Heisz - Move the Body, Heal the Mind: Overcome Anxiety, Depression, and Dementia and Improve Focus, Creativity, and Sleep

To my darling daughter Monica,

may you never live in fear or suffer alone.

Every new beginning comes from some other beginnings end.

SENECA

H ERE WE GO, on the cusp of a new journey! Time to move the body and heal the mind soothe your anxiety, ease your pain, fix your depression, keep you sober, prevent dementia, alleviate your insomnia, find your focus, and optimize your creativity. Sounds great. Im in!

But wait... somethings wrong.

Youre not quite ready.

Stuck. Full stop. Hesitant to begin again.

Dont worry.

You are not alone.

The first few steps on any new fitness journey are the most difficult.

But I promise it does get easier.

How do I know?

Ive been my own guinea pig on a journey from sedentary scholar to triathlete. Along the way Ive discovered the unexpected benefits of exercise on my own brain that are upheld by ground-breaking science. Im excited to share with you all that I have discovered in the hopes that it will help you on your own journey, whether it is to start exercising, enhance your current fitness level, or go for gold.

But this book is not just about exercise and the brain. Its about navigating life. My life has been full of moments where its been hard to breathe. I breathe easier now, and I want that for you. Exercise was my antidote. I needed to move my body to heal my mind.

In this self-help guide on the neuroscience of exercise, I share with you exactly how it worked for me. My evidence-based how-to approach will help you enhance your own brain health through exercise. You will emerge fully equipped with an exercise skill set to help you achieve greater resiliency, a more positive outlook, sharper focus, enhanced productivity, and more meaningful relationships. Yes, you can have it all!

But before we embark on this journey together, I must warn you.

To harness the healing power of exercise... you actually have to do it.

I know, easier said than done.

So, lets ease into things together.

Lets begin where it all began for me, 3 years, 8 months, and 24 days ago. It was the beginning of an end. And as you will see, it was awfully difficult for me to get started.

It was New Years Eve, December 31, 2016. The party was at our house, but I was in no condition to host. I had a secret, and its burden was becoming too heavy for me to carry alone.

My marriage was ending over. But how could I admit that to anyone? They were all there when I said, Until death do us part. And at the time, I had wholly meant it. But things had changed, promises were broken, and there was no love left.

At the stroke of midnight, we exchanged a dry peck. I had officially lost my liveliness in the loneliness of this marriage. I used to be a deeply passionate person. Long romantic kisses were my favorite. On that night, with that kiss, I was so far removed from who I was that I worried that if I didnt break free soon, my true self would be gone forever.

It would still take me months to leave him. The stress of the situation had weakened my body to the point of frailty. I doubted whether I could make it on my own. I needed time to restore my strength. To break down the illusion of dependency so I could finally be free from the suffocating situation.

For the time being, I wore a fake smile to veil my secret and prayed for the promise of something new, something real, something I could get excited about.

A love affair? That would surely jolt me back to life, but I was still married.

Cut my hair? Nah, I tried that before, and it didnt make me feel any better.

And then, it came to me in the form of a New Years resolution. A tradition I had upheld every year. I usually resolved to be more productive at work or more helpful at home, but that year I decided to choose something just for myself.

The resolution?

A new fitness goal (I know, zero points for originality).

But not just any fitness goal: a triathlon.

Could I do it? Probably. But if you had asked me 10 years earlier, the answer would have been a definite no. The truth is I have never been an athlete. I was overweight in elementary school. I could still hear the ridicule of my classmates: It aint over till the fat lady sings. Come on, Jen, sing! When I hit puberty, I became obsessed with thinness and developed a serious eating disorder that nearly destroyed my body. My late teens and early twenties were marked with several failed attempts at becoming a runner. Then, on a whim, I borrowed a friends rusty old road bike and fell in love with cycling. At the time, it was just a nice escape from my studies. I didnt realize it then, but those bike rides started me on a new path where I would gain the physical fitness I needed to transform from sedentary scholar to triathlete and the mental toughness I needed to survive the next decade of my life. My newfound exercise had strengthened my body and my mind.

That rusty old road bike also inspired a shift in my professional life. At the time, I was completing my doctorate in neuroscience, researching how tiny brain cells use electrical impulses to represent who we are. As I pedaled my way through my PhD and into my postdoctoral training, the movement sparked a shift in my research toward exercise. In 2013, I joined the department of kinesiology at McMaster University and founded the NeuroFit Lab, where I began intense study on the impact of exercise on the brain. Throughout this book I present our latest research, highlighting the incredible interplay between the mind and the body that can be harnessed by exercise to transform your life.

And on that eve of 2017, I needed a transformation more than ever. So, with a glass of Champagne in my hand and hope in my heart, I made a toast to the first chapter of my new life.

Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.

ARTHUR ASHE

N EW YEAR! NEW YOU ! Your motivation is high and your effort is strong.

In the beginning, exercising is easy.

But then... its not.

Three times a week becomes two and then one.

Suddenly, youre too busy to exercise and too tired to move; at least, thats what the brain wants you to believe. Why? Because it prefers the status quo, and exercise is attempting to change that.

The truth is you dont have to accept the status quo.

You can change your brain by changing your mind.

Its mind over matter.

And its time to set your mind right so you can get moving and let the healing begin.

In this chapter, you will learn the reasons its hard to exercise and what you can do to overcome the brains built-in barriers that may be holding you back.

It was the first day of the new year, and I sat in our home office staring blankly at the computer screen. I had a new fitness goal (to complete a triathlon) but no idea where to start. I needed an action plan. Come to think of it, I needed one for my life too. I opened a browser, and my eyes locked on the search engine. I could feel a quiet resistance building in my body as if it were protesting, Theres no need to change. It was my biological inertia talking, and the discord between my mind and my body warned me that the journey ahead would not be easy.

We all know that the first few steps on any new fitness journey can be difficult. But did you know that the brain is partly to blame? Instead of encouraging us to change, it wants us to stay the same.

Amidst a constantly changing world, the brain strives to keep the body centered around an ideal state a homeostatic happy place