Which came first, the chicken or the egg?  Did depression cause your weight issues or did your weight issues cause your depression?  Does it really matter? 

Yes, it does.

One is the root cause and one is a symptom of something deeper just like the weight issue.  The difficulty lies in determining which came first for you.  Before you get to that part, you must first realize what depression is and its symptoms.

Rather than define the condition myself, I will defer to the experts at MedicineNet.com.

Depression: An illness that involves the body, mood, and thoughts, that affects the way a person eats and sleeps, the way one feels about oneself, and the way one thinks about things. A depressive disorder is not the same as a passing blue mood. It is not a sign of personal weakness or a condition that can be wished away. People with a depressive disease cannot merely “pull themselves together” and get better. Without treatment, symptoms can last for weeks, months, or years. Appropriate treatment, however, can help most people with depression.

Here are the symptoms of depression:

The signs and symptoms of depression include loss of interest in activities that were once interesting or enjoyable, including sex; loss of appetite (anorexia) with weight loss or overeating with weight gain; loss of emotional expression (flat affect); a persistently sad, anxious or empty mood; feelings of hopelessness, pessimism, guilt, worthlessness, or helplessness; social withdrawal; unusual fatigue, low energy level, a feeling of being slowed down; sleep disturbance with insomnia, early-morning awakening, or oversleeping; trouble concentrating, remembering, or making decisions; unusual restlessness or irritability; persistent physical problems such as headaches, digestive disorders, or chronic pain that do not respond to treatment; thoughts of death or suicide or suicide attempts. Alcohol or drug abuse may be signs of depression.

If you can identify with several of the symptoms, and they just won’t go away, you may be suffering from clinical depression.  HOWEVER, don’t self-diagnose and try to fix it yourself…leave that to the experts and see your physician immediately.

This topic is very near and dear to my heart.  I have suffered from anxiety (which I’ll cover in a future post) and depression for most of my adult life.  For me, it wasn’t clear if my weight issues were caused by depression or due to depression.  It wasn’t until I figured it out that I was able to begin making progress.  I’m going to try to walk through how I came to that determination.  For the sake of not boring you to tears, I’ll stick with the root cause analysis of my weight problem and not go into too much detail on what got me there.

In 2005, I was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes which was obviously caused by my weight and general neglect of my body.  I had been diagnosed with generalized anxiety/depression years before but I attributed my weight issues to the SSRIs (selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors) that I was prescribed since that is a known side effect.  I’m sure that was some of it but not all of it.  Deep down I knew it the main culprit was the depression.  It took some time to admit it but I didn’t start making progress with my weight until I did.

Once the depression became my main focus, I started to hunt for my eating trigger…what was causing me to overeat?  I started at the most obvious point: I knew the reason I was turning to food was because I wasn’t ‘happy’.  But why was I doing that?  It went all the way back to my childhood.  I came to the realization that all of my fondest childhood memories involved food!  These were my ‘happiest’  and ‘funnest’ times.  Family reunions, going out with friends, Thanksgiving, Christmas…they all revolved around food for me!  This was an amazing breakthrough.  I wasn’t happy so my brain was trying to make me happy by telling me I needed food.  I was overeating to try to recreate the happiness and fun I felt in the past.  Most importantly, I realized that I wasn’t just depressed because I was overweight.  I was overweight because I was depressed. 

I consider myself lucky in that I found this root cause early in my weight loss journey.  The depression has never completely gone away.  It is something I’m afraid that I will always battle.  However, because I know ‘why’ I have the tendency to overeat, I can sustain the fight.  I have tried to make a conscious effort to create new ‘happy’ and ‘fun’ memories that have nothing at all to do with food.  I only wish this was an easy thing to accomplish. 

As I said yesterday, I struggle with it every single day I roll out of bed…but I press on.   Being stubborn does have its benefits.