July 17, 2018
Why Eating Healthy and Exercising Makes You Happier
Most people notice that when they are consistently being physically active and eating healthy, they tend to feel happier. This is not a coincidence – it is actually scientific! While we know exercising and eating right is good for health and can help you maintain a healthy weight, it can also improve your mood!
Exercising produces a chemical response in your body that can make you feel happier. But, it is not just the chemical response that improves you mood because exercise tends to help you relieve stress and give you energy which will also have a positive impact on your mood, as Mind Body Green points out, “Dopamine, a chemical that plays a role in happiness, is a neurotransmitter in the brain that’s necessary for feelings of pleasure and happiness.
Many studies suggest that as we age, we’re constantly losing our stores of dopamine, which is why we need to constantly seek out experiences that release dopamine. The best way to increase your brain’s dopamine production? Exercise. So run, lift, jump, play — and get happy…When you exercise, you’re actually subjecting yourself to a low-level form of stress by raising your heart rate and triggering a burst of hormonal changes. When you subject yourself to the stress of exercise enough, your body will eventually get better at handling the rest of life’s stressors…No matter how exhausted you are from a long day at work, taking care of your family or recovering from a busy weekend, do your best to muster up all the willpower you have and still work out, because more likely than not, you’ll feel more energized after your workout than you did before it. So the next time you force yourself to get off the couch and get into workout mode, you’ll most likely feel more energized throughout the rest of the day. And more energy equals greater happiness.”
When you need an instant mood boost, there is no arguing that exercise will usually produce the fastest result. But, it is important to note that a healthy diet can also make you happy. You may be staring at a plate of steamed vegetables and rolling your eyes right now but, trust us, eating healthy is likely to increase your happiness! We are not talking just about happiness with weight loss or your appearance either (though that is certainly a great result as well!). Eating healthy supplies your body with the vitamins, minerals, and nutrients it needs for energy, hormonal balance, immune support, and more. Mens Health even notes that there are studies that connect eating more fruits and vegetables with happiness, “Science has found another reason to eat more fruits and vegetables—eating enough of them could make you a happier person, according to new Australian research. More than 12,000 people were surveyed twice about how many fruits and vegetables they typically ate—once in 2007, and again in 2009. During both of those surveys, the subjects also rated their overall life satisfaction on a scale of 1 to 10. Researchers looked at how each person’s fruit and vegetable consumption and happiness changed over those two years, and found that with each extra serving of fruits and vegetables people ate, the happier they felt. For example, if someone ate two more daily servings of fruit in 2009 than they did in 2007, their happiness increased by about .07 on a 10-point scale. Based on the strength of that link, the researchers calculated that if someone went from eating no produce to eating eight servings a day, they’d experience a .24 increase in their happiness score. While that may not sound like much, it’s as large as the boost you’d get from going from unemployed to employed.” When you want to look better, feel better, potentially add years to your life, avoid some life threatening diseases, and feel happier – start with exercise and eating healthy!
