@MusicLover82

I think it is very difficult. A lot of the tips mentioed so far in this thread, while well meaning, are either tips that apply to anyone trying to lose weight. Or they come from people who aren't mostly depressed, aren't on weight gain medication or people who've not been very fat in the first place.

I used to be a pro at getting and keeping the weight off too, but I experienced a lot of hypomania back then, I was younger, and I wasn't taking weight gain medication.

Now I do take seroquel, and I've not seen more than a few minutes of hypomania or the absence of depression in several years.

The real questions are, how does one lose weight when you can work out everyday and still be depressed. How does one eat within their calorie range when they can't sleep because their meds make us so damn hungry. We get up have a yogurt or a piece of fruit, still hungry, still can't sleep...then half a peanut butter sandwhich a glass of milk. Great now we can sleep, but we've eaten too much to lose weight...and this happens every night.

How do we work out regularly, when depression or meds cause every cell in our bodies to cry out to lay down 5 minutes in. We push through and work out anyway, feel the accomplishment. But now we're too exhausted to do anything else. After weeks of doing this we still don't have any extra energy, we're still depressed and our home is becoming a dump, because we choose to workout with our only crumbs of energy. Oh great, now here's two weeks worth of insomnia to make working out even harder. We keep working out, hoping it will help us sleep, but it doesn't. And now we're in constant pain because we're not getting the sleep need to repair our muscles. The pain causes us to become more sedentary for a couple of weeks before we started our sensible workout routine 6 weeks ago. And then we're back at it, but the cycle repeats itself.

How do we stop eating the crap food, or just overeating even healthy food when it's the only damn thing in our lives at the moment that stops up from SI. We've quit drinking, we don't use drugs, don't smoke, but we do turn the drug of choice for "good bipolar boys and girls" - food.

We're not making excuses, we keep hammering away at it, making several attempts each year. Each time telling ourselves, "this time i'll stay stable long enough, or I'll keep going despite how ill I feel , how hungry I feel" or we taper off the weigh gain meds, maybe try something weight neutral, maybe we lose a few pounds before going completly off the rails and begging to go back on the weight gain med once again. Because after all what's the point of being thin if we're dead.

We know what to do- eat less, eat healthier, move more in ways that we like. The illness and meds themselves do create many obsticales.