Depression and My Eating Habits

When I’m depressed, I tend to stop eating. Most of the time I just don’t feel hungry, and when I do feel hungry I can’t bring myself to care. When I finally force myself to eat something, I don’t usually feel like cooking, so I eat what’s convenient rather than what my body needs–which leads to situations like in the previous post, where I’d go a whole day eating nothing but coffee cake, or, if I hadn’t baked anything, Kraft mac & cheese, or potato chips. Not more calories than usual–in many cases, less–but just too much of the same thing. I don’t believe foods are inherently “bad,” but eating an unvaried diet of mostly the same food group is, which is something I don’t do when I’m taking care of myself.

I know other people have gained weight from their depression without changing their eating habits, and I know that things like food, stress, and genetics have a complex and interconnected relationship when it comes to determining someone’s weight. But the overwhelming perception, in my experience, is that depressed people gain weight because they’re self-medicating with food. I remember telling a nurse once, when she raised “concern” about my weight gain, that I was struggling with depression. I didn’t even get to the part where I am recovering well (with some occasional setbacks), eating a healthy, balanced diet, and exercising, and that my weight is probably the most stable than it has been in the past year and a half, and I’m the healthiest I have been, before she started asking me about my overeating problem.

I don’t think people need an excuse to be fat. Even if weight weren’t influenced by genetics or other factors outside of people’s control, even if being fat was completely and totally a choice, it would be a person’s individual choice and not something for society to judge. But I do think it’s important to teach people that fat and weight gain is caused by things other than food, and that even when it is related to food the relationship is much more complex than “calories in, calories out,” and much more complex than the pictures of lazy gluttons choosing to stuff themselves or of mindless, passive consumers brainwashed by the evil fast food conglomerates–and to remind people that health is about your mind, not just your body.

That was a bit rambly, I think. I have grown frustrated lately, feeling myself falling back into the depression and realizing, now that I’m fully entrenched in the idea of intuitive eating (I’ve been doing it somewhat informally for at least a year now, but I’ve only fairly recently been able to put a name to it and truly separate it from the guilt-inducing ideas of “good” and “bad” foods) and have seen what benefits it gives me when I’m feeling healthy, how frustrating it is that when I’m depressed, intuitive eating doesn’t work.