Eating piles of garlic bread and ice cream didn’t make me fat — being sad did, and science says so
I’VE been overweight for almost all my adult life.
For parts of it, I’ve also been extremely unhappy — and, when I’m sad, I eat more.
So when I read about a new study linking obesity to depression, I wasn’t exactly shocked to my core.
I knew that, without actually knowing I knew it.
The root of obesity, the study says, is not diet, mental weakness, exercise (or lack of it), my DNA, or supermarkets waving sugar at me.
Those things are incidental. The root of it is sadness.
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In retrospect, that’s obvious — maybe even cheering.
After all, if I am overweight because I am sad, then surely I can lose weight by being happier? Win, win.
Maybe this means I don’t have to obsess about calories, or food — as I have done all my life, for nothing.
Instead, it seems, I need to focus on being happy — and the rest will follow.
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The study, by Cambridge University, tracked 2,000 people for nine months.
Dr Julia Mueller, who led the research, said: “People who are overweight or obese are more vulnerable to weight gain in response to feeling more depressed.
“We know from previous evidence that people who feel depressed can overeat, or eat higher-calorie foods with more fat or sugar, or be less likely to go for a walk or take exercise.”
It’s true for me. I was a normal-sized child — skinny even.
Then my parents got divorced when I was ten and I became lonely and depressed — and food became my “friend”.
I began to get fat.
Different foods created different feelings. Sugar — chocolates, cakes, toffees — made me high.
Bread and other refined carbohydrates — pasta and even rice — calmed me down.
I learnt I could regulate my feelings using food, and I have used this mechanism all my life.
If I felt scared, or angry, or ashamed, I learned, I could fix it with a meal.
I was overweight by puberty, and I got bigger year on year.
Occasionally I would lose weight if I were happy or optimistic — when I started university, say — but it always came back on.
Juice fast clinic in Spain and a sheep yoghurt clinic in Austria
Now I am nearly 50, I realise I have been comfort eating for decades.
In fact, I’ve done it for so long, I tell myself I am OK with it. But I’m not.
If overeating is self-soothing, it is also habitual.
You get used to it. The body adapts.
On my few adventures into eating healthily, I have learned you get used to that too.
I have done fasting retreats — the juice fast clinic in Spain and the sheep’s yoghurt clinic in Austria stand out — that made me feel healthy and happy, but I always relapsed eventually.
It takes years to put on a lot of weight.
Aged 11-14, I went from skinny to stout. It was mortifying.
When other girls were wearing Levi’s 501s in the 1980s, I couldn’t. They were tight on my thighs and baggy on my calves.
I looked at slender girls who could regulate their food — who ate because their bodies needed it, not their souls — as marvellous creatures, because I could never be like that.
They weren’t unkind, but I knew I wasn’t in their group. I was different from them.
They ate salads and vegetables, while I loved takeaways and chocolates. I still do.
When I was fully grown at 18, I settled at 11st, even though I am only 5ft 4in, and my BMI was 24.6, just into overweight.
I wasn’t particularly unhappy — I excelled at school and had a friendship group — but I was anxious, as most teens are, and the food helped me manage it.
In my 20s, again spurred on by the anxiety of being at university, I began to put on serious weight.
As well as drinking too much — I developed a serious alcohol problem — I was eating piles of carb and fat-heavy food, followed by enormous portions of chocolates.
I think now that I need the food, the fat, to protect me from my feelings, as alcohol had.
I had a good job, but the rest of my life was chaotic, and recovery from alcoholism is no picnic.
I used food to regulate my moods again, just like the study says.
An unhappy love affair when I was 30 — he had someone else, and I knew it — put a stone on me, and I weighed 12 stone.
He would drop me at home after a date and I would walk to the Italian restaurant and eat huge plates of pasta, garlic bread and ice-cream, knowing he was going to see someone else.
I wish I could have owned my anger, which the food pushed down, but I didn’t.
The unhappy love affair ended, but the weight stayed with me, and grew, as if it had a life of its own.
It didn’t, of course, it was my sadness.
I would always live near places where I liked to eat, as if they were friends I could drop in to see.
I was also attracted to friends who ate compulsively, like me. We would eat together, lounging in front of the TV.
