I used to have depression coming back every now and then.
I could never figure out what exactly causes it, until I started personal quest where I wrote a lot about what relates to depression.
My first observation was masturbation.
It seemed that if I dont masturbate for 2 weeks, depression stops and doesnt come back anymore.
However, what builds up is pressure, so it was not an ideal solution.
The next discovery I made was drinking a lot of water at once, about 700 mililiters at once.
It was much better, but from that discovery, I concluded that maybe overeating also reduces depression.
Turns out thats true too. If I eat a lot of food at once, I become happy.
Other discoveries were positive thinking, simple problem solving, one meal per day, learning new things... all which were shown to help with depression.
But my best discovery was pure accident.
I wanted to see how much calories I can reduce daily without losing weight.
It was sort of a test to see how much food I really need.
The test itself also came as an accident, because I got sick and couldnt eat for a few days, and since I didnt feel hunger, I wanted to use the opportunity and for research purposes after that I reduced calories daily to about 1000, then increased to 1200 later.
However, when doing this research, I didnt think it would have effect on the mood and depression.
I couldnt help but notice that my mood greatly improved.
Depression didnt return at all.
To my surprise, reducing calories to about 1200, and eating once or twice a day, seems to work surprisingly well to solve depression.
Even after I controlled for other factors, such as water intake and how often I drink water.
It seems that simply reducing amount of calories alone does great against depression and improves mood significantly.
In research, its really important to write everything down, because thats how you notice causation/relation.
In fact, I dont think much research is possible if I rely on my memory alone.
