For years, I exercised for all the wrong reasons. Exercise felt like a pursuit for a better looking body, putting myself through unsustainable – and, frankly, awful – workouts in the name of changing physically. I’d find myself signing up to bootcamp-style workouts that would have me dry heaving halfway through, powering on through embarrassment for a few sessions before giving up. I never actually quite stuck to anything long term and felt horribly guilty for it, with movement becoming something to tick off my to-do list rather than anything I actually enjoyed. And if I was having a particularly bad body image day, or stress was piling up, I’d completely avoid moving my body altogether.
Most of the time, I hated exercising. And, unsurprisingly, I couldn’t stick to it. There are umpteen other reasons why people find it hard to commit to a fitness regime. In a 2024 report, the Mental Health Foundation found that 1 in 10 people said that not liking the way their body looks prevented them from exercising more, while 1 in 6 said that stress in their daily life was preventing them from moving more.
However, somewhere along the way between then and now, something shifted. I stumbled into weightlifting, because I was curious about feeling stronger. The change wasn’t instant, but it was noticeable. Instead of chasing exhaustion, I started paying attention to how great I felt afterwards. Consistency stopped meaning forcing myself through workouts I hated and started looking like small, repeatable acts of movement I could actually sustain. For the first time, exercise felt less like punishment and more like support.
New research insights
And now a major new study confirms what many of us had suspected all along. A 2026 umbrella review published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, analysing data from 79,551 people across multiple studies found that structured exercise interventions were associated with meaningful reductions in symptoms of depression and anxiety. The findings suggest that movement – from aerobic exercise to strength work and mind-body practices – can be a powerful support for mental wellbeing, and that benefits often appear within relatively short periods of consistent activity.
And while it may sound obvious that exercise helps our mood, this study is important because it shows the mental health benefits of movement are consistent across age groups, exercise types and settings, not limited to one specific population or approach. Interestingly, it also found that group-based formats showed particularly strong results for depression, and shorter, lower-intensity programmes seem especially useful for anxiety. Crucially, the effects were large enough to be considered clinically meaningful, reinforcing exercise as a credible treatment tool that can sit alongside more traditional treatments like therapy and medication.
Ways to encourage yourself to exercise
On days when anxiety crept in or tiredness made me hesitate, I’d let it stop me altogether. Then a therapist suggested something simple but surprisingly effective: separate the act of going from the act of doing. Putting on my shoes and leaving the house, or getting changed and driving to the gym, counted as a win in itself. If I didn’t make it to the second part – the workout – I hadn’t failed. But, more often than not, I followed through, did the workout, and felt much better afterwards.
It’s an idea echoed by author and podcast host Mel Robbins, who argues that waiting to feel motivated is a losing strategy. “If you listen to how you feel, about what you want, you will not get it. Because you will never feel like it,” she says. The brain is wired to keep us comfortable, which means motivation rarely shows up first.
“It can feel so hard to exercise when you’re feeling exhausted, so finding exercise that you enjoy is really important. Then it will feel less like a burden or additional stress,” explains women’s health specialist Dr Rachel Hines. “Exercise doesn’t have to be formal like fixed time at the gym, and it can be really helpful to think about how you can fit movement into your day.” Exercise, she continues to explain, has really beneficial effects on energy and sleep, helping to regulate the circadian rhythm while lowering cortisol and boosting endorphins. These changes, she says, can reduce stress and improve mood, which helps explain why movement often feels so supportive during periods of anxiety or low mood.
And this tracks with my own experience. Once I began consistently focusing on movement, I noticed the benefits showing up elsewhere: better sleep, steadier energy and less mental noise.
A movement for movement
NHS women’s health doctor Dr Ravina Bhanot says she’s seeing more women within her clinic describe exercise as something they do for mood and feeling calmer, rather than purely for weight and fitness. The evidence, she adds, supports this shift, but with nuance. Exercise can bring “moderate improvement” for anxiety and depression, but it isn’t a substitute for medication in moderate to severe cases. Instead, movement works best as part of a wider picture of mental health support.
Both doctors challenge the all-or-nothing approach many of us still carry around exercise. As Dr Hines already emphasised, movement doesn’t need to be formal or scheduled, suggesting small, practical ways to build it into everyday life – using stairs, walking after lunch or short bursts of activity throughout the day. Dr Bhanot echoes this: “Some is better than none,” she says, explaining that the biggest gains often come from moving from inactivity to light movement. When you have this mindset, exercise stops being another goal to fail at and becomes something flexible that can work around real life.
For women navigating hormonal shifts, that flexibility matters even more. Dr Hines explains that movement can help restore confidence when many feel disconnected from their bodies during perimenopause. “Choosing to exercise is quite powerful,” she says, because it offers “an element of control” when our bodies are changing.
Dr Bhanot also stresses that rest has a place in the conversation, particularly during high stress, poor sleep or postpartum recovery, when intense exercise may make anxiety or insomnia worse. Sometimes, she says, small movement, a walk to the front door, a gentle stretch, is enough.
And perhaps that’s where the real meaning of this study sits. It doesn’t tell us to push harder or optimise more. Instead, it validates something many of us are already discovering. When movement stops being about changing how we look and starts being about supporting how we feel, it becomes something we can actually sustain. Maybe that’s why this research feels so validating, giving weight to how many of us are now feeling, moving away from punishing routines and towards movement that supports real life.
I used to think consistency meant pushing through no matter what. Now it looks more like listening to what I really need, lifting weights when I want to feel strong, walking when I need space in my head, resting when my body asks for it. The question isn’t whether exercise works for mental health, because the evidence is clear that it does. The question is what happens when we stop asking movement to change how we look and instead let it help us feel and live better. When the goal shifts from transformation to mental support, movement stops sitting on the to-do list and starts slotting naturally into real life.
