Diet and depression

[elaineanne1]

I am feeling very depressed at the moment and this is sending my eating through the roof, I am trying to control it but it is not easy to do. I am a carer for my husband and he has just come out of a 10 week depression which I struggled though. I managed to lose a stone last year but have been the same since about March.

[Beek]

I tend to comfort eat like you. I started C5K about 6 weeks ago and since then I am finding I have gone from NEVER EVER feeling full to having times when I feel so stuffed that I cannot eat another thing. This is a totally new experience for me, and I am now eating less for the first rime in my life. If you are able to exercise it may be helpful to you. Just a thought! Hope you soon feel more 'up'!

[Hidden]

Hi elaineanne1,

It;s clearly hard for someone on a blog to comment upon a person's depression.

Perhaps you mean a 'real' clinical depression, or perhaps you just mean a period of low mood or perhaps even just feeling a bit down.

If the former, I'd suggest you talk with your doctor about perhaps getting your depression under better control.

If the second, well if your spouse has had a period of being depressed, that will obviously impinge upon your emotional state too. And such emotional impacts can alter your hormones (which amongst other things control fat storage, fat burning, appetite and feelings of satiation) and impinge upon your weight loss efforts.

If that is happening for you, then you're going to find it hard to lose weight, because you'll be kind of fighting your own body's management system to do it.

However, my advice would be to just stick to your guns with your better eating habits as much as you are realistically able.

Comfort eating is to be expected in this sort of situation and you may even be actually sublimating food for the care and attention of your partner who has probably not been showing you very much of that recently due to his depression.

But as the situation improves, my guess is the weight loss journey will get back on track.

And, perhaps you could try and comfort eat things which are more filling and less 'naugthy' than other things. That is perhaps you could steer away from the 'empty' calories and more towards the fruit/veg and fibre stuff, at least a bit.

Good luck with both the weight loss and the low mood issues.

[ctauson2]

Hi,

Sorry to hear you feel the way you do. I can understand your feelings as I have experienced depression. I realised that one of the ways to improve my mental health is to improve my eating and am doing the NHS health eating plan which has been brilliant and really helped me stay focused.

Something that I found useful was a blog on the Mind website called Food and Mood which has information about the ideal foods which help to lift your mood backed by scentific evidence which is growing. mind.org.uk/mental_health_a...

Hope this may shed some light