How Exercise May Protect Against Depression
It takes some time to find some exercise that works for you. I hated the gym, running bored me, I didn't really fit in with the fightsport crowd in my city (all started classes were filled young kids, you might have better luck in a bigger city!) but swimming has been awesome so far. I used to stay in shape by cycling to work everyday but over the years I have become fatter, slower, less attractive, depressed and far less sharp.<p>I swim almost an hour everyday and during the weekends I sometimes go for 3-4 hours and it has done wonders for my depression, it also enhances your mental clarity and swimming is a great way to work out those hard recursion or architectural problems.<p>I used to deal with overwhelming negative emotions in less constructive ways, some days I still swim to "destroy", endorphins also work great for emotional pain so after that I usually feel a lot better.<p>I hear great things about climbing from other programmers. If you're depressed find something that you enjoy as a exercise, once you get the basics down it becomes a "flow" not much different from programming :)<p>I also take some St John's Wort, some vitamin D and I replaced most breakfasts with Soylent. So far it has done wonders in fighting my depression.