I started with 1 day on 2 days off, then 1 on 1 off, and have been building up to 5 on 2 off (weekday/weekend) 7-10km/day and man the days that I run and the days that I don't run feel so different it's crazy.

When I cardio first thing in the morning the rest of the day I am relaxed, focused and generally in a great mood. I have pretty bad ADHD so my dopamine floor can drop out from under me and I get into a state of frantically focus shifting looking for something to give me any little bit of dopamine, but there have been 0 days of feeling like that when I go running. It's like setting a baseline of dopamine for the rest of the day so I am calm focused and energetic .

The days I don't run in the morning I feel so lethargic and in a haze. I don't think this was my normal pre-daily-cardio, but it's definitely pretty close. I never really get hungry so my meal times are way off, I find I drink more coffee just to have some pep and I crave harder drugs way more (I'm sober except for coffee). On days I run I don't even think about it. My knees and ankles definitely need the rest though lol.

I fucking hate running by the way. The whole time I have to tell myself "if you stop running and walk the rest of it you will be out here all morning, the faster you run, the sooner it's over" and that generally works. I am running through orchards and forest for 90% of my path every morning so it's not like a stressful city run or anything, my whole body just wants me to stop and go back to bed (I wake up ->drink water -> stretch -> run over a pieriod of maybe 10 minutes).

This post isn't going anywhere I just wanted to get my thoughts out there and hopefully inspire someone who needs to hear it. Daily moderate-heavy cardio will change your life in so many different ways, but it fucking sucks and I hate it so much.