3 Ways Depression Is Connected to Food

With depression often comes dissatisfaction with one’s appearance. It sometimes starts with low confidence present already in childhood and often with the lack of support from parents, or even humiliation and abuse from those who should protect and nurture us. These are among the factors that can lead to a negative relationship with one’s body and oneself. In severe cases, it can result in self-hatred and suicidal tendencies.

Food, the fuel our body runs on, plays a key role in this mind-body relationship. Our diet is something we can relatively easily change, unlike self-perception issues caused by features such as a crooked nose, large ears or unusual height.

Various forms of depression are often diagnosed together with nutrition-related mental disorders such as anorexia or bulimia, as an accompanying diagnosis. Some depressive patients develop eating disorders, and vice versa. Although monitoring signs of depression is an integral part of treatment in anorectic and bulimic patients, paying attention to eating habits of people suffering from depression is far from common practice — even though food patterns can play a role in all phases of depression and can influence the course of the illness.

Let’s take a look at how can our dietary habits influence depression, and conversely, how can depression trigger problems related to nutrition.

1. Lack of energy

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People suffering from depression may not feel enough energy to go grocery shopping and cook for themselves. Interpersonal communication also presents a problem, which severely complicates eating out. If they live alone or in an unsatisfactory relationship, no one persuades them to eat or cares when and what they ate. Moreover, the illness or its medication may cause the lack of feeling hunger or diminished appetite.

Food thus becomes more of an obligation or giving way to social pressure. If a person suffering from this problem doesn’t at least use some regular food delivery service, there’s an increased risk of the problem getting worse. Long-term undernourishment leads to further decline of one’s mental state and triggers a feedback loop that becomes harder and harder to escape.

2. “I don’t deserve to eat”

If the state of depression stemmed from humiliation or abuse, it’s frequently accompanied by strong feelings of inferiority, worthlessness, and uselessness. If one repeatedly, even for years, hears from their closest ones that good food or any food is too expensive for them, that they don’t deserve it or that take it from others who are more deserving, they can internalize the arguments and adopt them. Such rejecting of food and other life necessities or pleasures can remain hidden beneath other health issues and diagnoses for years.

3. Food as a substitute

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Conversely, food can sometimes become the sole source of pleasure in the sea of gloom. If one’s feeling so bad that they are unable to exercise, go to the cinema, or get drinks with friends, there are not many remaining ways to feel joy. However, this can lead to binge eating, which is — not only in people with eating disorders — related to feelings of failure and loss of control over oneself. It can further trigger the feeling that nothing matters since we can’t control ourselves.

If we succumb to this notion, it increases the fear of going out or speaking to people, so that the feedback of problems with eating and depression continue: Eating problems aggravate depression, and depression complicates the chance of a healthy diet and dietary habits.

Skipping meals, refusing to eat anything but the most basic and cheapest foods, low appetite or an irresistible desire for sweet foods can be the markers that something may be going wrong, and we should become sensitive to these cues to be able to help people around us. We’ve become used to the abundance of food and little risk of hunger. It doesn’t usually occur to us that people in our vicinity may be going hungry, even though they don’t lack the means and opportunities to eat. The reasons may lie hidden away in their psyche, and however difficult they may seem to understand, we should not overlook them.