Physical exercise improves your sense of wellbeing but different intensities give different results.
Healthy adults were tested after doing various types of exercises and activities and compared how they felt.
Office work and driving a car were considered light intensity and were associated with an improved mood.
Housework or walking were considered moderate activities and not only improved mood but reduced pain, in those that suffered this.
Doing nothing reduced people’s moods.
Journal of Health Psychology doi:10.1177/1359105317691589
Adapted from article in Human Givens Vol 1 2017
Diabetes Diet 
“Office work and driving a car were considered light intensity and were associated with an improved mood.”
Good grief! They obviously never worked or drove in some of the places I used to.
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I was surprised by this as well. I would say driving was very low intensity (except for stress) and office work was low intensity, but neither tend to improve my mood. Despite my hatred of housework it does seem to me to be moderate in intensity and does improve my mood, once I have actually done it.
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I actually enjoy driving here because there’s comparatively little traffic and except for the holidaymakers mostly well behaved. The M25, not so much.
Along the same lines I recall a doctor, or maybe a dietician, claiming that exercise could only be done in a gym. Housework, gardening, walking etc. “didn’t count”!
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Well Chris, I’ve got an even better one than that! A dietician on an online diabetes teaching programme claims that saturated fat clogs your arteries because it is solid at room temperature and vegetable oil and olive oil don’t because they are liquid.
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Tell her to put some heart-healthy oatmeal down the kitchen sink and get back to you . . .and for bonus points ask her to explain what other consequences might arise from having arteries at room temperature
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