 Good afternoon everyone, thank you for joining us. We'll make a start very shortly, actually just waiting for a few more people to join in. We'll just check Kerry, can you hear me okay? Yeah, absolutely fine. Okay, excellent. Good stuff. Okay, thank you everyone for joining us. We are actually live on Facebook and on Zoom, so if anyone has any questions that they want on Zoom then please use the Q&A and the chat function. If you'd like to ask any questions on Facebook then please use the comments section underneath where you can see this, basically, and we'll try and get through as many questions as we can towards the end, so we'll crack on. Today has been for many years called Blue Monday and we're not really sure how that for one day of the year sort of helps anyone really, so we'd much prefer to rename it Green Monday in support of the health benefits that being outdoors can give everyone. I know personally of many people to whom the outdoors is given purpose and a sense of fulfilment and satisfaction, so clearly an escape away from modern life, modern daily grind, is something that we all need but is it as simple as just putting on our walking boots or our running shoes and heading out the door. So to answer those questions we are delighted to be joined by Kerry McCarthy, who is editor of Runners World UK Magazine, a really passionate runner himself and a transformational life coach. So we've got Kerry for about 20 minutes today as he's quite a busy man so we'll kick off straight away. Hello Kerry, you're clearly successful in your career as an editor so tell us what took you down the road or down the route I should say of becoming a life coach as well. It's kind of a long path really, I suppose the short version would be it was a process of self-discovery. In 2010 I had a quite a sort of traumatic relationship breakup and for the first time in my life I experienced a bout of depression and when I went to a counsellor after about six months of suffering in silence my family begged me to take some action and I went to a counsellor who you know after we'd been working together a few weeks explained that while the relationship breakup had you know obviously had an effect on this it wasn't that in and of itself that had caused my depression that was simply the trigger and that was basically a volcano waiting to explode because I had been brought up learning that you didn't talk about your problems you keep things to yourself, step off a lip, all that kind of stuff. So that was kind of an eye opener. I then went on some antidepressants and fast forward a few years and after probably three or four more depressive episodes where I would go on the antidepressants I would come back off them I'd given myself about three bouts of overtraining syndrome which was kind of ironic given that I'm a health and fitness journalist but I'd got into a routine where I would sign up for some ridiculous challenge I would train like an absolute demon and flog myself then make myself physically ill through adrenal fatigue and have to take some time off during which time a bit like Ricky Hatton between fights if anyone remember that remember that boxer I'd just booze and eat all the pies and put all the weight back on and then I'd have to start again and it wasn't until a few years ago a friend pointed out to me and said look you're an experienced health and fitness journalist there's clearly a reason why you're doing this to yourself that's psychological and sometimes when you know you're in the eye of the storm obviously you can't see what's blind in the obvious to other people and that really made me stop and think so I'm about to know a programmer popper I had psychotherapy, hypnotherapy for a couple of things energy healing I'm quite a curious person and I believe that you know life is there to be experimented with and live so I kind of throw myself into these things quite enthusiastically anyway and during that process I discovered life coaching as well which is a little bit it's the only other different ones and as well as helping me for some reason it just it just lit me up it just triggered something in me and I thought I want to do that as well that's great I've had such benefit from this I want to help other people through this so I trained and started doing that as well. Thanks Kerry that's um that's yeah it's really good of you to share that um the what advice would you give to develop a solid foundation to support stronger mental health through your own experience and you know obviously your your life coaching experience as well. If I had to distill it down I would reuse a word that I used a minute ago I would say be curious be your own best detective I think in today's you know there were there were many many reasons obviously why people now today are struggling more than ever even before the pandemic mental health was a big conversation a growing conversation part of the national narrative I think in the UK we have something like we have the the highest use of antidepressant antidepressants in Western Europe which is massive I think particularly Brits because of our stiff upper lip kind of persona but all around the world people think or their instinct is to block things out block bad things out if you have if you suffer an anxiety attack or you wake up in a low mood or anything like that anything that's negative to perceive to be negative one's natural instinct is to go I'm going to push that away I'm going to ignore it la la la finger in my ears if I just ignore it it will go away and actually whilst you don't want to get neurotic about it a lot of the time inviting those feelings on and walking towards them can absolutely be the best thing to do because you take the mystique out of it and if you investigate what's happening a lot of the time you'll find the solutions so you know one a really useful tip that I that I give to clients and to people which if anyone has ever used the headspace meditation app you will recognize this there's a very recognized technique for dealing with