About this time each year, people make resolutions that involve exercise. To lose weight or improve muscle tone or just generally improve health. But, happiness and fighting the blues is usually not on the exercise list. I've not found very many people who say, "I'm going to increase my happiness and avoid the blues and I'm going to use exercise to do it."
But, researchers have found that exercise does make you feel better - mentally and emotionally. Exercise helps you manage stress and will boost your general sense of well being. But, until recently, no one seemed to know exactly how much exercise you needed to feel brighter.
It turns out, it's not very much. Twenty minutes per week is all you need to boost your mood and it's just activity really. Twenty minutes of doing anything physical - gardening, house cleaning, walking your dogs - was shown to improve mental well-being.
Considering that a lot of people live sedentary lives (one that is defined by fewer than 5000 steps per day), twenty minutes a week is a good place to start. Of course, twenty minutes per week of activity (and my opinion is that exercise and activity are different things - you can read about it here) won't do much for your overall fitness but it's a lot easier to do when you're in a better mood.
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Hamer, M., E. Stamatakis, et al. (2009). "Dose-response relationship between physical activity and mental health: the Scottish Health Survey." Br J Sports Med 43(14): 1111-4.
