I've noticed that a lot of us in the Triple Digits Club (including me) have written at various times about suffering from depression. This started me wondering if there is a relationship between our weight and depression, and if so, what the relationship is. I can think of three possible ways weight and depression may be related:

1. In response to feelings of depression, we may start eating more carbs in order to up our blood sugar and give us that elusive feeling of well being. I know that I have certainly done this in my life and it has quickly turned into a vicious cycle, because when the blood sugar crashes I look for more carbs and my moods swing up and down while my weight just swings up.

2. I am sure we have all experienced difficulties and discrimination because of our weight. This could possibly lead to depression -- I know that at times it has gotten me down.

3. Both depression and weight gain could be symptoms of something else and both could be caused by the same thing, rather than one causing the other. I have a family history of both issues -- weight gain and depression -- so it is possible there is some gene that gives me a predisposition to both. However, one of my children seems to have inherited the tendency toward depression but has absolutely no weight problem.

I will say that since starting low carbing last July, my moods have been remarkably stable. However, I started getting a little down a couple of weeks ago in response to some events in my family and all of a sudden I found my consumption of diet Coke and nuts increasing -- it was as though I was substituting them for the carbs in my fight against depression. I started getting into the same up/down mood cycles with the diet Cokes and the nuts that I had previously gotten into with carbs. Eventually I realized what was going on and stopped it and now I am focusing on other ways of dealing with stress (including lots of aerobic exercise).

I was wondering whether other members of the Triple Digits Club who have a tendency toward depression feel there is a relationship between your weight gain and depression and if so how you think they are related -- does one cause the other? I was also wondering how you felt low carbing had affected your tendency to get depressed.