Has Anyone Tried The Serotonin Power Diet?

[Bonkers101]

Hi there

I have been taking an antidepressant for 2 years now and its not had any impact on my weight, but I have just been taking Seroquel for a month and I have put on around 6lb already....

I eat an incredibly healthy diet and nothing has changed there and I exercise at least 5 times a week, so the weight gain has to be purely down to the Seroquel.

It really seems to be helping me with my anxiety so I am reluctant to stop taking but from what I know, Seroquel seems to be notorious for weight gain as a side effect. But if I continue to gain weight I know it will make me really depressed (especially if diet and exercise make no difference) so there is a big trade off between my anxiety/ depression

I have been doing some research and came across the Serotonin Power Diet - it seems to be specifically targeted to help people who have gained weight as a result of medications they are taking, so I ordered the book.

Has anyone else tried this diet and if so what are your experiences?

Thanks for any feedback!

xxx

[unlucky]

Never heard of it... but I do have a book called 'Potatoes not Prozac', which sounds like a similar thing. I haven't read it though as I used to have an eating disorder and never really recovered, so I don't see the point in reading it when I probably won't follow it.

You could try typing it into amazon and reading the reviews on there?

Would be interesting to see how you get on.

[Bonkers101]

I was going to post this on the eating disorder part of the forum - I'm actually worried that I could develop an eating disorder if I continue to put on weight....I am having stupid ideas about how to deal with weight gain so I really need to try and get a grip on this before it gets out of hand.

I just found some really positive reviews so am looking forward to my book arriving so I can get started :)

[catsmother21]

ooo that sounds interesting - I might have a look on amazon myself xx

[Bonkers101]

I found this article written on a blog by one of the authors....interesting stuff

Weight Gain: The Depressing Consequence of Antidepressants

Friday, July 8, 2011, 02:54 AM - Antidepressants

I recently saw a television advertisement for a weight loss program that showed a woman changing her shape from obese to skinny while taking the advertised product. As she stepped on the scale over a period of time, her expression changed from desperate to joyous as the scale registered her amazing weight loss.

Perhaps television advertisements for antidepressants should use the same pictures except run them in the opposite direction. The first picture would have a skinny woman stepping on the scale, looking happy, and the last picture -- the same woman, now obese -- looking horrified at the numbers on the scale.

As with the weight loss shown in the advertisement, weight gain associated with the use of some antidepressants, mood stabilizers and other drugs prescribed for mood disorders does not occur overnight. The process may be gradual and perceived initially as an unwelcome change in appetite. Often people who do gain weight on these drugs never had a problem with overeating, food cravings, portion control and unhealthy food choices until they started on their medication. After several weeks, though, they notice they are no longer feeling satisfied after a meal that would have contented them pre-medication. Snack foods that had no appeal before treatment are now irresistible. Late nights become a battleground between willpower and cravings, and willpower usually loses.

Adding to this unhappy mix of factors causing an inevitable weight gain is the inability to exercise at pre-treatment levels. An email I received recently from someone who gained more than 60 pounds on his medication attributed some of the weight gain to his inability to exercise. "I stopped going to the gym," he said, "I just feel too lethargic and tired to exercise."

Weight gain as a side effect of some antidepressants has been known since the 1960s and, despite the proliferation of new drugs over the past 20 years, it has not gone away.1 Not everyone experiences it, but for those who do the weight gain can range from trivial to heartbreaking.

No one has yet identified how these medications change the appetite, and perhaps even levels of physical activity and metabolism, to cause weight gain. It has been suggested that some of the antidepressants may act on other chemicals in the brain, called neurotransmitters, known to increase hunger. Animal studies have also found that one drug, used for severe mood disorders, might possibly block the ability of serotonin to shut off eating. But of course, even if and when we understand how these drugs cause overeating, the problem of what to do about it still remains.

Fortunately, the type of overeating caused by the medications gives us a hint of what might be taking place in the brain. Most people complain of a need to eat more carbohydrates and of an inability to feel satiated or satisfied after eating a meal. This combination of symptoms, such as carbohydrate craving and absence of satiety, point to a problem with serotonin. In addition to regulating mood, serotonin, acting on other cells in the brain, monitors our eating. Serotonin does not make us start to eat but rather turns off our eating by making us feel that we have eaten enough. The feeling of satiety or satisfaction is similar to what we feel when we have had enough liquid to drink. No matter how thirsty we may have been when we started to drink, once the body receives enough water, it is very hard to continue drinking. Serotonin makes us disinterested in eating even if the food is tempting.

