Healthy Living for Mental Wellness

imoquenn

Hi!

I'm looking for a group of friends whose primary motivation on myfitnesspal isn't weight loss - it's developing healthy habits to create a state of mental well-being.

I've been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and I find healthy living is often difficult. When I'm depressed, I binge, and when I'm manic, well, I don't care about healthy choices.

Any like-minded people out there?

PrivateVenue

Alright, so my primary goals are to feel strong and lose weight, but the side effects of that is a better sense of self. I have depression and maybe a bit of anxiety. I have my down days and I've had to change my coping mechanisms from eating to running and exercising. My husband has bipolar and he does weight training to help keep his moods at an even keel. You have to find what works for you. Just get moving and talk to someone about the way you're feeling, whether it's a counselor or a friend.

opuntia

My primary goal is also mental wellbeing - this is much more important to me than weight and appearance. I do not have a mental illness, but I'm on the autism spectrum, and I find diet and exercise strongly influence my energy levels, my motivation, my ability to focus, and sensory integration. Being on the autism spectrum causes quite a bit of fatigue, because my brain doesn't automatically process a lot of things that most people process automatically, so I have to consciously and intellectually process these things - so a huge goal of mine is improving energy levels and reducing fatigue.

I also have difficulties with organisation, which can get very overwhelming, so I find it very useful to log my food and exercise, and form healthy habits, because that gives me more of a sense of control over my life. I tend to binge on crisps/potato chips when I have sensory overload, because the sensation of crunching is calming to me - but I am trying to find other strategies of controlling sensory issues.

Feel free to add me if you want. It would be nice to have some friends with similar goals. I imagine some of my specific goals are quite unusual compared to most, but my overall goal is mental wellbeing, and to be able to enjoy life to the full, which I imagine is the underlying goal of most people.

imoquenn

PrivateVenue: That's what I'm trying to do now, focus on exercise instead of eating! It's great to hear that you're having success with that... how do you maintain your motivation?

optuntia: Wow, good for you. I'd actually never really though about how autism can impact one's physical health like that. Although I recently saw a documentary on autism, and apparently there's a correlation between healthy eating and a decrease in symptoms?
Does it impact your choice of exercise? And at what point did you realize that healthy habits helped with the symptoms of your autism?

opuntia

imoquenn - yes, for me, what I eat definitely affects how I function, mostly because of hypersensitivity, and also digestive problems, which are common in autism. I don't see it as being about symptoms as such - I believe autistic behaviours are simply coping mechanisms to deal with what's going on inside one's head, such as sensory overload, and difficulty making sense of one's environment. But choice of diet and exercise definitely affect how my mind processes things - I find swimming helps a lot with sensory integration, for instance.

It's been a gradual realisation, to be honest, because I didn't get diagnosed till adulthood, and for a long time there wasn't a lot of awareness of the physical and sensory aspects - the research on that has been more recent. So for me it's largely been about working out what works for me, and then later relating that to what people have later discovered about the autism spectrum.