COVID and mental health: Am I doing enough exercise?

Let me be honest: I hate exercise. Ever since being the tallest girl in school – and the only one with boobs – exercise has been a scene of self-conscious embarassment that I wanted no part of. And I’ve never really found a way to move past that. The self-righteous cries of all those lucky enough to find pleasure in exercise don’t help – “Nooo, haven’t you heard of endorphins?! They’re GUARANTEED to make you feel better.” People accept that some people like knitting and some like art. Some love music and others prefer to sit and read. But ‘exercise people’ just can’t seem to wrap their heads around the fact that some people just don’t like sports. Apparently it’s easier to figure out putting a human on the moon than it is to empathise with a big-breasted, clicking-kneed, weak-ankled woman that just does not want to go for a sodding jog.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not Jabba the Hut. I run around endlessly after two young children. I’ll happily walk for hours and miles through forests, fields or picture postcard towns, and my husband has even affectionately nicknamed me ‘the mountain goat’ for how quickly I can scamper up a rocky hillside.

But is child wrangling and hill scampering enough, especially in the face of a barrage of COVID challenges. I know I wasn’t the only one who didn’t have the time, energy or motivation to do much more with their ‘free time’ than stare at a wall and occassionally sob.

Well, some people don’ think so. And so now, apparently, there’s a new health pandemic in town: decreasing mental and physical health, because of a lack of exercise.

Healthier Nation Index

According to a report from Nuffield Health, the UK’s largest healthcare charity, over 7 in 10 Britons aren’t exercising enough, a quarter of over 55s have done no exercise at all since COVID-19 hit and 41% say their mental health is worse.

The index focused on physical health, mental health, food and drink and future health, reporting a variety of physical health statistics including: on average a third of Britons (33%) agree their physical health is worse than this time last year, with older age groups reporting a worse decline, and 16% of the population say they’ve done no exercise at all in the last 12 months.

It’s no suprise that mental health has also been heavily effected by the pandemic, with women in particular feeling the impact of home schooling, professional pressure and caring responsibilities.

On average, 41% of people said their mental health is worse than this time last year, but this rose to nearly one in two women (49%). More than a fifth of Britons (21%) reported low life satisfaction, while over a third (36%) reported high anxiety when asked how they felt on the previous day. The biggest impacts were:

• Pressures linked to work had the biggest impact on the nation’s mental health in the last 12 months (54%), rising to 58% of women.
• Money worries affected 44%, rising to 49% of women.
• Personal lives and relationships impacted 42%, and 47% of women, while health issues affected 40%.
• Parents of only children were the most likely (31%) to say childcare or home-schooling had an impact on their mental health. Women were also more likely than men to be impacted by this (22% vs 18%).

There is also significant concern about family members. Almost half (49%) of 25- to 34-year-olds agreed they were more concerned about their parents’ mental health now because of COVID-19, while 47% of parents agreed to expressing fears about their children’s mental health.

Less than 3 in 10 said the main motivation to exercise in the last 12 months was because exercising helps with their mental health.

Is Exercise The Answer?

Yet less than 3 in 10 said the main motivation to exercise in the last 12 months was because exercising helps with their mental health (28%).

And this is where I take issue with these kinds of studies, linking mental and physical health in only the simplest and basest of ways; and I refer you back to my initial point. “Go for a jog, it will do you the world of good!” is not the bloody answer. It may be cheaper and easier for the government to dole out those kinds of empty messages, backed up by juicy clickbait stats like this (released by an organisation who, funnily enough, have their own network of private and pretty highly priced health services and gyms….) But it doesn’t change the fact that exercise isn’t solely the answer. Access to therapy, empathetic health care workers, holistic care, medications, appropriate and quick healthcare pathways, more mental health practioners, robust systems: this is what’s urgently needed. Despite what some people would have us believe, we can’t jog our way to mental wellness and a global carefree future.

Reflecting on the findings, Judy Murray OBE, said: “Good physical and mental health are intrinsically linked and the Index shows that the pandemic has had a significant impact not only on the nation’s mental health – but also on our ability to exercise. The focus must now be on helping people get active to make sure we don’t store up problems for the future.”

Now, if the report was referring more closely to physical health, of course. I don’t disagree that we could all do with getting out there and addressing some of the comfort eating, and drinking, many of us have been doing, coupled with the more sedentary lifestyle many of us have been living, during the pandemic. But it isn’t. It’s presented as a direct link of issue and solution.

Yet again, there’s an inability to address mental ill health for what it is, and what it isn’t, seperately from the physical, as well as alongside it. The fact that reports like this one have prominent voices concluding that getting active is the key to avoiding the wealth of future problems that will be, and have been, inevitably born from COVID is wildly dangerous. It’s why mental health stigma still exists. Listen to the people from your own report: less than 3 in 10 said that their motivation to exercise was because it aided their mental health. And yet exercise is yet again lauded as the miracle cure.

Tell me again how exercise helps the millions of women struggling to balance home-school and their own job? Tell me again how exercise helps the millions of people who were put on furlough for months, or let go, to pay their bills? Tell me again how exercise helps the millions of children and young adults who are in and out of school and uni, exams messed around; defining events in their young lives changed forever.

Truly, this isn’t a rant against exercise, although it might seem like one. Physical exercise has it’s, very vital, place. But please. The kinf of events we’ve seen and circustances we’ve faced during COVID can leading to very real lasting damage, anxiety, trauma. If we want look to a healthier future for us all, to save lives, promote mental health, aid healthy converstaions and create safe spaces where those suffering feel they’re able to actually be heard – not just be told what they should be feeling – we need to look past the gym.