the thoughts called labeling and instead of identifying with your thoughts and going oh my god my boss has just shouted at me or I forgot to do that or I've messed this up or whatever it is it's just simply to go I am experiencing fear I am experiencing agitation I'm experiencing low mood today and you are disassociating yourself from them so if you imagine that you're sitting by the side of the road and your thoughts are cars going past and you're just watching them go past instead of getting into the car you're just watching them and a lot of the time that helps people so I would encourage people to when you experience some kind of strong emotion to stop make note of it and journaling can help here and then you know if you have the time I'm not saying you know you have to stop where you are particularly you're busy you're home schooling or something but make a quick note on your phone just scribble something down and say massive pang of anxiety what caused it notice that this was on the news or somebody said that or I thought about this and if you keep a note of it over time you will start to notice the triggers that cause you to have those behaviors and you can do something about it that's really interesting thank you the so what's made the biggest difference to your mindset and has it been your love of the outdoors you were talking about how you were entering for almost grueling kind of punishing punishing kind of events you know one stage in your life and you know or is it a combination of both is it kind of yeah it's a combination of things there's for me there was a real kind of hallelujah moment particularly with regards to the use of the antidepressants and whether you should use them or not and how far as you go with them I read a book by quite a well-known journalist called Johan Hari he's half Swiss half English I think and a few years ago he wrote a book called Lost Connections and it's now regarded as the one of the kind of like a seminal groundbreaking works on mental health and you know when you you know the bit in the book where it's got all the kind of the the quotes from people who've read it who say yeah read this book it's great and it's got you know Alton John, Davina McCall, Oprah all sorts of people who've gone this book is groundbreaking and the reason why it is is this guy spent a couple years going around the world interviewing the world's leading experts in anything relating to mental health and the established wisdom seems to be now that there are essentially nine reasons for depression and anxiety and I scribble and down so I'm just going to quickly whist through them and basically if you're having a tough time it means because you are experiencing one of these disconnection from meaningful work where you feel you can make a difference and you are respected disconnection from people disconnection from meaningful values childhood trauma disconnection from respect disconnection from the natural world which obviously will come onto disconnection from hope for a better future and then the last two are what modern society is overwhelmingly skewed towards currently which are the role of genes and biology i.e saying I was just born like this or I've inherited the depressive or anxious gene so in there somewhere will be the answer to why you are feeling the way you are and for me in terms of what made the biggest difference it was working with myself enough to be able to work out what those triggers were because it's not simplistic enough to say okay my name is Kerry therefore I suffer from number four on that list it will be different things at different times so it's it's learning what works for you at what moment you know particularly at the moment with the pandemic obviously people are feeling disconnected from people even before that you know with the with the rise of social media and people starting to work from home and work remotely or having breakout zones in offices as a modern society we're moving away from what we're evolved to be which was working a tribe do things together and we're we're we're quite lonely and I worked out for myself I'm absolutely at my best when I'm collaborating with other people and some days I wake up and I feel really rotten and I realize it's because I've been stuck at my desk in my home office for four days and I haven't really spoken to anyone you have to do something about it equally I might not have got outside or been in crap food or haven't been doing any one of a number of things that I've worked out over time for my personal toolkit for making myself feel better but obviously within that being outdoors and taking exercises is huge for me personally it's a huge part of my life I couldn't live without it so that's great so that's kind of got to focus on yourself and you know these other things then help to deal with that as well but putting yourself first is really important sort of message yeah it's it's so important and I think again the instinct is you know when people say put yourself first focus on yourself it's kind of an instinct to go well isn't that selfish isn't that a bit navel-gazing you know particularly if you recommend to people you know I wouldn't you know recommend some kind of therapeutic process there's almost that perception that if a person eyes a course of therapy or coaching or something even similar to that there's somehow some kind of like Woody Allen character in a movie slightly neurotic you know obsessed themselves but actually there is only one of you there was only ever going to be one version of you as you are now in the history of this universe so why not absolutely make sure you are the best version of you that you can be because if you are the best version of you that you can be that's going to trickle out to all your other relationships think about how you are when you're firing all cylinders and work's going well and your home life's going well everyone loves you and you love yourself so get the core of it right which is you and the rest of it will absolutely follow great