Weight Loss: When Being Down Is Bad

As you think about the above vignettes, what themes come to mind? Do the struggles of Selma, Robert, or Jill trigger memories of your own that might be related to your reliance on food? These stories and stories like them, of grief, loneliness, and helplessness, can lead to periods of depression later in life.

Feeling down or is it depression?

It is not uncommon for a person to feel depressed at some point in their lives. In fact, it is often a critical emotion for a person to experience, especially when dealing with losses (such as the death of a loved one, loss of a job, end of a relationship). However, when these episodes last for days and weeks at a time, it is often a warning sign that something more significant is occurring. When this happens, it is vital to consult someone to assess whether this is still a natural reaction to the situation or you have become clinically depressed. Often one of the things that people try to do before seeking help is deal with the problem themselves, especially because it is often considered a weakness to be depressed and something you should just snap out of it on your own. However, as anyone who suffers from depression will tell you, it is not that easy. So, how do people try to cope with their depression? Well, some of the most common ways are alcohol, other substances, or food. (This is often referred to as self-medicating.) So the next question becomes, how do we choose what to use? As is often the case, it depends on what has been modeled for us from a young age.

Food for comfort and coping

In the case of food, from a young age we are taught that when we are upset, food is a source of comfort. How often do adults hear their baby crying and automatically think it means that they are hungry and need food? This is the beginning of what behavioral psychologists call a paired response. When this occurs, an individual has learned to pair a certain situation with a certain response. In the case of depression, when someone feels unhappy or sad, they respond by soothing this response with food. This is known as a coping response, if this becomes generalized the person will use it all the time to cope with the various situations and feelings that they encounter. Coping responses can be adaptive (e.g., talking to someone) or maladaptive (e.g., eating). Research suggests that children who eat excessively are more likely to utilize maladaptive strategies to cope with emotions such as anxiety and depression (1.)

As we grow up, we rely on food as a way of coping with our sadness. Excellent examples of this are eating after a stressful conversation or a break up. We use food to sooth ourselves and while this is a perfectly acceptable coping strategy when it happens occasionally, it becomes a maladaptive coping strategy when it occurs as our primary way of coping with these feelings. With this in mind, research has demonstrated that individuals who have problematic eating behaviors are more likely to use more coping strategies that aim to avoid dealing with the situation (2.)  This means that if you eat as a way of avoiding or dealing with something, then you are more likely to use other avoidance strategies to deal with challenging situations.

Once we consume food, the journey that it undertakes within the body sparks off a variety of chemical reactions, one of which involves serotonin, which is one of the main chemicals involved with an individual's mood (3.) One theory associated with this is that eating certain food groups increases the production of serotonin. This may be an effort by the individual to self-medicate against depressive symptoms. This gives the term "comfort food" a whole new meaning. This means that when you eat the candy bar or the ice cream, it does actually make you feel better.