- Hi there, I'm Kyle
Kittleson with MedCircle. If you've not yet subscribed
to this channel, please do. We're 25000 people away from having one million
subscribers, a big milestone for us. Today's video is not meant to--
- Over 25000 people. - Whoop, that's me, I know.
- Milestone for us. Today's video is...
- (laughs) Sorry. So today's video is not meant to offer any type of educational advice or insight. I'm not a doctor. I am someone living with depression. And here are three things
that I regularly rely on to manage my depression. And even when I mention
these, you might go, well yeah, I know that. I have some extra tips with them. If you've watched the channel for long, you know, I don't enjoy when people go, well, get enough sleep and eat right. It's like, okay. Yeah, we've heard that before. If I feel a little or if I
sound a little off today, I apologize, I am 90% certain
I have the flu coming on, which is super fun. So it's a little difficult to speak. But enough about me, let's talk about me and my depression. So I was diagnosed with depression at the age of nine years old. I am medicated. Currently I take 40 milligrams of Prozac, but I've been on a variety of SSRIs and antidepressants my entire life. I also attend therapy and
have, again, on and off since about the age of nine. That being said, therapy and medication
while are incredibly useful and for me I consider necessary
for my overall wellbeing, there are other things that I incorporate. Now, the first one is no
surprise, it's exercise. But let me give you my caveat to exercise. One, I despise it. I'm not one of those people who exercises and goes, gosh, my body
is just craving it. I really just need to do it more. I don't go on a run ever. And the few times I have gone on a run I've thought, this sucks, I'm running. I could be sitting or standing
or doing anything else, but I'm running. I don't naturally find myself
wanting to go exercise. For years I knew it was important. And I also am someone
who's just very thin. And I know a lot of
people think that is good. But for me, my lack of body
weight has always been an issue. And so working out allows me
to put on a little more weight. So there's a lot of
reasons for me to do this, but when I attempted exercise,
it was always all out. Meaning it was Monday morning
I was at the gym at 5:00 AM. I was going to do two hour, you know, the workout was two hours. I'm supposed to eat 1000 chicken breasts, you know, on Monday, 14000
protein shakes on Tuesday, and continuous two hour
workouts every day. You know, it was just overwhelming. It's how I had pursued
other things in my life and found success, just this maniacal,
monotonous consistency. And so I assumed, well, if I apply that
to my physical regiment, then I will stick with
it, I'll see results, and I'll have success. And I have attempted that really strong, hard drive
towards physical exercise more times than I can remember in my life. And without fail, I
failed every single time. Failure being, I would stay consistent for anywhere from a week
to maybe a few months. And then it would go away, because who wants to go to the
gym two hours a day every day and eat a ton of food, even
when you're not hungry. I don't. So finally this year I
was in desperate need for physical activity. COVID and my natural
proclivity to introversion and a sedentary lifestyle had made me probably the most
out of shape I had ever been. And so when I decided
to go back to the gym, my strategy changed. Instead of going to the gym for two hours and just going as hard as I could, I told myself I would go to
the gym for about 30 minutes and do whatever I felt like doing. So I walked down to the gym in my building and I looked at the time and I said, all right, in 30 minutes
I'm going to leave here. And I just kind of
puttered around the gym, putzed around the gym. I stretched, I lifted some
weights, I used some machines, I did some free weights, and then exactly after 30
minutes, peace, I'm out of there. And when I left in those 30
minutes, of course I felt good. I had exercised for the
first time in two years. And I also thought, well,
that wasn't that bad. 30 minutes went by like that. Maybe I can do this again. So on Wednesday I did another 30 minutes. And then on Friday I did 30 minutes. And what was so great about it was even though I didn't
want to be at the gym, I only had to be there for 30 minutes. And most of us can do something
physical for 30 minutes. And remember, I'm not even
going hard for the 30 minutes. I show up, if I feel like
doing legs, I do legs. If I want to do arms, I do arms. I do whatever it is
that I feel like doing, because you know what? It's better than me not being there. Now, how does this actually
help my depression? Well, we all know that physical exercise in virtually any study you read, helps a variety of
mental health conditions. So there is a correlation
between taking care of your body and then how that takes care of your mind. But what really helped my depression was I saw for the first time in my life that I really could be
consistent with exercise even if the exercise I wasn't
doing was super strenuous. And seeing myself be consistent with something I have never
been consistent with in my life, gave me a huge mental boost, a nice sense of wellbeing
and accomplishment. And what I added on to