Antidepressants, mood stabilizers and related medications sometimes seem to interfere with this effect. Instead of feeling content and disinterested in further eating, an individual thinks, "I feel full, but I still want to eat something," or, "Those leftovers aren't going to be left over very long because I have an urge to snack." In worst case situations, some medications leave an individual so unsatisfied another dinner may be eaten an hour or so after the first, or the person will wake up in the middle of the night feeling ravenous.

It is easy to see how adding on calories from larger portions, frequent snacks or two rather than one supper each night causes weight gain. It won't happen overnight, but like the advertisement for weight loss run backward, over weeks or a few months the body can be transformed into an unrecognizable, overweight shape.

Typical weight loss methods are irrelevant for this type of weight gain. Obesity experts promote nutritional education, calorie labeling for fast foods, increasing consumption of fruits and vegetables and strategies to prevent stress-related overeating. These wise and workable methods are fine for someone who gains weight the traditional way. But some people gaining weight because they are on Zoloft, Depakote or any other medication for mood disorder know how to eat healthily and would be doing so if they were not on their meds. 2 Their brains' control over eating has been damaged, and an admonition to eat more greens is not going to change that.

Restoring the ability of the brain to control appetite is the only strategy that will work, and this means restoring serotonin's appetite-controlling function.

We discovered somewhat by accident that increasing serotonin in the brain brought about this effect. The pesky, and sometimes almost frightening, need to eat brought about by antidepressant use goes away when serotonin is made. Dieters whose weight gain was caused by a mixture of medications (antidepressants, mood stabilizers and anti-anxiety drugs) were able to stop gaining and start losing weight when they increased serotonin levels prior to meals. Patients who came to TRIAD, the weight management center I ran at Harvard University, were told to eat a specific amount of carbohydrate an hour or so prior to meals, and also as a snack. The carbohydrate, eaten on an empty stomach and with little or no protein or fat, stimulated the production of serotonin. Less than one hour after eating the carbohydrate, new serotonin was made and it decreased the nagging need to eat. Our patients reported feeling content, and often for the first time in weeks the constant need to put food in their mouths was gone. They lost weight because they gained control over their eating.

Eating carbohydrates to make serotonin may seem like too simple a solution to antidepressant weight gain. Moreover, given the belief that carbohydrates are a "fattening" food, perhaps a hard solution to accept. But healthy, fat-free or very low-fat carbohydrates (e.g., pretzels, rice cakes, or even marshmallows) are a potent tool to fight the weight-gaining potential of antidepressants, and you and your scale will benefit.

Hey - I found this article written on the authors blog....its very interesting:

[Bonkers101]

Another article.....

Must you choose between depression or obesity?

Thursday, March 10, 2011, 06:59 PM

The catch-22 of antidepressant therapy is the depression that comes from gaining weight on a drug used to stop the depression.

Weight gain is, alas, a common side effect of the drugs used to treat depression, fibromyalgia, severe PMS (known as Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder) and hot flushes. As much as physicians tend to minimize the effects, or protest that patients are gaining weight because they are finally happy and going to restaurants, their patients are protesting. Many are halting their use of these drugs because they cannot stand to live in a body blown up by the overeating generated by the medications.

Anna typifies this problem. She had major depression that was intensified by PMS and was prescribed Lexapro. This drug has been used effectively to treat major depression and to relieve severe premenstrual mood changes. It worked—and left Anna almost 50 pounds heavier after a year. Her psychiatrist claimed that this weight gain was unusual because most patients gain “only”10 to 15 pounds”. Anna claims that she may have gained more weight because not only did her appetite increase; the medication made her lethargic and diminished the time and intensity of her daily workouts. Weight Watchers was tried; she gained a pound over four weeks. Desperate to find her formerly thin body, Anna (with the knowledge of her therapist) stopped the therapy. “I am fearful that my terrible PMS will come back and that I might become really depressed again but I can’t stand myself, “ she told me. “As soon as I stopped the medication, the weight started to come off.”