advice thank you just on sort of moving to your love of running a couple of questions on that really the what do you the trail trail or road running and why I'd say it might sound like a bit of a non-answer but I'd say both equally as I've got older I've been running for about I think about 18 years now as I've got older I've I've moved over more to trial running in my head everyone will have a different view but my head I see road running is almost like that's the running that you do when you're training for event and you decide you want to crack a PB and you're going to push yourself and for me getting off-road and getting out on nature is the time for me to leave my watch at home and just get out on meander about and you know absorb myself in what's going on the Japanese have a lovely phrase called forest bathing which is what they use to describe simply communing with nature which again you know it might seem slightly hippie-ish and tree hugging but it's what we're evolved to do and I read I think I've read recently that the average American spends 93% of their time indoors there wasn't a stat for Europeans or Brits but I would imagine it's not that different I mean imagine being being locked up for all that time we don't have to imagine it we are locked up at the moment now imagine that being your your permanent state we'd all go bonkers so getting outside and reconnecting with look at those birds flying overhead I can feel you know the wind on my face running there's nothing like running through a massive forest or even a park where there are trees for kind of reconnecting to that sense of majesty of nature and actually research shows that when we're outside in nature as humans we feel we feel reassured it can really help with your calm and your mental health because you are suddenly more aware of being part of something bigger and that's reassuring because you have to relinquish control to the mountains and the sea and the parks and everything else so it's just it's one of the best medicines that you can get I would say so that's interesting so you use road running as more of a kind of training sort of thing person trying to smash person best and trail is more just enjoying it going for the freedom and escapism is that that kind of it yeah I think so and you know there are a few companies springing up now that offer instead of offering competitive races they will offer guided runs particularly outside you know in areas just outside of cities if you're somebody that's a city dweller I think there's a company this actually there's a company called one of them is called um runaway adventures and they will offer guided runs so if you live in London and or leads or wherever and think well I'd like to get out a bit further out for my local parts but I'm not sure where you can sign up to one of these runs and they'll just guide you along and it costs you know like six seven quid or something and they'll take you through you know a different length run according to your ability at a particular speed and it's just about being with other people and being outside in nature and nobody gives a monkey what time you're running or what your splits are or how far it's just about the act of taking the sheer joy of moving your body yeah that's great yeah we work with one called um adventure running company I think based in France similar similar idea girls on trails up in Scotland yeah it's great it's great idea um so is it I think you've just touched on it really but as a keen runner um what what do you get out of it what's your kind of you know you're kind of going out from your six a.m run it's maybe dark outside maybe not this time of year but dark outside what's your motivation to sort of get out of bed and put your trainers on and get out with you sort of get out of it I think for me it comes from the experience of knowing what it gives me and also how I'll feel if I don't frankly and excuse me this can be transposed onto all forms of exercise obviously not just running so hiking mountaineering whatever but there is so much research behind the benefits of you know of movement and exercise in what it gives you um you know I can rattle off half a dozen here you know it'll improve your serotonin the the hackiness hormone your dopamine which is that reward hormone the same the same little flip that you get when you get an email come through or social media post or you've eaten a particularly satisfying meal or anything like that improves your immune system it makes you more productive it improves your sex life I'm sure the researchers that did the study into that had fun doing that one um it improves your memory your self-confidence better sleep better skin um you know the list is is endless and it actually um there's some evidence to show now something that it actually does make you overall happier there's a thing called the Oxford happiness questionnaire um the Oxford University brought up periodically and people answer um this questionnaire and it gives you a score between one and six where one is um you know I'm deeply unhappy and six is I'm skipping around like a lamb in a field and the UK average score on this one to six it comes out was four um but they did they um made a couple of thousand park runners you know people who do park run on the Saturday morning take the questionnaire and their average score came out of 4.4 so the runners overall were on margin a bit happier than than people who didn't exercise okay that's interesting yeah that's great I mean for me I I certainly get that sense of completion from doing a run that work seldom gives you because it's just to feel like you're on a bit of the treadmill you know completed one task it's straight on to the next so it's a primal thing isn't it I mean yeah you know we're evolved to move and we need to move our bodies and yeah if you can you know half the time I'll take my phone and my watch and all the gadgetry and half the time I'll just leave at home and you know arguably I enjoy myself more when I completely disconnect