Depression, Weight Gain and the Story We Tell Ourselves About It

Episode 176: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube
View transcript on Buzzsprout

A member recently wrote into our monthly Q&A inside the Regulated Living Membership with a question I hear in some form all the time. During her most recent round of depression, she gained a significant amount of weight. Her mood has improved since then, but her weight hasn’t changed, and she feels stuck.

She had already done her homework. Her primary care doctor and endocrinologist ruled out thyroid and cortisol issues. She knows the basics of exercise and nutrition. What she wanted was a depression and nervous system lens on what happened, and some help finding the motivation to move forward when it feels like she has a hole to dig herself out of.

When I answered her inside the membership, the comments filled up with people saying how much it resonated. So I want to share it here too, with the care a conversation like this deserves.

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What We Cover in This Episode

• Why weight gain during depression makes physiological and emotional sense
• How to look back at a hard season with compassion and still take accountability moving forward
• What the nervous system can and can’t do when it comes to weight, and why some popular claims miss the mark
• Why consistency comes before intensity, and motivation usually follows action
• How to expand your sources of comfort so food doesn’t have to carry the whole load

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Coming From Inside This Experiencer Right Now?

Before getting into the education, I want you to know where I’m speaking from. My body looks very different today than it did when I filmed many of the movement videos inside the membership. A few babies, a lot of hormone treatment, a couple of years of fearing exercise after multiple miscarriages, and very little sleep. For the first time in my life, a doctor recently told me I’m technically overweight too.

I share that because it may matter to you that this conversation comes from someone living a version of it alongside you. When I look at my body right now, I can honestly say it makes sense.

I also want to be clear that your body doesn’t owe anyone an explanation. In this member’s case, she asked for one, so let’s look at it through the lenses I’ve spent my career in: mental health, the nervous system, and fitness.

Why Weight Gain During Depression Makes Sense

At the most basic physiological level, part of what happened is simple. When you move less and take in more energy than your body uses, weight gain follows. Depression often decreases movement and increases intake.

Stopping there misses almost everything that matters, though. The more useful questions are why movement dropped, why eating shifted, and why food ended up carrying so much of the work of getting through that season.

On the low-energy, shutdown side of depression, there is genuinely less energy available for nearly everything: movement, meal planning, focus, decisions, and thinking about the future. At the same time, there’s a strong pull toward anything that offers something immediate. Immediate comfort, immediate stimulation, immediate relief. Food offers a bit of all three.

When pleasure is scarce everywhere else, something that tastes good stands out. When your workday feels unbearable, a snack gives you something to look forward to. When hard feelings sit just under the surface all day, eating can soften them for a moment. That is real regulatory work. I don’t want food to be your only coping tool, or even your main one, but it is a coping tool. Acknowledging that plainly is very different from moralizing it.

Compassion for the Past, Accountability for the Future

Here’s the reframe I offered her. We can’t know what that dark stretch would have looked like without food offering some comfort along the way. Maybe it would have looked the same. Maybe it would have been much harder.

If eating was one of the things that got her through, I have no interest in looking back and telling that version of her she failed. I’m much more interested in asking: what did you actually need in those moments that you didn’t have access to?

That question opens the door to real compassion. It also opens the door to forward-looking accountability. With more capacity now than she had then, she can start building other supports, so that if another hard season comes, food isn’t the only thing holding her up.

What did you need in that moment that you didn’t have access to?

Letting Go of the Hole You Think You Have to Climb Out Of

One phrase in her question stayed with me: she wasn’t sure she could dig herself out of the hole she’d gotten herself into.

I understand that feeling deeply. When your body changes during a hard season, it’s tempting to split yourself into two people: who you were before, and who you are now. Recovery then becomes a huge project of clawing your way back to that earlier weight, fitness level, and set of habits. When the distance feels enormous, motivation is almost impossible to find. You end up at the bottom of a mountain you’ve imagined, feeling like you have to climb all of it just to get back to where you think you should already be.

You went through depression. Your behaviors changed in ways that made sense in that context, and your body changed with them. Your context is different now, which means your capacity likely is too, even on days when it doesn’t feel that way.

So instead of asking how to get back to where you were, try setting the old version of you aside for now and asking:

• What does taking care of the body I have today look like?
• What does fitness mean for me right now?
• What does feeding myself well look like from here?

I would much rather you build health forward from where you’re standing than spend the next six months frustrated with a body that was doing its best to survive something genuinely hard.

Self-Compassion and Wanting Change Can Coexist

Conversations about body changes sometimes swing so far toward acceptance that wanting your weight to change starts to feel unenlightened. I don’t believe that. You can have compassion for why your body changed and still want your body composition to be different at some point. Those two things can live side by side.

What I want you to release is the idea that weight is the only measure of health or success. The scale tells you nothing about your cardiovascular fitness, muscle mass, strength, metabolic health, energy, or mental health.

With my personal trainer hat on for a moment: lose 20 pounds of fat and gain 10 pounds of muscle, and the scale barely moves. You might feel frustrated, even though your health has changed considerably. Weight loss can absolutely be part of your goal. I just don’t want it to be the only scoreboard you check, and I don’t want your next chapter of healing to become another war against yourself.

What the Nervous System Can and Can’t Do for Weight

There’s a story making the rounds on social media that goes something like this: my body was holding onto weight because I was in survival mode, then I regulated my nervous system, lowered my cortisol, and lost 25 pounds.