that afterwards was, all right, if I can do 30 minutes Monday, Wednesday, Friday by myself, I'm not following any routines,
I'm not doing any meal prep, I'm not doing anything. Okay, I'm literally just working out and then I'm going about my life. If I eat, I eat whatever I eat, whatever. I just added the 30
minutes, three times a week. Luckily I'm in a position where I could go get a personal trainer. So I got a personal trainer and I see him every Wednesday for an hour. I told him I don't want to
be here, I don't like this, and I don't want to have
to think when I'm here. So when I show up, you tell
me exactly what I need to do, hi Chad, my trainer. And I will do it. And I might complain a little bit, but that's the type of person I am. Are you in? He says, I'm in, no problem. See you every Wednesday. So each Wednesday I see Chad for an hour. Do I love it? No, I don't love it. But you know what? Chad just tells me what to do and I do it and then I leave and I go,
good, I'm glad I did that. And because I committed the money and the time
for every Wednesday, it really motivates me to go for the 30 minutes on Monday
and the 30 minutes on Friday. Now I mentioned that I
wasn't feeling well today. So it's Monday, I go to the gym. And after about 25 minutes I left. I go, I could sit here and do one more round of
exercise for five minutes, but I'm so tired. I don't feel 100%. At least I went anyway and now I feel good about myself for at least doing that
one productive thing even when I didn't feel like it. Now, if you're listening to that, go well, that's great, but I
can't have a private trainer and I don't have a gym I can go to. And 30 minutes is even too much for me. I get winded walking
up a flight of stairs. Fine. Then walk up one flight of
stairs three times a week, stretch, two times a week. It sounds so why, I get why you would hear that goal, then why do it at all? But if you're not doing anything, it's going to be so much more just by doing this little
thing consistently. Imagine if right now you were like me and didn't move at all and you started stretching
Fridays and Tuesdays for 15 minutes. If you did that for four weeks, you would have two hours of
stretching under your belt after a month, which is more stretching than you would have
done the previous month. And what's also likely to happen is you feel good about
yourself because you go, wow, I carved out those 15 minutes just for me to do
something good for my body. My body does feel better. Look at me go, I'm doing
something great, this is nice. And it also leads to
other healthier behaviors. On the days that I work out, I'm less likely to go grab a diet Coke or, you know, something
because I have to go to gym. I need to fuel my body. I know I'm going to go for 30 minutes and a diet Coke isn't going to
serve me in that 30 minutes, but you know, some water and
a healthy breakfast would. So you start making other
light improvements to your life which have a big consequence once you commit to it for
a longer period of time. So to shorten all that up,
for me, consistent exercise, whatever you can do consistently is so much more valuable than any type of perfect exercise,
routine, plan, et cetera. Because Kyle Kittleson is not
going to turn into somebody who just loves going to
the gym and working out and eating healthy and going
for runs and blah, blah. I'm not that person. But Kyle Kittleson is a person who can get himself to go to the gym for two hours every week over
three different sessions, one of which is led by somebody else and the other two are
just quick, 30 minutes, whatever I feel like. That is something I can do consistently. And when I do it consistently, that's when you see the benefits which go right into your mental health. So that's my one advice. Whatever exercise you're
doing or not doing, see what you can add to your routine that you will do consistently. And it's about finding the minimum. I would encourage a friend of mine, if I was telling them this, go figure out what's the least you'll do. Will you go on one five
minute walk once a week? Will you at least do that? Can you do that? If that's the, and then do
that for six months even, and see if you can do that, one five minute walk
a week for six months. Can you do that? I know it sounds so small, but if you can do that consistently, you're building the blocks for a overall healthier life consistently. Hopefully that made sense. Let's go to my second thing that I do to maintain my
depression outside of exercise. The second one is something
I shouldn't even say I do, I try to do. And that is watch what I
am putting in to my body. It is so easy for me to rely on caffeine not only as a way to be awake and alert, but also as a way to improve my mood. And that is just me being
100% honest with you. In the morning if I wake
up and I'm tired and groggy and not in a good mood, I know if I get a big energy
drink or a big cup of coffee or take a pre-workout, I'm going to get rid of my grogginess, I'm not to be tired, and
my mood will improve. And you might hear that and go, well, that sounds really great. Just drink the coffee and
have the improved mood. And I think that's a fine way to live. But for me, if my mood is
not great when I wake up and I cover it up, so to
speak, with an energy drink, it doesn't allow me to have the space to think about why am
