{"id":103,"date":"2011-01-06T10:54:53","date_gmt":"2011-01-06T10:54:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/feline.wranga.com.au\/wordpress-3.0.1\/wordpress\/?p=103"},"modified":"2011-01-08T09:37:21","modified_gmt":"2011-01-08T09:37:21","slug":"exercise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clinicalpsychology.net.au\/?p=103","title":{"rendered":"Exercise"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Following on from my Journaling entry there is one more thing that I would strongly urge you to begin this year and that is\u2026..yes, you guessed it: exercising. I\u2019ll bet that is on many people\u2019s new year\u2019s resolution list anyway so what I want to do is give you a little extra incentive.<\/p>\n<p>So, why the big deal about exercise? Unless you\u2019ve been living under a rock for the last 10 years you probably know something about the physical health benefits so I don\u2019t really want to go too much into that. But what about the psychological benefits of exercising? Well, they may be more significant than you thought:<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>According to recent search (also conducted in Australia) regular, aerobics exercise is <em>as effective<\/em> in combating depression as<em> our best<\/em> anti-depressant medication! Of course the pharmacological companies are not wild about this finding, which may be why it is not more widely known. So think about it, as effective as our best medication but without the adverse side-effects. In fact, one could argue that the side-effects are positive: looking better, feeling stronger, reduces the risk of developing heart disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, colon cancer, breast cancer and diabetes, and help insomnia just to name a few.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<ul>\n<li>Regular exercise       (together with novelty, psychotherapy and attention) has been found to       increase neuro-plasticity (that is, adaptive changes in the brain). Now,       how amazing is that? So if you have difficulties getting out of bed and       off to the gym just remind yourself of this: neuro-plasticity! You\u2019re       doing it for your brain! Ironically it is also your brain that will try       to sabotage your efforts. Just watch your mind as it is scrambling for       excuses: I\u2019ll start tomorrow, I overslept, I can\u2019t start on a Wednesday,       my shoulder hurt, I have a long day, I don\u2019t have time etc. Watch it, but       don\u2019t let your mind seduce you. You know what\u2019s best for you.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I recently read somewhere (I can\u2019t remember where. Hmmm\u2026maybe too much surfing around on different websites?) someone saying: \u201cI have to go and exercise early in the morning before my brain figures out what I\u2019m doing\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m a bit like that. Usually by the time I\u2019m fully awake I\u2019m already on the bike listening to Channel V.<\/p>\n<p>So, \u00a0all together now: <strong>neuro-plasticity<\/strong> \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Following on from my Journaling entry there is one more thing that I would strongly urge you to begin this year and that is\u2026..yes, you guessed it: exercising. I\u2019ll bet that is on many people\u2019s new year\u2019s resolution list anyway &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/clinicalpsychology.net.au\/?p=103\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-therapy-notes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinicalpsychology.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinicalpsychology.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinicalpsychology.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinicalpsychology.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinicalpsychology.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=103"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/clinicalpsychology.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":118,"href":"https:\/\/clinicalpsychology.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103\/revisions\/118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinicalpsychology.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinicalpsychology.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinicalpsychology.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}