I walked into the gym and boy, was I not happy!  I’d had a rough day to say the least; my boss was on my back, my children needed to be picked up in an hour but the gym was still my destination. No matter how much I wanted to head home for a much needed nap I knew that a workout would be better for me. After a 30 minute jaunt on the treadmill, a 20 minute weight workout and a few minutes of stretching I was starting to feel better. A lot better. Which made me think, is it possible to work off a bad mood?

With a little bit of study and a lifetime of personal experience I dove into this subject like a bee after honey…and came out with a wealth of information.

“Absolutely!” Alyson Bruner, frequent fitness fanatic at local Chicago gyms, stated when asked whether she felt better mentally after a workout as opposed to before. “Working out always makes me feel better. I don’t know, I suppose I just like working out?” Bruner guessed.

Or is it more than just that, a guess at a topic whose origins can’t be tied down?

It turns out there really was authenticity to my gut feeling that the little workout I did that day acted in a big way to bump me out of my sour attitude. It really is possible to work your way out of a bad mood. The truth lay inside the topic of endorphins.

No, endorphins aren’t the lovable cousins of dolphins, as many people pre-assume, but they’re instead a group of endogenous peptides within the brain which create a relatively large amount of physical side effects (You can thank Merriam-Webster’s for that!). To simplify it for us ‘normal’ folk, endorphins are the itsy-bitsy energy boosters that reside in our brains that say, “Hey, this feels good”, when we work out for extended periods of time.

Amanda Gore, international lifestyle and fitness speaker, calls endorphins the bodies “natural happy drugs.” Gore continued saying that “we humans can produce them at will. All we have to do is exercise, fall in love, or laugh a lot…There will be endorphins everywhere!” Gore, with her 20 plus years of experience, just may be onto something here.

Or, to pull a famous quote from the movie Legally Blonde, main character Reese Witherspoon exuded, “Exercise gives you endorphins--endorphins make people happy.”

Most people have experienced endorphin power at one time or another. You don’t need to be a frequent runner or biker to realize the feeling. You feel energized. You feel revitalized. And best of all? It all happens when you think you’d be the most worn out- after a tough cardiovascular workout!

Even if you have had a rough day, a sick stomach and a broken leg (okay maybe not this last one!) you could work out and feel a lot better afterwards. It’s also the main reason why there are so many fitness obsessed individuals out there. These hit-the-gym-daily people are trying to replicate the feeling that makes them feel oh so good everyday.

Bob Hunter, a runner from the small town of Fryeburg, Maine, hasn’t missed a day of running in over 4 years! “It’s not like I win races or anything,” Hunter says, “I just like the feeling I get when I finish a run. I may not like it while I’m running but I’m always glad I went (after) I finish.”

Okay, so while endorphins may be the backbone of our physical prowess, we’re still missing the key component- how do they work?! With science backing endorphin existence in relation to working out at the gym just what makes these little ‘ energy-boosters’ tick? Or to make it a little bit more relative to you, how long do you have to work out for in order to feel the benefits?

Renowned physical fitness guru, Joyce Vedral says not to “Let your mood rule you.” Vedral offers this advice in terms of endorphins, working out and how long it takes for all the factors to synchronize:

“Once you get started, three minutes into the workout your energy level and mood will pick up. A few minutes later you'll forget yourself and go through your workout. By the time you've finished you'll be looking at the world through rose-colored glasses. When you exercise, the endorphins kick in!”

Most researchers agree with Vedral, although most think that it takes a little more than three minutes for endorphins to kick in. Moderate intensity workouts done for a minimum of 20 to 30 minutes is the key to producing more endorphins within the blood, which soon make their way up to the brain. This means at least a 20-30 minute run, bike, weight workout or other form of physical fitness should be completed before you can expect results. Less then 20 minutes and you risk not feeling any side effects and too long…may have opposite effects?

Hmm. Too brief of a workout you don’t realize any results, too long of a workout and your body shuts down the steady stream of endorphins. If it seems pretty specific, well it is. However, if your best friend claims that she’s gone on a three-hour mountain bike adventure- and returned exuberant, not worn out- don’t automatically assume that she’s lying. While 30-45 minutes is the “prime” time period that endorphins appear it is possible to keep them around longer by feeding your body sport specific foods.

When you work out for longer than an hour it is crucial to consume adequate amounts of water and carbohydrates. A few ounces of water and taking a bite from an energy bar every twenty minutes that you’re working out should do the trick. This will keep the endorphins happy enough to keep you feeling great without tiring you out too quickly.