I not in a good mood? What is causing this? Where is this coming from? How do I feel? And is there something I can do or realize or come to terms with that would allow me to get more in tune with
my emotions and mood, rather than going to the quick fix of pounding an energy drink. And to do that, I find that my clarity is at an all-time high when my eating is as
clean as I can make it. And to do that, cutting sugar,
drinking a ton of water, for me, this is all me, I'm not suggesting you
do any of these things. Eating no dairy, heavy on the vegetables, pretty heavy on fruit
I guess in the morning. But again, I don't like a lot of sugar. And cutting any type of
caffeine entirely if possible, but pushing the caffeine
earlier in the day so by the time night rolls around, my body has gotten rid of as much sugar and caffeine as possible,
and I can sleep soundly. All of that clarity allows me to wake up and really be in tune with myself. Because if I eat a whole
bunch of pizza before bed, wake up, I'm groggy, I pound a Red Bull, I go through my day not
being in tune with myself. I'm covering up whatever I'm feeling with the food and drinks
I'm putting into my body. And when I've made the
most progress in my life, I've had a diet that
correlated with healthy eating. You know, and okay, duh, that's
how healthy eating works. But here's my healthy eating hack because I'm not somebody
who enjoys cooking and I have in the past
used food as a comfort. I've talked about on MedCircle many times, when I get stressed or
depressed back in college, I would truly literally find myself in the drive-through of
a fast food restaurant. And I wouldn't even have remembered going I'm going to go to
Arby's and get something, I would just be at Arby's,
I'd be like, oh my gosh. Okay, yeah, well, I'll
have this and this and this and I'll eat it and I guess
I would feel a little better. So that's a cover-up. So I that's my natural habit. So what I do that's really
easy is I juice, I juice. Getting a juicer, and there's lots of
different types of juicers we can all debate which one's the best and yada yada yada, but getting a juicer and then getting fresh, organic produce, especially heavy on
the vegetables, I find, I know I put fruit in there
so it tastes somewhat okay, but I'm really not juicing for taste. I'm juicing for nutrients. And I'm heavy on greens,
kale, vegetables, beets, stuff that I would never really eat. But I get it in a juice and
I can wake up in the morning and have a big glass of vegetable juice that is packed with more nutrients than I would likely ever
get eating my typical diet. And just by making that change
where I have a big veggie, or I do about like a, I
dunno, a 50-50 fruit vegetable in the morning, and then an 80-20, vegetable
80%, 20% fruit, at night. And then all of my diet stays
the same during the day. So if I'm out with friends, I go, hey, we're going to go
get chimichangas, sounds good. Deep fry it, let's go. I will go eat that knowing
that this morning I had, you know, two beets, two cups
of spinach, three cucumbers, you know, five large
carrots, eight apples, whatever I drank. And that night I'm going
to get some more as well. Juicers are expensive. And what most people do, juicing, like juicers are expensive. And what most people do is
they watch some documentary. They're like, I'm going to be healthy. They buy a juicer and it's, you know, I don't know how much they are, but a few hundred bucks I'm assuming. And then they juice one
time and they're like, wow, this is a lot of
work, It's really messy, and the juice tastes gross, I'm not going to do this anymore. And it was kind of a waste of money. So I recommend either finding
a friend who has a juicer, they don't use it anymore and go, when's the last
time you used this? And they go, two years ago,
and go, can I just have it? Or can I give you $20 and
take it off your hands? And hopefully they'll say yes. Or for a week go buy juice,
really healthy juices, either from a local store
or from your grocery store and have them in your fridge. I don't think they're the same. I really noticed a difference
with the juices I create rather than the juices I buy pre-made. But if you can find yourself
in the habit of having juice, you know, Monday through
Friday in the morning, then maybe you are somebody
who should take the investment or place the investment on a juicer. Because it really is
the biggest diet shift that I've been able to do. It gives me the most
energy, the most clarity. It is not an easy process to juice, but look, you do it on a Sunday. Lemon juice is a natural preservative. They probably last three, four days. And what's so great is for most people, when I pitch this, they do it, first day they're like,
yeah, that was fine. Second day they're like,
oh, this kind of feels good. And then by the third and fourth day, they go oh my gosh, I need less sleep, I have more energy, I look better, I'm not as hungry, I drinking more water, I feel great, I just can't believe it! And so it's something that works for me. Maybe it'll work for you. But overall, find whatever those consistent diet changes you can get, that you can do consistently. Same thing with the working out. Now, the third thing
was going to be sleep, but I actually don't find a
correlation with my depression and sleep as a way of
managing my depression. For example, when my
depression is at its worst, you will find me sleeping
