I love being outdoors on a bright, crispy winter day–running, cross-country skiing, snow shoeing. I love the blue sky against the evergreens against the snow; the colors look as clean and pure as the air feels inside my lungs. Even though I complain ad nauseum about black ice, shoveling, and the New England ice storm that knocked down power lines for days, I know my body and spirit need winter. I find ways to be outside anyway, by shoveling for cross-training and going for a long run from the hotel we fled to when we lost power after that storm.

What I could really do without is the darkness that descends at 4:00 and the small voice in me that makes me think I want to stay in the house for five months. I love a roaring fireplace, sitting with a hard-but-not-too-hard crossword puzzle, and baking my way through the holidays (and February and March if I’m going to be honest about it). There are so many times when I watch the daylight disappear and the arrow on the thermometer drop that my mood starts to descend, too. And when that happens, the idea of venturing out to move through winter air seems a lot less appealing than, for example, whipping up another batch of chocolate-covered pretzels and wallowing in my indoor winter blues.

The extreme feeling of winter blues, Seasonal Affective Disorder (or SAD), affects 9% of the population in the northern Unites States, according to current statistics on the disorder, which brings on symptoms of depression. Treatments for SAD range from light therapy to medications like Zoloft and Prozac, but one option for milder cases of winter blues is bundling up and confronting Old Man Winter head on. In my interviews with dozens of women runners, one theme stands out: we always come back from a run outdoors feeling better than when we left. The treadmill, my study has found, does not have the same effect. Being out in the world rather than in the house, doing something aerobic, presses some sort of reset button in the psyche to get us through the rest of the day. And as a regular routine, being outside ultimately gets us through those tough, bluesy times of year. The National Organization for Seasonal Affective Disorder agrees—outdoor exercise is key to managing the winter blues.

Resisting the mentality that makes me want to hunker down with the crossword is my biggest struggle, but the knowledge that I will come back in the house stronger and more settled gets me off my duff to layer up and head out. While there are definitely days where the wind chill makes it impossible to leave the couch, I often look to the advice of a friend and coach who quips his team through winter marathon training: “there’s no bad weather, only bad clothing.” And so when it’s 10 degrees outside, I put on layer after layer and what feels like hours later, I’m shuffling down the road in 10 pounds of clothes. Some blustery days it’s all I can do to walk to get the mail at the end of the driveway, but every little bit helps. When I’m out there, I’ve passed drivers who do that little finger twirl at their temples to tell me I’m nuts, or who simply shake their heads slowly, but my craziness for attempting a snowy run is no match for my madness after weeks of inactivity.

I try to avoid dispensing fitness advice to people I know who aren’t active because it’s a sure way to lose friends, but so many of us are afflicted by cabin fever and the winter blues, which becomes a cycle of lethargy and sadness that is hard to break. And so I wish that in this new year that starts in a most brutal winter month, we might get out of our funk by getting outside to walk, run, or play our way through life, even when the sky is gray or the ground is slush. Because in my experience, I return to my indoor life recharged and renewed, with a clearer head—to tackle that crossword or the other puzzles in front of me.

KRISTINA PINTO was an academic in gender and psychology and is now a mother, runner, and writer currently working on a book about how running enhances motherhood. She also blogs for the Competitor Group at Marathon Mama »