Weight gain from antidepressants is not a trivial side effect, even though therapists may trivialize the effect of gaining 15 pounds on the patient’s self image (and wardrobe). Given the vast numbers of women who have been medicated with antidepressants, the number of women who may have experienced this side effect is not trivial either. Data collected by the government on the use of antidepressants between 2005 and 2008 show that 12.7% of women were on one or more of these medications during this time period.

The drugs work on relieving symptoms that affect physical and emotional life. But when these treatments deposit extra pounds on bodies that had been a normal size before treatment, patients like Anna may choose to live with the depression or muscle pain rather than accept being fat.

Perhaps her choice could have been avoided if her physician had discussed with her the possibility that weight gain might occur and had suggested interventions to prevent or minimize this occurrence. Physicians do discuss the side effects of the drugs they prescribe. They recommend dosing schedules, the use of food to minimize gastric distress, periodic blood tests to check on organ function affected by the drug, and information about avoiding the sun if the drug may cause photosensitivity. They may even prescribe other drugs to deal with unavoidable side effects like nausea. So why not make a discussion of weight gain part of the side effect conversation?

Anna should have been told to be aware of changes in her appetite and to pay attention to food cravings and an urge to snack even though she wasn’t hungry. If she had been someone who exercised regularly, the possibility of reduced energy and thus decreased ability to exercise should have been mentioned as well. She did not have to be warned to call if her jeans suddenly stopped fitting but weighing herself at least weekly would have been a prudent recommendation. And had Anna been supported in her concern not to gain weight by the offer of dietary and exercise guidelines, then she might not have come to the point of dumping her medications to get back into her jeans. Ideally (although not realistically), she could have been sent to a weight-loss support group run by a department of psychiatry for patients like herself who were struggling with medication-associated obesity.

Unfortunately, there are very few physicians trained, or weight-loss programs designed, to treat antidepressant-associated weight gain even when it is recognized. Conventional weight-loss programs are not designed to treat this side effect and may even recommend diets that could affect the positive mood changes brought about by the drugs. For example, high-protein diets will decrease the synthesis of serotonin, the neurotransmitter on which most antidepressants work. This is because in order for serotonin to be made, an amino acid, tryptophan, has to enter the brain. High-protein diets supply too many other amino acid that compete with tryptophan to enter the brain and very little of this essential amino acid gets in.

As we discovered when we ran a weight management center at a Harvard psychiatric hospital, patients found their food cravings, uncontrolled appetite and weight gain stopped when they followed a food plan that increased serotonin. Even though their medications were increasing the activity of the serotonin involved in mood regulation, for reasons that are still not clear the serotonin involved in controlling their appetite was impaired. The only intervention available then and now was to increase the amount of serotonin in the brain. When this occurred, our patients stopped their snacking and bingeing and began to lose weight.

Fortunately, the dietary intervention to promote serotonin’s control over eating required only a small adjustment to their diets. Since it had been known for decades that serotonin was made when any non-fruit carbohydrate was consumed, we told our patients to consume a small amount of carbohydrate an hour before lunch, late in the afternoon or an hour before dinner and, if needed, about an hour before bedtime. By controlling the amount of carbohydrate in these snacks and limiting fat content, it was easy to insert the snacks into a 1200 to1400-calorie daily diet plan.

We also did not minimize or ignore the tiredness and lethargy that was reported by our patients. Many of them had exercised regularly before they become depressed, but while on their medications they reported feeling too exhausted to continue doing so. It is not easy to force one’s body onto a treadmill or into a pool when lying down seems a much better option. Our clinic had a staff of personal trainers who worked with the patients to develop exercises compatible with their reduced energy levels. As this particular side effect wore off, the amount and intensity of physical activity was increased. Obviously, patients are not going to be given a consultation with a personal trainer by their therapist. However, this side effect should also be recognized and discussed. If, for example, they are told to be content to walk rather than run on a treadmill, or to do something less intense such as yoga rather than kickboxing until this side effect goes away, they will realize that they have more options than lying on a couch and watching their hips grow bigger.

When these dietary and exercise strategies should be implemented is up to the therapist. Obviously, the patient has to be emotionally ready to follow dietary guidelines and engage in an exercise routine. But as Anna points out, therapists should not wait until the patient is getting depressed again because of weight gain. By that time, the choice—stop the medication and endure the depression—may be the wrong one.

[unlucky]

Choose between depression or obesity?

I wish! How much easier would it be if I only had depression OR obesity instead of both!