even more than I normally do. And I sleep a lot. I don't find that when I sleep a lot, my depression improves. I find that I sleep a lot as
a symptom of my depression. Now I also am living with Crohn's disease. I do find that my sleep is directly correlated with my Crohn's. If I get less sleep, my
Crohn's gets worse that day. If I get more sleep,
my Crohn's gets better. If I have a flare up, I
know if I can go sleep that's going to be my best bet to getting the flare under control, more than anything that I can
think of right now, at least. So that, so sleep I
understand is important, but for me, I've never looked at it as a depression management tool. I've recognized it as a
symptom of my depression. So that being said, the third bucket that I'm sharing with you that's worked for me is a list of hobbies that have nothing to do with work, that have nothing to do with making money, so, or any type of goal. So a lot of people go, well you know, I have a little Etsy store
where I sell my paintings. I think that's awesome
that you have an Etsy store where you sell your paintings. What I'm saying for you is
find a hobby that you can do, and you don't have to worry if
you sell it or don't sell it. You're truly doing it for you. I want to find more of
these things for me. And so I'm going to share some of them that are easy, simple, and
I really just do it for me. I would consider them
mindfulness activities. And the first one I've
talked about on MedCircle only recently, because it is
something I've only done for, I think I'm on week five now or something, but it's bullet journaling. Bullet journaling is used
in a lot of different ways. I don't run my schedule
on a bullet journal. Meaning if I have a dentist appointment, it goes into my digital calendar. All of my events go
into a digital calendar. But what I do use the
bullet journaling for is tracking behaviors
and tracking my sleep. Let me actually see if I
can bring up a example. So there are some personal things on here that I don't really want to share, but you can see like here,
this was October 4th. Okay, I don't know if you can see this. Can you see this there? October 4th? Oh, no, Prozac right there. I took it Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. For whatever reason on Thursday
and Friday, I missed it. And then Saturday and
Sunday, I took it again. So I got five out of seven of those days. And then I track tons of
different habits with that. Not just the meds I take, but any habits you're trying to track. And then here I track my sleep. Now I have an Oura Ring coming. So this might go away once
I have that Oura Ring. But this is where I track my sleep. You can see when I went to bed, how many hours I slept each night, and then I put it in a
little graph because, not because I need to see it in the graph, not because of anything other than I like the mindfulness activity
of every morning I wake up, I walk into my office
where I am right now, and this little book is sitting here and I open the book and I go, okay, yeah, yesterday, did
that, yesterday I did that. Oh, I didn't do that yesterday. Okay, what time did I go to
bed last night, this time. What time did I wake up
this morning, this time. So I slept this many hours. I draw my little graph, boom, boom, boom. That's my little mindfulness
routine in the morning. And I just like doing it. I don't even know if
it improves the habits, improves the sleep. I just like doing it. It gives me probably a sense
of control over my life. It lets me review my day-to-day behaviors. And it also, there is something for me about creating pen to paper, having that. I've always wanted to be
someone who journaled, but I'm not a writer. You know, I'm not going to sit there and go today was, dah dah dah, that's just not part of my thing. But this is a very nice
mindful activity for me. Bullet journals are available everywhere. And Bridget, our producer,
is live on this video. And she said that we do
have a juicer for under $50. I don't know if it's any good, but we're going to include
some affiliate links in the description of this video in case any of you are
motivated to start doing that. So that's one of the hobbies. Second one is plants. (chuckles) Plants are huge right now,
especially among my demographic. So you can see I have a plant. I wish I could take this camera with you. I have plants all over my house. Now I don't have so many where you go, wow, you have like a gazillion plants. I have one, two, I have this one on my desk, three, and then I have four, five, six. I have six potted plants. And typically on Sundays, I take all of those
plants into my kitchen. I prune, preen, I don't know. I take off all the bad
parts of the leaves. I clean the leaves off with a cloth. I water the ones that need to be watered. I take the ones that need to go outside to go outside to get some nice sunlight. And then I put them all back. And throughout the day it might
take a few hours to do that cause I might not do it all at once, but it is a nice reoccurring
thing for me to do and I like doing it. That's also the key here. I think finding things that
don't have anything to do with progressing your life necessarily like selling your paintings on Etsy, but carving out time to do
something that you enjoy doing that takes you out of the day to day. When I'm doing this, maybe