myself from the world around me and in today's society particularly if you've you know you've got kids in your homeschooling at the moment or you have other types of dependents there's a lot of pressure on us all and that time when you're outside whether it's an amble or a brisk walk or a run or whatever it is if you can leave the tech you've just got time for thinking and reflection and being uncontactable which sometimes for that brief period is a wonderful thing absolutely carry you've been involved I think with a new initiative called run some can you tell us a little bit about please yeah so excuse me run some is a campaign that I co-founded with on behalf of runners world magazine with another company called active things and the idea is to get people to run some more everyday journeys so this is for people who want to take up exercise maybe or you know thinking about taking it running they've seen the explosion in the last year since the first lockdown last March but they fall into that category of people who think running is not for me I'm too unfit I don't know what I'm doing I'll be embarrassed don't you have to have a watch and you know short split shorts in order to do it and running to improve or moving your body to improve your mental health as obviously as we're discussing more critical now than ever before but it can be fit in your everyday life so something like 20 percent of all car journeys in the UK are less than a mile because we all we'll do it it's like oh I just need to take them to the post office so I forgot something a supermarket I'll jump in the car the idea of the run some campaign is to take the current figure of people who say they run everyday journeys which is about 240 000 according to data and double that in the next year so run or run walk to get that pint of milk to do the school run to drop off a parcel to get a paper and then take it to Enans and incorporate it into your everyday life you have to run the whole way if you're completely new you can run a bit walk a bit or mostly walk and then run a bit but it's about fitting in that movement to help your your mind and your body in a way that fits around your life as well and it actually has a practical function so we're working with you know we're kind of building a coalition of brands who've come on board who are keen to support this we're lobbying government the government last year announced an active travel budget of two billion so it's going to be engaging in changing infrastructure and encouraging people to get around and their own steam more currently the provision with what the government's talking about is just is cycling and walking so we're trying to get running kind of accept done there as well so it's there's a sort of a shorter term focus of let's see how many people we can get signing up to this campaign and changing their lives in the next year and also try and create longer term change as well for those who are interested in investigating it more they can go to runsum.org and there's also for the next two weeks I'll just add there's an opportunity to become the running mayor of your city we're encouraging people to apply to become the running mayor of Leeds, Nottingham or wherever it is you live, Reading and the idea of that role is that if you're somebody who's found exercises helped you and you want to help your community it will be your job to champion the campaign in your community tell people about benefits of running about exercise, lobby MPs, tell the council where the roads need more pavements any ideas you have to get your community running and you want to shout about it and you want to be part of the campaign you can apply on a very simple one single form on our website and we will be going through the selection process and picking the mayors at the end of this month so runsum.org if anyone wants to check that out great and then Charlotte on Facebook has just said she loves this idea Kerry great idea to get people taking the first steps towards a healthier lifestyle without being too overwhelming so it's yes it's a brilliant concept I think it'll yeah hopefully against you know well it's already getting traction but hopefully it will gain more yeah yeah about showing people that they you know if they start small if you chunk it down and into really manageable amounts you know even just I'm going to get out the door even if I go back after two minutes I'm going to get my stuff on and I'm going to go out the door start wherever you're comfortable with and take it from there and move at your own speed because it's all about you it's not about what anyone else is doing that's great thank you one of my final questions was going to be because it was sort of running out of time is um if you were to close your eyes and imagine a calm peaceful place where would it be or what would it look like okay I'm not sure I should admit to this um so I'm quite connected to my to my inner child um and I think you know we all know what joy we can get from watching animations particularly if you've got kids and still you have children in your life in some capacity and actually funnily enough my my kind of happy place in my head is the flower farm from an animation called Ferdinand the bull um which was like it was a car it was a film that came out about three years ago um and I don't know why it should be it's you know the the film's about like a bull that doesn't it doesn't want to be a bullfighter because he's a pacifist and he ends up living on a flower farm but in that animation there's a beautiful stone farm cottage with trailers at the side and um you know flowers everywhere and a patchwork of fields and a beautiful hill in the in the in the distance with a solitary apple tree on top where the the bull and his his female human friend play during the day but for some reason I find that really calming so when I want to go to my happy place I just imagine that but I kind of transpose it into a proper you know non-cartoons everyday form in my head um but I do think it's really