Improve Your Mood with Exercise

by Doug Jackson, M.Ed.,CSCS

Are you in a good mood today? I am. Partly because I absolutely love writing my newsletters and knowing I'm reaching out to many people with what I believe is great info!

But I have to tell you...last night I was moody as anything. Anybody that knows me knows that when I don't get enough sleep, and especially when I'm hungry, I turn into a little baby. Imagine what a baby is like when it's hungry and tired. Got the picture? Well, I guess I'm the grown up version of that when I'm tired and hungry. I just get plain cranky.

But I have the cure for my moodiness.

Well, getting some sleep and some food help, but my favorite cure is some good 'ole vigorous exercise.

Last night, as I mentioned, I was in one of those cranky moods for a variety of what I considered to be valid reasons.

I decided that exercising would be the best thing to do. I called up my girlfriend to see if she wanted to go to the gym with me.

She said she was already planning on jogging at the park. Well, cardio isn't my favorite thing but I made a compromise.

"Okay, I'll run with you in the park if you'll do some resistance training with me first. In fact, I'm going to show you some of the crazy exercises we're developing for Family Fit Plan.

Suffice to say, we had a great workout in the park. We got some crazy looks because of the unconventional (but very effective) exercises we were doing. And we felt great. I went from being a total grouch to feeling fantastic.

By the way, I saw a father and his child exercising at the park as well. It was great to see. Both of them getting in shape and spending quality time together. That's exactly the vision that Jonathan Ross and I have for families and why we're creating Family Fit Plan (www.FamilyFitPlan.com).

That's it for today. Just remember. Next time you're moody, just go burn off that tension doing some VIGOROUS exercise. I guarantee you'll feel better. I'll be sending out another newsletter tomorrow or Thursday before I fly out to DC on Friday to shoot pics for Family Fit Plan. As a preview to the next article I can just say, forget the dumb jock stereotype. New research suggests that being a jock might actually make us smarter! More on that tomorrow.

Make sure to go do some exercise today!