I'm listening to music, but I probably don't have the TV on. I'm not doing it when people are over, I'm doing it by myself. And so again, it really
focuses that mindfulness. And that is something I've been
doing for years, the plants. I love it. I couldn't even tell you
all the names of my plants. I really couldn't, like
what they're called. I just like taking care of them. Now for a single mother
with three kids and two jobs she might be sitting here going, okay, well, that's nice for you, but I don't have time to
go take care of plants. I get it. Oh my gosh, I get it. I just took care of my nephew
for five days or four days or something, you know? And he's fabulous. So I can't imagine the responsibilities of running the whole family,
something I don't have to do. But I still think it's
important that even when you have these incredible
demands to care for others, you find something where that
activity forces, in a way, for you to care for yourself. So bullet journaling and plants are two. Now there are other things
that I would love to go do that I haven't done,
and shame on me for not. One is aquascaping. It is the art of creating
underwater gardens, so to speak, in fish tanks. Some of them have fish in
them, some of them don't. They're very beautiful and
peaceful to watch on YouTube if you just, you know,
YouTube aquascaping videos. My favorite guy is The Green Machine. James Findley in England, I think, The Green Machine,
beautiful calming videos. Oh man, if you're stressed
and you got the time, snuggle up, watch one of those videos. Oh, I think it is, I just
think they're fabulous. So I think that's something
that I would love to get into where I had an aquascape
that I needed to care for. It's not improving my
life in any other way than giving me the time to do
something that I like doing. And you'll notice too that the examples I've been
giving are solo examples. I know that people like to go
play golf with their friends or go to brunch with their friends or go to church with their family. And I think those are all
great if you love doing that. But there is something
that I find healing, to have time by myself that doesn't involve me being on my phone, watching TV, you know,
taking a bath, whatever. It engages my mind in a different
way, like the journaling, like caring for these plants. So I think those types of things in addition to therapy and medication help manage my depression. And really, if you want to look at it it helps improve my overall
mood and well-being, which when you're doing that, and inadvertently does help you with whatever depression symptoms that you might be experiencing. So those are it. If you have any ideas for
cool mindfulness hobbies, some that come up, come to mind, I tried to be a knitter, but I'm not, that's not something I
was interested in doing. I've tried drawing, coloring,
like coloring for adults, both on my iPad and in person or in books. It was fine. For me, I was just
like, I feel like a kid, I don't really love this. But I guess part of it was
calming and interesting. A couple of weeks ago I started learning American Sign Language, and it's really fun. For no other reason than
I've always had a fascination with sign language and ASL in particular. And I know a little sign
language and I thought, man, I could really carve
out some time for myself to do this by myself, to engage in this mindfulness activity and also engage my mind in a new way. And that's been really rewarding. So those are lots of things. One thing, I'm an animal trainer by trade. Sometimes I'll train my dog Cali. She doesn't need the training. I'll just train her a stupid pet trick or train her to do something fun. It's fun for her, it's fun for me. So there's lots of things out there, but you've got to know
what your go-to list is. And I want to make my list bigger too. So any comments, leave them
in the comment section below. So now I'm going to see if there are any questions that came in. Wow, I think someone
tipped us in the live chat. That's very nice. If you are interested in
mental health education, you can certainly
subscribe to this channel. You can also go to watch.medcircle.com to see our entire video library, or medcircle.com and learn
all about what we offer. Okay, so let's see if
there are any questions. I don't think there is. Bridget did find a $50 Amazon juicer, so it will be in the description
with an affiliate link. So if anyone wants to
try it out, please do. A lot of questions about
post-traumatic stress disorder. We do have some series on
that and some free videos right here on YouTube. Again, I really encourage everyone to go to watch.medcircle.com, or you can download the
MedCircle app for free. When you download the app, it is free and then you do get free
content on top of that. I think right now we have eight
or nine free in-depth series and classes available for
anyone who downloads the app on a variety of mental health conditions. So that's it. Well, I don't see any other questions. Thank you guys for tuning into this. I really hope it was helpful in some way. And I do go live here every Monday on MedCircle's YouTube channel
sometimes to just chat, see how everything's going, sometimes to share what's working for me and sometimes to give updates on what's going on with MedCircle
and what we have planned. So thanks for being here. Most importantly, remember
whatever you're going through, you got this.
