Dealing with mental illness

My brother takes mood stabilizers and antipsychotics known to cause an increase in appetite. When he was in a hospital setting, he gained weight while eating hospital food and not getting much exercise. Now that he is home, eating Mom's cooking, helping her with extensive yard work, and walking several miles per day, he lost all the weight he gained in the hospital and has maintained a healthy weight for over three years.

He doesn't count calories. He does eat lots of whole foods - fruits, veggies, legumes, whole grains, etc. There's very little, if any, junk food in the house.

He's had lots of medication adjustments over the years. Some posters here seem afraid to try that. I guess for my brother when his meds aren't working, it's really really bad, so easy to justify the change. However, I just have mild-to-moderate depression and went through 5 or 6 ADs over the years before I settled on Wellbutrin.

I know that regular exercise is, for me, just as critical to my mental health (if not more) than my AD, so I force myself if I need to. I don't wait for motivation - I created a habit, applied discipline, and stick to it.

The below refers to spoon theory, which can be very helpful. My depression/anxiety doesn't cause me to run out of spoons, but my very heavy menstrual bleeding due to uterine fibroids does, and on my two heavy days and a few recovery days nothing in my exercise paragraph applies. Today is day 3 and I may not have enough spoons to run to the store, let alone get in any cardio.

bathsheba_c wrote: »

It depends what exactly the issue is. Are you too symptomatic to have the spoons necessary to plan, shop for, and cook nutritious food? Are you on a medication that increases appetite? Are you an emotional eater? Does actively trying to lose weight feed into anxiety or depression?

Two things have been critical for me. 1) This has to be an act of self-love. I am here to be healthy, not skinny. If that means I don’t lose weight, but I’ve improved my fitness, diet, and mental health, then I have achieved what I set out to do. It also means I am less fixated by the number on the scale and don’t freak out if I have an off day. 2) Eating a balanced diet, especially getting enough protein. If I only restrict calories without getting the protein in, it eats up my spoons real quick no matter how small the calorie deficit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoon_theory
https://butyoudontlooksick.com/articles/written-by-christine/the-spoon-theory/

ElizabethKalmbach wrote: »

LOGGING.

Honest and for true the habit of LOGGING EVERYTHING has helped me communicate better data to my doctors and find trends in my own health that helped or hurt me.

It's not just logging food and exercise. It's logging my mood, logging other symptoms, logging sleep, water consumption, medication compliance, periods, even medical appointments...

When your balance is delicate a lot of surprising things matter, and building logging habits, short hand, and even a collection of useful apps has helped immensely in more areas than my health. It's an entire skillset that has made me so much more efficient about a lot of things, and much faster at tracking down and identifying problems, leaving more spoons for what's important.

I am curious as to what apps you use for logging health related data?

I have never heard of spoon theory, that was a interesting, thanks for sharing.

OP, personally, I didn't attempt to lose weight until my anxiety got better. I still went on walks/ exercised because that was helpful to my mental health but didn't attempt calorie deficit. When I got better I felt ready to work on personal goals and learn to stop emotional eating. Maybe I could have when my anxiety was moderate-mild but I couldn't when it was (briefly) severe. I couldn't function.

The best thing for me is to ease up on myself. I have had life long anxiety and panic attacks. A few years ago I discovered that the medication that I taking to help manage the anxiety was contributing to spontaneous bleeding. It turned out that it combined with a blood thinner and exercise was enough to trigger bleeding. My physician had not cautioned me that the antidepressant that I was taking could impact blood clotting. Anyway I had to stop the antidepressant and adjust to life. I needed to change my exercising as it can become part of my problem - becoming fixed on how often I go, how much time I spend at the gym, etc.. I think that actually exercise - as healthy as it is - was becoming a symptom of my anxiety in an unhealthy way. I was healthy but used exercise as a distraction from the symptoms of the anxiety. Now I try to be in the moment and when anxiety seems to be rising I find that walking meditation is the answer. I walk and be aware of what my senses are picking up - smells, sounds, textures, colours . It gets me focused on being fine just as I am. I don't exercise much anymore and I am losing weight and staying on target. I might be able to lose weight faster if I exercised more but I am done with the gym after about 50 years.

This is my struggle.

I have PTSD and a history of eating disorders and self-harm. I am very worried about relapsing as a result of losing weight.

I am finding success in doing things that double as mental and physical self-care. The example I can think of is walking. I especially like walking outside, though I am not sure how that is going to work this winter. One thing I have found useful in the past is trauma sensitive yoga. Pioneered by Dave Emerson and Bessel van der Kolk, it addresses trauma symptoms through movement.

Other mental health tools I use are medication, 1-1 therapy, trauma support groups, Department of Mental Health social workers, a weighted blanket, online recovery groups.

Recently my therapist explained that eating when emotionally distraught is one way to calm the vagus nerve, which is partially responsible for fight/flight/freeze/fawn/fatigue/flood response can be calmed by eating since something warm in the mouth can sooth the nerve which runs from the neck to the navel. She suggested having a warm cup of tea instead. I have found it helpful- to the point where I ask those around me to remind me to have a cup of tea when I am upset.

More info:
Trauma Sensitive Yoga: https://www.traumasensitiveyoga.com/
Weighted Blankets: https://www.autismcommunitystore.com/creature-commforts-weighted-blanket-xl-for-teens-adults

Undiagnosed anxiety and depression over here, low-grade compared to most I've come to realize. I've also had significant issues with imposter syndrome, personally and professionally, for years. For me, having my own home gym made a huge difference in terms of allowing myself to seek and achieve fitness and physique goals. In college, despite having access to a pretty decent weight room, I never felt that I had any business being in the weights section, under the justification that I'm not a "weights guy". I also find that music is counter-productive while working out as I have a tendency to get lost in thought spirals where if I'm listening to a podcast (usually sports or fantasy football) that I can focus way more. In terms of my professional imposter syndrome issues, feeling comfortable with the right people to talk about my issues and see their disbelief and encouragement has been game-changing in how I view myself at work. Mindset-wise, going from feeling like I needed to fix my broken thoughts to allowing the belief in what others see has been the most productive shift.