This impression was clearly strengthened when we asked another question of our survey population. We asked them when they most frequently break their diet and turned to food for relief of stress. Two thirds said it was when they were most critical of themselves and one half said it is when they were depressed. As a psychiatrist, when a patient tells me they are too critical of themselves, I instinctively understand that I am talking to someone who is depressed. And I know very well from my own work with patients who are overweight that people have learned how to silence the internal critic temporarily with food, so overeating becomes the medication of choice.

What I Mean By "Depression"
The word depression has come to mean so many things lately that I want to clarify what I mean by it before I go any further. The kind of depression I'm talking about here is not the clinical depression called major depressive disorder that has been diagnosed in up to 10% of the adult population. Instead I'm talking about the depressed moods that come and go, take their toll, but do not incapacitate the person. The depressed mood is tied to a perception that one's life is not going as well as hoped for or as expected. This has been called a sub-clinical depression and at any one point in time we believe that about a third of the adult population is in this state of mind.

The Vicious Cycle
In doctors' offices it is estimated that 70% of all outpatients have some degree or kind of sub-clinical depression. In Britain, because of this high percentage, they have asked their doctors to stop giving antidepressant medication to this large group of people who are distressed, but not clinically depressed.

Although antidepressants are frequently prescribed for sub-clinical depression in this country, it is probably not the best choice for people who are overweight or sensitive to weight gain. Many of the most popular antidepressants cause significant weight gain in one out of every four patients. The average weight gain is 7 per cent of their body weight, and for some it is up to 20% of their body weight. There are an estimated 28 million people in this country taking antidepressant medication so undoubtedly for some the cause of being overweight is a combination of two factors, the depression and the medication for the depression.

And of course there is a self-perpetuating cycle at work. If you are depressed and don't think your future looks hopeful, and you are too critical of yourself, you then eat to comfort yourself and gain weight, which makes you more unhappy with yourself and more depressed about being over-weight, so of course you have to eat more to comfort yourself.

This cycle goes on and on until one day you wake up and say no more and decide you are going to do something about the cycle. You either decided to see a therapist, or ask your doctor for an antidepressant, or go on a diet, or start rearranging your life to get unstuck, or you start doing all of the above.

That's exactly why I said at the beginning of this article that dieting is part of some larger agenda in the lives of most dieters. On the surface a diet's purpose is to help you lose a few pounds, but it's probably also an attempt to break the cycle of the sub-clinical depression, and to regain the momentum in your life, and with that, to recapture your own self-esteem.

What You Can Do
MASTERINGFood is program designed with all of this in mind. We start with your emotional eating habits and follow the trail to the other parts of your life that need attention, paying special attention to self-doubts. We help you go through the transition from "stuck to going strong." We believe that in order to transform unhealthy emotional eating habits to healthy self-care habits, you will have to deal with the other life agendas that moved you to decide to diet now. If you'd like us to help you in your attempts to improve you life, please join us today.