Depression and Weight Gain
Depression and weight gain often, unfortunately, go hand in hand. I’d like to say that depression usually causes the reverse, a slight weight loss, rather than weight gain, as weight is usually a little easier to put back on than to take off, but in fact, most of my friends, and myself, experience weight gain when going through “blue” periods.
This weight gain during depression may be explained by the fact that depression many times causes levels of certain hormones, like seratonin, to fluctutate in our bodies. These same hormones many times are a big part of our appetite, and their subsequent fluctuation can mean trouble for an outlandish appetite that just won’t quit.
Also, we often tend to try to fill emotional voids by doing what is called “comfort food eating”. The foods we all consider comfort foods are often loaded with fat, and actually cause immediate gratification by appealing to our sense of smell and taste by kind of bombarding them with lots of fat (which has tons of flavor), salt (also, tons of flavor), and sweet sensations which help comensate for the lack of feel good chemicals in our body.
Or so our body thinks. In fact, while these types of foods can cause instant gratification, in the long term they actually cause critical sugar crashes and hormone imbalances which only trigger further depression and mood swings.
