For me weight loss is always a battle of gaining and losing; being obsessed with food, constantly thinking about food, feeling guilty about food, feeling like I always need to be on a diet and that I should be working out more, eating healthier, cleansing, yet yearning for comfort, and then I go on binge drinking sprees. If you knew me you wouldn't clasify me as an alcoholic. It wasn't until my boyfriend who lives with me told me that I have a problem. I am a very secretive person. I know myself and I know my habits. My own struggles with bulimia and tendencies to overindulge are unveiled when you live with someone. These were all years of bad habits that I saw as being normal. I would eat healthy for weeks and then go on over indulgent binges the next. Even going so far as throwing up my food. Going so far as drinking so much as to throw up. I knew I was so drunk I would go throw up in the bathroom, but it was normal to me, it was normal to my friends, these were friends that I had known for years..but they wouldn't know because I would keep it secret (I was good at keeping it secretive I am smart and can still use intelligent vocabulary and handle myself when I am drunk and then go throw up in the bathroom) this was not normal to my new boyfriend I now live with...this was not normal to my psychiatrist that I now see, who now diagnosed me with bipolar disorder...who put me on topamax...in fact I actually feel better now that I am on medication... I have already seen a difference in the way I feel about food, in the way I feel about health and myself..I don't feel like I have to binge and purge. Even in alcohol. Topamax is a mood stabalizer. I wish I would have found it years ago. By the way though it does have some side effects like brain fog, I am usually a much better writer, there is some brain fog, which I hear goes away after a few weeks, and tingling of the hands and feet which I have noticed but I can handle. My bi polar was getting pretty bad. I would cry over nothing, would get agitated about nothing, ect. so trust me side effects be damned I would take this any day.
If any doctor tries to tell you that there is no correlation between mental health and weight gain when you are in a depressed mood and eat a whole chocolate cake, a tub of ice cream, and chicken fingers to try and fill that void like I have, really, where is the rational behind that, too bad that so many pharmaceuticals out there like lithium cause weight gain, but do some research and fins something that works for you