Wednesday, July 13, 2005

Exercise withdrawal can be mood-altering

This totally makes sense to me. Since I've started running I've become intolerably chirpy in the morning. I missed running this morning because of sleeping late, and already I feel grouchy and unfocused.

"After only one week of exercise withdrawal ... approximately three workouts missed ... there were significant increases in feelings of fatigue and decreases in feelings of vigor."After two weeks, the symptoms got worse: The subjects were more tired, depressed; they felt pangs of guilt over missing exercise. These feelings correlated with a loss of physical fitness. "The people who lost the most fitness were the ones who experienced the largest increases in negative mood," Berlin said.

Full article here

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Wow, that's really interesting. I've definitely experienced this, but to hear that losing fitness is correlated with a negative mood - enlightening.