I understand the appeal, and parts of it are grounded in truth. Chronic stress can affect appetite, sleep, hormones, glucose regulation, and activity levels. Thyroid issues, medications, hormonal shifts, and sleep problems can all influence body weight, and any significant unexplained weight change deserves a conversation with the right medical provider, just as this member did. But the idea that your nervous system is holding onto fat until you do the right somatic exercises isn’t well supported by the evidence.

Here’s what the nervous system piece is really doing. Your nervous system state, especially one you’ve been in for a long time, shapes your behavior. Your capacity and energy shape your ability to delay gratification, plan ahead, prepare food, tolerate discomfort, start moving, and reach for something other than food when you need relief.

If fat loss is the goal, an energy deficit over time is what creates it, barring a specific health condition. That part of physiology doesn’t bend. A nervous system-informed approach gives you a way to pursue that deficit without piling on so much stress, restriction, or exercise load that your body and brain experience your health plan as one more thing to survive. The math stays the same. What changes is how much alarm it sets off along the way.

Consistency Before Intensity

This member is already walking, doing yoga, or riding a stationary bike for 15 to 30 minutes a day, and she minimized all of it because she doesn’t consider herself athletic. So let me be direct: walking counts. Yoga counts. Biking counts.

Is that amount of movement likely to create significant weight loss on its own? Probably not, and I’d rather be honest with you about that. But weight may not be the first problem worth solving. The first problem is consistency. Can you build a reliable pattern of taking care of yourself again, using movement your system already knows and is at least somewhat willing to do?

So instead of jumping into a program that makes you dread Monday mornings and leaves you too sore to sit down, start with a 10-minute walk, yoga session, or bike ride most days of the week. If that feels overwhelming, make it smaller. Put your shoes on after lunch, walk to the corner, and come home. That’s the whole assignment.

Starting this small gives your brain time to stop protesting the start of the behavior. You’re aiming for the shift from “I have to exercise” to “it’s after lunch, this is just what I do.”

Once it becomes familiar, add a little. The corner becomes the block. Five minutes becomes 10, then 15, then 20. When it truly becomes “just what we do,” pause and ask whether you need more to reach your goals, or whether this is a great place to sustain your wellbeing. If you want more, that’s when a day or two of strength training might come in.

This is titration applied to behavior change: matching the plan to your current capacity instead of demanding that your capacity catch up to an old standard. I often describe it as installing tiny behaviors and optimizing them over time. The best part is that those habits tend to build capacity, which lets you grow the habit, which builds more capacity.

Motivation Follows Action

Inside the membership and RESTORE, we teach a habit change equation: successful behavior comes from motivation, ability, and a prompt. When you’ve committed to a 10-minute walk five days a week and it isn’t happening, that points to a problem in the equation, and equations can be adjusted. Looking at it that way takes a lot of shame out of the “I know what to do but can’t make myself do it” loop.

I’ll also say this with a lot of love: sometimes you just have to do it. Sometimes self-care looks like self-accountability, doing something you don’t want to do because you know it’s good for you.

Research is clear that motivation tends to follow action. That’s especially true after depression, which often takes motivation and willpower offline first and returns them last. Waiting to feel motivated before you move could mean waiting a very long time. Small action comes first, and motivation catches up.

Support makes that easier. A friend to walk with, a few personal training sessions, or an accountability buddy lets you borrow a little willpower and structure while your own is still turned down low.

If you want help building this kind of plan for your specific life, members of the Regulated Living Membership can book 1:1 strategy sessions with me. Together we look at your actual capacity and build a realistic roadmap toward a specific goal or shift.

Giving Food a Seat at the Table

Coming back to food: she described it as comforting, a source of enjoyment, a way to avoid hard feelings, and a way to get through her workday. If you recognize yourself in that list, please don’t make your next move stripping away every food you enjoy.

When food has been one of your main sources of pleasure or regulation and you remove it all at once without replacing anything, you create a vacuum. The goal is to expand the places you can find comfort, pleasure, and support, so food doesn’t have to do the whole job alone. With clients, I might explore questions like:

• What else brings you comfort?
• What else brings you enjoyment?
• When those hard feelings come up, what do you actually need? What are they signaling?
• What else could help you get through your workday?

Food can still have a seat at the table. It just doesn’t need to be the only chair.

Rebuilding From Where You Are

There’s a real difference between “I did something wrong that I now have to undo” and “I gained weight during a difficult season of my life.” On a hard day they can feel like the same story, but they carry very different energy. Your behaviors made sense in the context you were in. Your context is changing, and so is your capacity. The work ahead is to ask, from exactly where you stand, what feeding yourself well, moving yourself well, and caring for yourself looks like from here, and what support you need to make it happen.

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Three Tangible Takeaways

1. Your behavior made sense given your context. Weight gain during depression reflects lower energy, lower motivation, and food stepping in as an accessible source of comfort and regulation. Look back with curiosity about what you needed, rather than judgment about what you did.
2. You’re rebuilding forward from here. Healing means supporting the person you are now in the life you have and want to create. Set the old version of you aside and ask what taking care of your body looks like today.
3. Consistency comes before intensity, and motivation follows action. Start with the smallest version of movement your system will repeat with little to no protest, then build from there as it becomes “just what you do.”

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Looking for more personalized support?

• Regulated Living Membership -A Monthly membership for nervous system healing
• RESTORE -1:1 coaching program for anxiety and depression

*Want me to talk about something specific on the podcast? Let me know HERE.

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Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or qualified mental health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition.