If you have been a normal weight all your life and find yourself gaining weight while on antidepressants, how will you know if or when your medication may make you obese? It is doubtful that your doctor will tell you; he or she usually does not have a scale in the office or a height/weight chart on the wall. The well-known side effect of antidepressant-associated weight gain is often not even mentioned by the prescribing psychotherapist lest it discourage the patient from starting or continuing the medication.

Ideally, preventing the weight gain at the beginning of treatment should be part of the management of the emotional disorder. As we mention in our book, The Serotonin Power Diet, it is not difficult to follow a dietary regimen that eliminates the overeating and cravings most antidepressants cause within weeks of starting treatment. However, in most cases, weight gain is discussed only when the patient brings it up and this may be only after a substantial amount of weight has been gained.  How do you get your physician to take your concern seriously? One way is to document that the pounds you have added as a result of the medication.

A client at our weight-loss practice told me the following. "I would go into my shrink's office and show her how tight my skirt was or how much my thighs were bulging in my jeans. She would shrug, tell me that I looked healthy and not to worry about it. But I was worried and found a BMI chart on the Web that put me into the obese category. The next time I saw my doctor, I showed her the chart and told her my weight was making me unhealthy and she had to do something about it."

As this client found out, she had to figure out herself whether her weight gain made her obese and as a result more likely to develop type II diabetes, heart disease or orthopedic problems that often follow from substantial weight gain. But these days, looking at a chart or a scale may not be the best way of determining obesity.

There are three types of measurements used to determine if someone is of normal weight, or overweight or obese. The simplest and the one around the longest is the height /weight chart. Pediatricians use such charts from birth on and your doctor uses the same charts, adjusted for age. Weight-loss organizations and health clubs use them, too. The charts are generous in the range of weight you can have for a given height and make allowances for age. If you are over 50 you are allowed to weigh more for the same height. But as a friend told me, "I am shrinking and my former weight when I was two inches taller is no longer healthy."

A seemingly more sophisticated method using your height and weight is called the BMI or body mass index.  To figure this out, you multiply your weight in pounds by your height in inches squared (height x height). Then you multiply this figure by 703 to convert it to a metric number, as the BMI is not based on inches and pounds. Most surveys on the percent of obese people in a population are based on the BMI.  If you try this calculation then the following chart will tell you whether you are underweight, ideal, overweight or obese.