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Originally Posted by Dianne042425
OMG! Ive always thought they were low. I went through a deep depression when I was 17-20 and I got on antidepressants. I am off now and feel fine but I always feel irritable and sometimes get depressed for no reason; so I feel like maybe the levels are still a bit low. What does serotonin have to do with dieting though?
As I understand it, meals high in carbohydrates raise the serotonin levels in the brain. So when your serotonin levels are low, your body craves carbohydrates. If, as a result, you binge on carbs, giving your body more energy than it can burn or convert to glycogen stores, the excess is converted to fat.
The same thing can happen when you eat no/really low carb, though, which you have mentioned you were doing for a while. Are you still? Because your body needs carbs, it will eventually force you to consume them, often by making you binge. The end result is the same: the excess carbs are converted to fat.
Of course, fats are more easily converted to fat in the body than are carbs; but when you eat too many carbs, the same thing happens to them, despite the fact that it is more difficult for the body to make this conversion.
Because complex carbs (good carbs) are digested more slowly than simple carbohydrates, they are less likely to be converted to fat.