How To Feed Yourself When You’re Depressed

How To Feed Yourself When You’re Depressed

Eating is a prerequisite for life, so it makes perverse sense that, for many people, it’s among the first victims of a depressive episode. Here are some tips on how to eat when you’re feeling depressed.

A friendly warning: this piece mentions — but doesn’t explicitly discuss — depression, eating disorders, and addiction, among other mental illnesses. Bookmark it for later if you need to, and/or skim the headers before diving in.

Appetite is easily swayed by one’s emotional state, so for people with mental illnesses, food can be a source of constant anguish. Depression does a number on your ability to feed yourself, but it’s very rare to struggle with depression alone.

Eating disorders like bulimia and anorexia nervosa, binge-eating disorder, and avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder (ARFID) rarely present without comorbid depression and anxiety disorders; the same goes for personality disorders, learning disorders, chronic illnesses, and drug and alcohol addiction. Basically, any condition that makes it difficult to navigate life is likely to mess with your relationship with food.

Many prominent chefs have frankly discussed their struggles with addiction and mental illness in recent years, which is a good thing. (Professional kitchens can be cesspools of, among other things, physical and emotional abuse, self-loathing, and truly destructive alcoholism; the industry is long overdue for a reckoning.)

However, a professional chef’s relationship to the physical task of cooking hinges on external validation, which differentiates it from the home cook’s experience. When I ran a food cart — easily the low point in my lifelong relationship with mental illness, by the way — I never once opened late because I was too depressed to get out of bed. My job was to make other people happy with my cooking, so I hauled my useless body out of bed and into work by 6:30 each morning no matter how despondent I felt.

When it’s my own health and happiness on the line, though, I fully cannot be bothered.

Garbage brain aside, I’m incredibly lucky to have had not just the inclination, but also the safety net and opportunities required to pursue cooking as a career. Along the way, I’ve developed an arsenal of recipes I can rely on when being alive is almost unbearably taxing. I hope that you find something in here that helps, because no matter what your brain says, you gotta eat.

Level 0: Easier Than Showering


Photo: Clem Onegjhuo (Unsplash)

Depression is different for everyone, but losing the will to shower is about as universal a symptom as it gets. I’ve therefore categorized these suggestions by relative ease, as compared to taking off all my clothes, standing upright for ten minutes, washing my hair and my face and my body, wrangling my wet hair into a towel, drying off, wrangling my only-slightly-less-wet hair into something approaching a “style” and putting on clean clothes.

Here are some recipes that are far easier than all that.

Delivery

Provided you can afford to, there’s nothing wrong with summoning comfort food from the ether when you really feel like shit — especially if you can get more than one meal out of it. I never, ever get sick of pizza, and when I’m very sad, I’ll order enough for several meals. Leftover slices get wrapped in foil and frozen, then reheated in a covered frying pan on low heat.

Assorted Instant Meals

You owe it to yourself to keep a stash of emergency meals in your house. Choose things that you really, truly love so it feels like more like a treat than an unwelcome consequence of struggling to function.

Rice

Whether you use a rice cooker or a pot on the stove, good ol’ white rice cooks quickly and fills you up. A bowl of white rice with butter and soy sauce is satisfying, supremely comforting, and unlikely to aggravate anxiety-induced nausea.

Miso Soup

Every depressed person should keep miso paste in the fridge: gluten-free and vegan varieties are readily available, it never really spoils, and you can turn it into an actual meal in under five minutes. For a mug of soup for sippin’, I pour boiling water over a big glob of miso paste, like tea; for a heartier meal, I put leftover cooked rice and a big knob of miso into a bowl, then add some water and microwave until very hot. (Bonus points for adding some cubed tofu and frozen broccoli or peas.)

Either way, I float a pat of butter on top as a finishing touch — miso and butter go together like peanut butter and jelly.

Level 1: About As Easy As Showering


Photo: Gabriel Gurrola (Unsplash)

Taking out cutting boards, knives, and assorted measuring implements is often overwhelming for me, but using the stove is usually OK — as long as I don’t make a mess of the cast-iron skillets. I acknowledge that the difficulty categories here are arbitrary — your mileage may vary — but these are a step up from Level Zero without feeling like too much.

Eggs and Carbs

I eat two basted eggs with buttered toast and hot sauce for breakfast most days because it’s easy, delicious, filling, and dirties one plate (I just wipe out the skillet when I’m done). Toast isn’t mandatory — I love a crispy fried egg with white rice, soy sauce and furikake, and I went through a pretty serious soft-scrambled egg taco phase a few years back. If you eat eggs, master cooking them your way so you always have a protein-rich meal up your sleeve.

Potstickers or Steamed Dumplings

Frozen dumplings from the Asian supermarket are a true MVP foodstuff for me: dumplings never fail to make me smile, and they can be pan-fried or steamed depending on my mood. Just be sure to check the interior temperature of meat dumplings with an instant-read thermometer and if you don’t have one, err on the side of a longer cook time; the package directions on my favourite varieties run a full five minutes too short.

Popcorn

Buttered, caramel-ed, dripping in fake butter-y goo or smothered in cheese: I am absolute trash for popcorn. To paraphrase a very wise friend, a bowl of cheesy popcorn and a glass of wine is technically a full meal: corn has your fibre, cheese provides some fat and protein and wine counts as “produce”. Making popcorn on the stovetop is easy and infinitely customisable; even if you have a microwave, it’s a technique worth mastering.

Level 2: Harder Than Showering


Photo: Jackelin Slack (Unsplash)

On a good day, I can carry the victorious momentum from successfully showering right on through to cooking. I do try keep it simple, though, so as to avoid overextending myself and winding up blubbering about ruined crêpes on the kitchen floor.

Dead-Simple Baked Goods

Conquering personal hygiene is grounds for a treat — but since I don’t buy many packaged snacks, I have to make my own dreams come true. Thank God for four-ingredient peanut butter cookies (this recipe also works with Nutella, by the way) and one-bowl cocoa brownies, both of which are easy like cake mix but a billion times tastier.

Roasted Vegetables

Feeling up to chopping vegetables is an extremely good sign, and there’s no better vegetable than a roasted one. I usually start mine in a cast-iron frying pan on the stove and finish them in a 220-230°C oven, then squeeze some lemon juice over top before serving to maximise that results-to-effort ratio.

Tomato Soup and Grilled Cheese

I’d never be so presumptuous as to tell you how to make grilled cheese, but I’m afraid I must insist that you try Marcella Hazan’s tomato butter sauce as a soup at least once in your life. When you do, I suggest the following two changes: simmer it covered so it doesn’t thicken too much, and add a pinch each of sugar and bicarbonate of soda at the very end to neutralise any tinny, overly-acidic flavours.

Homemade chicken stock, crushed red pepper flakes, and/or a swirl of cream are all welcome additions. Pair with the cheese toastie of your dreams — and maybe some roasted veggies — and savour a real meal that you made for yourself because you deserve it.

This article has been updated since its original publication.


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