Motivation when you have depression.

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/running

not a depression success story, but it's funny, it's truth, and maybe it'll make you smile a bit.

I don't really exercise, but I find that being depressed reduces my appetite anyway. Getting to 1,200 is a lot of effort, so usually I'll try to make it all healthy calories. So I'll have two slices of wholemeal/seeded toast with mushroom pate and a glass of orange juice, and that gets me up to 500ish calories. Then other small meals (even toast again if I'm completely not in the mood to eat) throughout the day.

Walking is a good exercise if you can't be bothered with anything else.

Meditation
seriously sleep 8 hours - make it a priority
It may sound silly, but I think vitamin D has helped my depression
Do an inventory of all the awesome things you've accomplished in the last year, and every time that little voice in your head tells you what a loser you are, whip out the list and beat that voice back into submission

I wish I had some words to help you.. unfortunately I know too many people who suffer bouts of depression and would love any advice given on how to help at those times as well...

I experienced depression once, it was very strange. I felt so vulnerable, like I would not be able to handle normal daily stresses.
My overall advice based on my own experience, is to gently steer yourself away from bad habits/patterns.
I overcame depression with natural means, check out St. John's Wort (an herb), as a medically recognized means of support for healing from depression.
Other supplements I took were recommended along with that herb, Omega's and vitamin D3. It takes 6 weeks to level out of depression.
Also, regular exercise.
Steer yourself back to regular sleep times, if that has been affected. The herb helps with that as well.

Give yourself not weeks, but months, to heal. It took me a solid 3 months to heal, and not feel like I was sliding down into depression again. I did feel "better" in 4 weeks. After 3 months, I slowly backed off the St. John's wort. Keep a bottle of the herb around for a period of time afterwards, just in case you need the support.
I am completely healed now, I don't ever take the herb. Although I have kept a bottle on hand in the wintertime for the past few years, as that historically was my most vulnerable time due to lack of sunshine and stress combined.

I have dealt with major depressive order (recurrent) a few times in my life. Currently I'm still on antidepressants, and have been for the past, Oh, five years or so. Maybe closer to six. I had severe post partum depression after my last child was born. Have you and your doctor experimented with different meds? I was one one med that left me just feeling "not suicidal", which was really an improvement over the alternative, but I really missed being an upbeat happy person. We had to screw around with doseages and different meds for years, literally, but last year I got on one that controlled the depression and allowed me to feel a bigger range of happy than just flat and "not too sad". Bonus is that "Weight gain" is NOT listed as a side effect of this one.

Anyway, other than the med issue, which you have to address with your doctor, I'd suggest not relying too heavily on motivation. There are two definitions for "motivation" you know. One is "the reasons that prompt someone to make a change." You haven't lost that motivation. You still want to lose weight for health benefits, appearance, or whatever originally made you start this process. Those haven't changed and they won't. The other thing that people mean when they talk about "motivation" is an emotional state of excitement, high energy, and "looking forward" to doing something. That isn't sustainable. It's an emotional reaction. As you know, human beings are creatures of emotional change. We're MEANT to have a variety of emotional states that change in response to what's going on around us. In fact, a flat affect, or the inability to feel a variety of emotions is criteria for a diagnosis of mental illness. You can't maintain happy, or sad (unless you're depressed) indefinitely, so why would you be able to maintain "motivated"?

The thing is though, you don't have to be "motivated" to succeed. You really can do your workouts because they're good for you, or they allow you to eat more, or just because activity is the means by which the human machine is maintained. A daily walk is to the human body what an oil change every 3,000 miles is to your car. Sure you can blow it off because you're "too busy", or "it costs too much money", or you "don't have time", but you'll still destroy your engine.

At some point you have to move "taking care of my body appropriately", which includes a proper diet of nutritious food in the right amounts to repair your cells and fuel your activity, and appropriate amounts of that activity, into the same mental category that you have for all your other adult behaviors: going to work, paying your bills, obeying the law, caring for your children, etc. etc. etc. That is "Stuff I have to do whether I'm in the mood or not, or the consequences will be more unpleasant than I wish to bear."

Now the good thing is that it's not all drudgery forever. Motivation doesn't just go away and stay gone. Remember, it's an emotional state. That means it comes back too. Generally it comes back in response to improvements. If you lose weight, don't you feel a burst of inspiration to keep doing it? When your running time improves, you feel excited about it. What works for me is to track many, many things, not just my weight. I take measurements of my body, I use a heart rate monitor for my exercise. I track max heart rate, resting heart rate, time to recovery to baseline, distance I've walked, ran, biked, kayaked, amount of weights I can lift and reps I can do in strength training. With all that data, it's very seldom that I go even three days without seeing some improvement. Maybe the scale is stuck, but I'm losing inches. If I'm not losing inches, then I'm running faster. If I'm not running faster, then I can move up a weight category on my kettlebell exercises. That keeps my head in the emotional space of "I'm making progress. This is working." which is way more motivational than any photoshopped fitness quote on Pinterest, EVER.

I can not cry and run at the same time !
I also try to listen rather then talk.
and prayer !

If you can, think of eating well and exercising as prescriptions for your depression. I have a long history of depression, and find that a good 30-60 minute session of aerobic exercise makes a huge difference in mood. And they don't call it a cycle of depression for nothing. You can feed the depression, or you can feed your body what it needs to get better--a healthier diet does support improved mental health.