I dated men who didn’t mind my weight, or liked food too.
Living next to a 24-hour milkshake shack in north London in my 30s, I spent many nights there and gained two stone.
My relationships were dead-end or fraught in those days, and it masked my loneliness.
At 35, I moved to another place a few doors from an Italian restaurant, where I ate all my meals.
When I left London for Cornwall, my local Indian restaurant gave me a goodbye box of After Eights — I was that good a customer.
I met my husband Andrew at 39, and we were so happy — but I still took my feelings out on food and we ate together as we fell in love.
I put on two stone in that period, and my pregnancy with our son, who is now 12, saw me gain another two.
Now I live next door to a pasty shop.
When I moved here seven years ago, I thought I would get fit. I didn’t.
I love my life now — the family, the cliff walks, the dog — but the weight is like a person I can’t shift.
I’m off sugar for now — I began on January 1, like everyone — and feel more active and healthy.
But I daren’t say it will continue, as it never has before.
I’ve dieted over the years, but succeeded only once.
Twenty years ago, while running with a charismatic personal trainer who advised no sugar at all and no carbs after lunch, my weight dropped to below 10st at last.
My response to this was very telling.
Thin at last, for me, I felt very anxious, as if I had lost my armour. In photographs taken at the time, I look gaunt and unhappy.
I remember looking down at the scales and thinking: “It’s all got to come on again.”
And it did. I felt as if it suited me, as if I needed it.
It felt inevitable — something I couldn’t let go of.
I’m not alone, of course. The actor Rebel Wilson posted about weight gain on Instagram this week, after losing 80lb in the last few years.
She wrote: “Working really hard has meant, coz of all the stress, I’ve gained 14kg (30 pounds)!
“It makes me feel bad about myself, it shouldn’t, but it does.
“I’m really proud of the work I’ve been doing on new movies and my memoir, it’s just been a LOT and I’ve lost focus on my healthy lifestyle.”
I know how she feels. But I find the new study weirdly comforting.
If you know why something has happened, you can change it.
I don’t have to bully myself about food anymore — the bullying itself is the problem.
Telling myself I look horrible, when I don’t.
Telling myself I’m weak when I was strong enough to live without alcohol for more than 20 years.
I had everything the wrong way round. I thought being slimmer would make me happier.
It turns out being happier will make me slimmer. I’m 17st now, which is a lot.
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I just looked up what I should be on the NHS website — 10st.
Maybe knowing I have to please myself, make myself happy and be kind to myself is really the best place to start.
FED-UP OF TURNING TO FOOD?
NEUROSCIENTIST Dr Julia Jones, author of Neuron: Smart Wellness Made Easy, shares her tips on how to beat depression weight gain.
- CHANGE YOUR MINDSET BY MAKING A PLAN: It might be helpful to tell your GP, or mental health professional, that your weight needs to be addressed and then make a clear plan with them. Are there specific behaviours, like eating junk while watching TV, that you can stop?
- DO NOT BE TOO TOUGH ON YOURSELF: Make a record of foods you like and plan your meals. If you are less motivated when depressed, this might not be the time to learn fancy cooking skills. Stock up on nutritious options that are ready-to-go, such as pre-made overnight oats. Keep supplies of microwavable bags of veg or rice.
- TAKE BABY STEPS: Heading into Lycra cycling shorts and hitting an intensive spinning class is asking a lot. There is a wealth of free classes on sites like YouTube so you can start tentative steps into activity from your lounge.
- ROUTINE AND REWARD: Once you have an eating plan stick to it and write down everything you eat, this is a great way to record your journey in a positive way and it helps you identify the feelings you have about yourself. Avoid using negative self-talk and keep a list of the constructive words you use in your phone to look back on when you feel low.
- DO NOT GO IT ALONE: Find a friend to help, by joining an online group or meeting a group in person. Look for fun alternatives to the gym – walk the kids to school or have fun at a trampoline park.
Identify triggers for over-eating - it could be arguments or a heavy workload. Instead of grabbing the biscuits after a row with your partner, listen to a favourite song or write a list in praise of yourself.
Admitting you are depressed is very difficult, so always seek support from your GP.