Can Losing Weight Still Leave You Feeling Depressed?

Many people assume that if they can manage to lose a decent amount of weight, they will automatically feel a lot happier and will be more content. However as many people have discovered for themselves over the years, it doesn't always work out this way. In some instances you can still feel depressed even after hitting your targets, and sometimes it can actually cause depression.

So what are the main reasons for this underlying depression?

Well it can never be pinpointed to one precise thing. There will often be a couple of reasons why you feel depressed.

First of all if you have undergone a huge weight loss program and managed to lose several stone in weight, you may well look a lot better than you did before. However you may notice one side effect that you hadn't anticipated before you started this program - saggy skin.

The trouble is that when you slim down a lot and all the fat magically disappears, the skin doesn't necessary shrink back to its original size. When you put on weight originally, your skin will have stretched and expanded to accommodate this new weight, but when you lose this weight you're left with many layers of saggy skin. So this can obviously make you feel pretty depressed.

Of course this generally only applies if you have lost several stone in weight. If you have lost maybe a stone or two at the most, then saggy skin is unlikely to be a problem. Nevertheless you can still be depressed because you may find that losing weight has not papered over the cracks of other problems in your life, like you hoped it might. Sadly this is a common occurrence, and can often lead to subsequent weight gain if you are not careful.

One final reason why shedding a few pounds can actually lead to depression is because some people are never happy with how they look. They will constantly be looking in the mirror and analysing photos of themselves picking up on any small faults, and subsequently feeling miserable about these problems.

So just because they have lost weight and now look a lot better because of this, they may still feel depressed because they will just move on to the next problem. It never really comes to an end either because some people are never happy with their appearance, and this will obviously continue as you get older because your natural beauty will start to fade anyway.

To avoid this happening to you, I suggest you seek help if you think you might suffer from this problem yourself. It is actually quite common amongst women, and it can also affect quite a lot of men as well, even though they may not admit it.

The point is that you should not assume that getting into shape by losing weight will be the answer to all of your problems. Yes you may well look a lot better, and part of you may be a little happier, but you may still suffer from depression in one form or another. So this is something you should bear in mind whenever you start a new weight loss program.