Exercise is one of the best ways to combat depression. However, when done in excess, as with most things in life, it can actually cause depression or make a current episode of depression worse.

But things don’t just stay in your mind, unfortunately, because depression will actually change the composition of your body.

So here is how to tell if exercise is making you depressed:

1. Things no longer excite you: Perhaps one of the most revealing signs of depression, when you no longer get excited by things that used to excite you, depression is probably budding. This happens because depression puts on negative blinders within your mind.

2. You gain or lose weight at extreme rates: Now too much exercise can cause this as well, so figuring out which is which can be hard. Nonetheless, serious depression can cause very rapid gains or losses in body mass. And negativity in most thought processes is also present.

3. Sleeping irregularities: Similar to eating patterns, any alteration in your fitness program can change the way you sleep. The key indicator here is how much of a change you notice. Extreme changes are usually an indication of depression.

4. Problems concentrating: Unfortunately, depression can cause changes to the hippocampus, the area of the brain responsible for memory. So if you are seriously depressed, mental processing speeds could plummet to the point where making decisions is extremely difficult.

5. Thoughts of death or suicide: Once someone reaches this stage, their depression is extremely serious. At this point, the thought processes and the mental outlook is so poor that death is seen as the only way to experience relief.

Now exercise can be one of the most powerful tools for decreasing depression. However, if you abuse it, it can do more harm than good.

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