Obviously when you're depressed you don't want to do stuff, especially not exercise. But they never stop telling you how good it is for depression. Well, not for me. I tried the 5x5 program, weightlifting 3x a week, but it was just another commitment to feel bad about not being able to keep up with. I tried running but would nearly always end up in tears and even more depressed for days after (probably low blood sugar - cardio has never agreed with me).

However, since feeling a little better I've been able to experiment with a few things. I've decided that I'm not going to force myself to do anything that makes me feel that bad as I'll just end up not doing it and feeling worse!

What I've discovered is that if I do 30 mins of light exercise of something a bit more 'fun' (for me that's dancing, pointe work, hula hooping, bellydancing) and then listen to a visualisation audio ( I like this one and others on their channel), I am actually able to feel good after exercise!

I haven't been great at keeping this up lately but I'll try to get back to it soon as I know it helps (even though the prospect of doing it is ...bleuuurgh). Just thought I'd share this with you guys as a practical tip which has really worked for me on several occasions so far. If you only manage to do one thing in a day, I'd tell you to make it this as I personally feel i get a lot back from the effort I put in (whereas I don't usually get anything out of anything I do).