As many of you know exercising is good for physical and mental health, not to mention trending all over social media. This post will dive a bit deeper into the benefits a workout regime has on our body internally and externally. I will do my best to remove the cookie-cutter stuff and get directly into the hard-hitting material. There are two sections, temptation and mental health, thus without further ado, let’s begin.

Mental Health

Exercise has many mental health benefits from aiding in anxiety management to increase cognitive performance. Yet, the timeline for these benefits is relatively unknown, therefore leading people to stray from progress.

That said, I’d like to present a finding based on depression research. Studies have shown that exercising for half an hour, three times a week yields the same results as a prescription for Zoloft. Those of you who do not know what Zoloft is, here is a brief rundown. It helps reduce depression, anxiety, panic attacks and unwanted thoughts and improves appetite, sleep, mood as well as energy levels. A drug to help improve quality of life with some side effects in the fine print somewhere.

However, these same benefits can happen by exercising at least three times a week for less than an hour. There must be a catch to this natural alternative right? Wrong, the only thing you have to do is not give in to temptation and reactive tendencies.

Temptation

In life, the temptation arises every day for us to take the easy road rather than the one less travelled. Unhealthy meals, skipping the gym, procrastinating on tasks, instead of eating healthy, exercising and completing tasks promptly. The crazy thing is the majority of the time we do this, because of our environment rather than other factors. I know many of you are thinking “wait… how does my environment play into poor decision making?” It is simple when the environment we live in is conducive to our current lifestyle no change will happen.

Therefore by creating an environment of no temptation, the changes we want will occur. An environment that includes less unhealthy food and more healthy options, laying out exercise or business attire the night before to streamline the moring, in addition to using apps like “SelfControl” to limit distractions. I know these options are only for the problems addressed above, but they will help kick start you in the right direction.

That said, creating this type of environment will be beneficial for more than keeping you on track. Removing temptation allows for more productivity no matter the circumstance and with this, you will create more freedom.

Give this a try and let me know how it goes!

E