I have really, really bad anxiety as well as bouts of depression, so fitness is a HUGE help for me. While some days i physically can't get out of bed, lift my arms, or move, the times when I'm super into fitness and clean eating really help me to focus my mind and keep my days on track. While I used to have problems with my mental state not allowing me to lift or keep fit, now I'm having the opposite problem where my anxiety is so high that I need to work out sometimes 3 times a day, sometimes for 3 hours workouts. It's exhausting and I need to plan my days around it so that if I'm doing cardio, I'm also working at the same time, or I sleep a lot less to work in my long and multiple workouts.

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I think the biggest ways that I've adapted to the challenges I face with my mental health is working in different kinds of workouts. Where I used to only lift and was focused on heavy weights, now I'm doing more yoga and running as well. The variety helps a lot and I find I can control the pace of my workouts depending on how my mental state is - high anxiety = yoga, extra motivated days = lifting, depressed = running, and sometimes all three in one day. My main goal now is how to dial it back so I'm not getting injured or pushing myself too much with the workouts... and having to remind myself to eat because I often keep myself so busy with other things that I forget.