Most of us have an idea of what depression or postpartum depression (PPD) is "supposed" to look like. But, in reality, it looks different for everyone. For Chrissy Teigen, as she explained in a new interview, PPD affected her life in the kitchen—and when her relationship with food began to change, she started to suspect that something wasn't quite right.
"I started looking at food and was like, 'I'm just not in the mood,'" Teigen told People in the new interview.
"It’s like going to the grocery store when you’re full. You just don’t want the same things. Food wasn’t that thrilling for me,” she said. “That was one of the first times I knew something was wrong.”
For the cookbook author, who frequently shares recipes and photos of the food she's made on social media, this set off a few alarms. “When I wasn’t feeling great, being in the kitchen was like torture. It felt like such a job, and you want to be excited when you’re in the kitchen,” she added. “I cook because I love food and I love to eat. It makes me happy to serve people. And when you aren’t feeling that way, it was like torture.”
As SELF wrote previously, postpartum depression symptoms aren't always obvious.
In general, the symptoms of postpartum depression are similar to those associated with other types of clinical depression, including feelings of profound sadness, loneliness, or hopelessness. But depression can also come with a loss of interest in the things you once found pleasurable, like cooking, for example.
And, as Teigen previously spoke about, it can come with physical symptoms as well. "Getting out of bed to get to set on time was painful," she wrote in an essay for Glamour last March.
"My lower back throbbed; my shoulders—even my wrists—hurt. I didn’t have an appetite. I would go two days without a bite of food, and you know how big of a deal food is for me. One thing that really got me was just how short I was with people…. I wondered: Am I making this all up? Is this pain even real anymore?" she said in her essay. "Before, when I entered a room, I had a presence: head high, shoulders back, big smile. Suddenly I had become this person whose shoulders would cower underneath her chin. I would keep my hands on my belly and try to make myself as small as possible."
She was also worried that she would get PPD again following the birth of her son, Miles. But that didn't happen this time around, thankfully.
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