn’t connect with loved ones; everything felt fake and staged.