And moving out of depression takes hard work. If you don't have a therapist to help you, find one. Your insurance may pay part of it and is likely to pay for psychiatric care (you'd need to see an MD to get medication--most people benefit more from a combination of drugs and talk therapy, but being the daughter of a drug addict, I was always afraid to go that route myself). Many therapists will work out a payment plan or set fees relative to your ability to pay. Many pastors and rabbis have so-called "Pastor's Purses" to use as discretionary funds for members and are happy to use them to help with mental health care. And local universities may offer low-cost care from grad students who are closely supervised by credentialed therapists.

Good luck.

I have clinical depression. Luckily, it responds to medication. I still have the usual ups and downs, but with medication, a great bike ride, a fun activity, a good book or even just a funny sitcom can raise my spirits.

A while back, my medication stopped working. Nothing in my life had gotten worse, but suddenly I found no joy in anything and felt hopeless all the time.None of those things above made me feel better. At the worst point, I didn't even want to sit on my rear and watch TV, I just laid in bed.

I upped the dose and felt better again. Which is to say, sometimes depression is just a stupid chemical imbalance in your brain easily treated with medication.

I have found exercise to be the best treatment of my depression (persistent since childhood). The more / harder I work out, the better improved my mood is overall. I would never give it up. Even on days when my fatigue is really bad, if I just push myself to start a workout, I always feel better afterwards. Depression is really difficult to live with. I don't know if everyone overcomes it. I just try to manage it, and live the best quality of life I can. There are bad days, but there are really good days too.

It's hard. For me, medication and therapy to treat the depression. And when the mood lifts the motivation comes back. It's not always so cut and dry however because so many meds for depression cause weight gain.

I have Bipolar disorder, so medication is a must. It took years but I'm finally on a weight neutral med.

I am on here right now looking for motivation. The more I read in these message boards, the better I feel.

I experienced depression once, it was very strange. I felt so vulnerable, like I would not be able to handle normal daily stresses.
My overall advice based on my own experience, is to gently steer yourself away from bad habits/patterns.
I overcame depression with natural means, check out St. John's Wort (an herb), as a medically recognized means of support for healing from depression.
Other supplements I took were recommended along with that herb, Omega's and vitamin D3. It takes 6 weeks to level out of depression.
Also, regular exercise.
Steer yourself back to regular sleep times, if that has been affected. The herb helps with that as well.

Give yourself not weeks, but months, to heal. It took me a solid 3 months to heal, and not feel like I was sliding down into depression again. I did feel "better" in 4 weeks. After 3 months, I slowly backed off the St. John's wort. Keep a bottle of the herb around for a period of time afterwards, just in case you need the support.
I am completely healed now, I don't ever take the herb. Although I have kept a bottle on hand in the wintertime for the past few years, as that historically was my most vulnerable time due to lack of sunshine and stress combined.

I am glad you are feeling better and it sounds like you experienced a placebo effect with the St. John's Wart. That pill is not recognized as an effective tool in treating depression. (although it has been marketed as such) Also, there is no time frame "to level out", as each individual will experience different symptoms and severity levels of depression. There must have been other changes associated with your decrease in symptoms and feeling better, but it was not the St. Johns Wart.

I am just throwing this out there for the OP for additional information. Again, I am glad that you are feeling better. :flowerforyou:

Actually, St. John's Wort has been shown, in clinical trials, to treat certain kinds of depression, namely, acute varieties ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_John's_wort#Medicinal_uses ). So, she didn't necessarily get a placebo effect (though neither is it guaranteed to work for the original poster, but we won't get into the efficacy of antidepressants in general here).

I'm going to echo a lot of other people here and recommend walking. Especially when combined with sunshine, trees, water, etc. In Japan they have a word, shinrin-yoku "forest bathing", for taking a walk through the woods for mental health.

Second this. Getting out in the sun prompts your body to create Vitamin D, which is known to help with depression. And being out in nature is just refreshing in general.

I have suffered for most of my life (off and on) from clinical depression and after the battle to come off meds last time refuse to go back on this time....it has been a battle for a few weeks now and the only thing that gets me through is knowing that the black clouds will again pass. Im sorry that this does not help or offer much in the way of immediate relief. But if anyone wants to add me (to know that there are others on this journey who suffer and to try and get through together) please feel free to do so.
There are no quick fixes but as I saw posted, eating poorly and not exercising do seem to make it worse (although thats all I crave, salt, sugar and sleep) I fight it with all I can.
Please try to stay strong........and if you need medical help to get through maybe its right for you?

I'm sorry. Being depressed completely bites.

I've been in and out of therapy and on Paxil for half my life (since I was 15). I have noticed a slight difference since I began to exercise and record what I eat, but it's certainly not the magic cure for me. I was talking about it with a friend yesterday and I compared exercise to a jump-start for your car. If the only problem is that the engine won't start, then jumper cables will fix it. But if it won't start, and the fuel line's broken, and there's no oil in the engine, and the timing belt is missing, and both rear tires are flat...well, you have to address those things before jumping the car will do any good.

Keeping up with exercise and a healthy diet requires a lot of slow, sustained effort. Depression sucks away all the energy you have and makes it so you're struggling just to stay upright. Do what you can to address the depression first. If some of that includes more exercise and other healthy activities, so much the better! But don't hesitate to go further afield if that's not fixing things for you. There are a lot of tools out there you can use.

Best of luck.