important for everyone to have one in your head and to immediately be able to go there um particularly if you're somebody who's trying to get going on something like meditation um it can really help to have something that does it for you um and as I've just obviously admitted with that I'm about to give Misha it needs to be something that really speaks to you and not something that you think is cool or that you think um people will find impressive or that other people have said they're happy places it's got to be something that resonates with you in your head that's great advice I love your happy place I think it's uh that's fantastic great and brilliant thank you for that Carrie that's been really insightful we've got a few few questions coming through if you don't mind we'll just pop these through to you um so um James asks is there um where if you need more more advice on mental health where would you to recommend that people head to you got any um I guess the Samaritans and I would say yeah I would say obviously the Samaritans and mind are obviously two good places where you can get going um I'm obviously obviously more than happy to help people I think my Instagram handle is on the screen so if people want to to DM me on there I will obviously always reply to everyone I'll get back to you straight away um whether it's you you know you want more advice from me or you want some you know extra resources I can put more thought into thinking about what you particularly might need according to your situation the other thing that I would recommend that I recommend to clients as well is and this might sound facile but it's really not is I would really take advantage of Google the advantage of Google now with the algorithms as we've as we all discover is that you can put in almost any question or query and somebody will have answered it you asked and had it answered before and the algorithms can work out exactly what it is you're getting at and the way that I navigate personally my way around is I think in my head how am I feeling today what's my question what do I need to resolve now and I just type it into Google and it's through that way and I disappear down a rabbit hole following links and you know I might read a piece and go and that's not doing it for me that's doing it for me and I end up on forums or YouTube videos and I just again I get curious and I investigate and I make myself my own best detective there was all the knowledge in the world out there so I would say to people rather than going to one particular resource and saying this is where I always go I would take the attitude of saying I'm going to think about what I need then I'm going to go to this incredible mind-blowing resource we have where all the information in the world is out there and I'm just going to pick up some threads and follow them and see how far they go and you will inevitably find something that works for you that's an interesting interesting view I've not I've not heard that before but it makes absolute sense that's great thank you thank you and Julie asked this is this is more about running so she tried couched a 5k for three weeks but found that her knees became so painful that she could hardly walk have you got any recommendations she was only running for a maximum of a few minutes have you got any experience of running ailments I do one of you know one of the things we you know I learned very on in my career run as well does that every every bodies and every bodies situation is is different so unfortunately as much as I'd love to say oh that's such and such syndrome or you just need to do this cunning trick the truthful answer is it could be any one of a number of things so if it's something that hopefully you're determined to crack on with and do if any you can resolve this issue I know we can't get out and about too much in the moment and I would recommend sorting out a zoom appointment with a physio I would always on what I will say I was if it's if it's muscular pain so it's something to do with a sporting endeavor in this case I would always go to a sports therapist or a physio in this case digitally rather than your GP because they're they're much much more likely to be able to get to the root of the problem you know you cannot either go to general sports ones there's a company called pure sports med that are very good balance physio who take care of people nation might as well and there's one in London called move clinics for anyone who's London based who are kind of running specific but again you know it could be anything from you need to start off with more walking first or you need to wear some supports to start with you know you can either go to general sports or you need to wear some supports to start with or you have some flexibility issues or muscular strength issues so you know the answer is in there somewhere but you know if you want to keep doing something while you investigate this you're like okay I want to you know so I don't lose my momentum I would I would just park the the catch to 5k program for now and just go whatever I was supposed to be doing in terms of running I'm still going to get out of the door but I'm going to walk it and I'm going to power walk it as well so really walk walk at whatever the fastest speed you can without your your knee pain kicking in but keep getting out there don't let it dissuade you from from starting on this endeavor which I think is brilliant fantastic thanks Kerry well we've crammed in quite a lot of information and advice into 20-25 minutes so I really appreciate your your time this afternoon for anyone who wants to look back on some of the advice that Kerry's given and missed it then you can watch this again on Facebook and we'll also upload it to YouTube as well so you can take notes on the next time you watch it but Kerry thank you again for your time well thanks very much for having me fascinating having you to chat and really appreciate it and thank you everyone for joining in this afternoon and have a great afternoon thank you