What other foods can you put away in order to keep your mood-friendly endorphins pumping through your blood stream? Basically any foods that are high in carbohydrates, moderate in protein and low in fat will work efficiently. Bananas, energy bars and gels and plain bagels are all examples of great ‘mood foods.’

Dr. William Sears, nutrition and pediatric medicine expert, says that we should care about the carbs we consume. Sears states that, “The brain is a sugar hog and a carbo-craver utilizing 20 percent of the body's carbohydrate supply. Yet it's a smart hog, being selective about the type of sugars it craves and how it processes them.”

Sears continued by saying, “(The brain) prefers a nice steady supply. When the brain receives a steady supply of sugar for fuel, it chugs along smoothly at a steady pace. But when levels of sugar in the blood fluctuate, the brain doesn't get its steady fuel supply and behavior and learning become more erratic.”

This is why you’ll want to get these mood foods into your system every 20 minutes or so, to create a steady supply of energy.

These mood foods can even come into play after you are done working out. Yup, it’s true, your endorphins will hang around a lot longer if you give them a little post workout snack.

Penn State’s Strength and Fitness department stated that it is “generally recommended to consume some kind of quick energy source (carbs, sugars) prior to exercise and some source of protein after to aid in recovery and growth.”

Fifteen minutes seems to be the commonly known window athletes have to get around 100 grams of carbohydrates and 40 grams of protein into their bodies. An hour is typically thought of as the very end of that ‘window of opportunity.’ After an hour the body loses its ability to utilize carbohydrates in terms of feeding the brain’s endorphins. Again you will want to get foods that are high in carbohydrates, moderate in protein and low in fats. These mood foods will keep your body feeling good for four to five hours after you have finished working out, as opposed to the two or three hours of feeling good without the proper foods.

So there you have it, working out and eating quickly thereafter are surefire ways to enhance your mood but…can sleep complete a triplet of mood-improving lifestyle changes?

Hold on: I know we’ve been discussing how working out and eating within the ‘window of opportunity’ will increase the endorphin flow but come on, sleep- isn’t that a no-brainer? We’ve all seen family members on the mornings that they haven’t gotten enough sleep (some of us have been those family members on more than one occasion!). It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that sleep and their mood just may be connected somehow, someway. But despite our best efforts our sleeping knowledge and our actual sleep time don’t usually match up.

According to the National Sleep Foundation 60% of all American women don’t get as much sleep as they feel they need. Even more compelling, 80% of the women polled mentioned that stress is the main reason they haven’t been getting the necessary amount of sleep.  

According to sleep researcher Michael Bonnet, mood and sleep are very well connected. Bonnet states that, “There is strong evidence that sufficient shortening or disturbance of the sleep process compromises mood, performance and alertness.” He continued saying, “The most common sense, do-no-injury medical advice would be to avoid sleep deprivation.”

If you want to be in the best mood for your workout tomorrow you need to get the ideal amount of sleep tonight. You’ve all heard that eight hours of sleep should be the minimum amount you get each night but does that really apply?

Absolutely! While there is no “magic sleep number” according to the National Sleep Foundation, it is still recommended that you get “seven to eight hours of sleep each night.”

The National Sleep Foundation also attributes sleep, or lack there-of, to anxiety in an individuals life. They say that “Stress can make it difficult to fall asleep and to stay asleep, and it can affect the quality of your sleep.”

Basically the less sleep you get the worse of a mood you accumulate over the course of the day and eventually it will tide over day after day, after day, after…Well, you get the point.

Working out, eating, drinking, getting enough sleep- what do they all have in common? They all help you improve your lifestyle through your everyday decisions. Your mood can be improved through working out, as I learned that day with my sudden rush of endorphin power. However, it’s not just the running and weight lifting I did then that gave me the full benefits of streaming, screaming endorphins, it was the combination of routine decisions I had been making to ensure I was eating properly and getting my eight hours of sleep.

One physical fitness guru, Carolyn Moos, also a former WNBA star, says, “Cardiovascular fitness provides many benefits including burning calories, reducing stress (endorphin to cortical ratios improved), and decrease risk of heart disease.”

All of these benefits in one? Why wouldn’t you want to work out more often?!

I know my family was sure glad I came home from the gym in a better mood then when I’d left for it and you know what, working off that bad mood wasn’t all that bad.


David Hunt is the owner of 100 Write Copywriting and is a professional runner sponsored by INOV-8. David is always trying to get in a better mood through his daily workouts.