I want to be hungry/have an appetite!!! Ahhh! Any suggestions?

Okay so I am in the process of trying to gain weight since being 93 lbs at 5'2 is not a healthy weight for me and my college is requiring that I weight at least 98 (due to my ED history) in order to go back at the end of August- therefore, I have around 5 lbs to gain in 7 weeks...

so the problem: I am almost never hungry/always feel full/just have no appetite...

The thing is, I have not been restricting for months, in fact I've been sticking to a healthy intake the past three months consisting of three meals/two snacks and all of adequate sizes, but in the past four weeks or so I notice that I never really get hungry anymore and just eat because I have to...it's strange because before (could be because I was malnourished) I used to ALWAYS be hungry and would basically look at the clock and countdown until my next meals.

Any suggestions would be really helpful to make this weight gain easier/more fun/more comfortable. Thanks!

I find that if I take a nibble of something sweet I'll become hungry shortly after. Take a bite of a piece of chocolate, muffin, yogurt, etc. and weight for a bit. Also, you could try looking at pictures of food online! That will stimulate the release of gastrin and cause hunger pangs as well.

If you still cannot get the calories in, have some milk or hot chocolate at night before bed. =) Soothing and it may help you sleep better.

Thanks, yeah I'm willing to try everything, I've even walked around my kitchen sniffing fresh bread or taking a whiff of whatever I'm cooking to try and stimulate an appetite, but it rarely works. So annoying. But I'll try the bite of something sweet idea tomorrow- hopefully that will help at least a little...:)

I would suggest that you try to eat as often as you can, or try eating some "fear foods" every few days.  Not only will it contribute to your weight gain, but I also believe that it could help make the thought of eating (or whatever it is about food that continues to bother you) become less scary, stressful, etc.  If your mind is able to let some of the fear/anxiety that surrounds food go, you might start to let yourself acknowledge your body's natural need to be noursihed.  From experience, I strongly feel that the continuing fear/anxiety that fills ED sufferers is what supresses our appetites and makes weight gain hard to achieve on our own.  I know its tough, but you're going to need to try and do things that are AGAINST your ED thoughts to fight it and hopefully beat it someday. 

I agree with the people above who suggested you eat things with sugar in them to spark your appetite.  For example, though watermelon isn't very high in calories, its still very sweet and watery (perfect for these hot summer days) so eating some may help you realize how hungry you are.  Pretty much any fresh fruit helps me start feeling hungry.

And hey, if none of this works you can always just make sure that EVERYTHING you eat has high fructose corn syrup in it, and that smoke alot of marijuana. (hehe..just kidding, of course) 

Good luck with everything!

People who can't understand why they're overweight usually find, on closer inspection, that they eat a lot more than they think.  People who can't understand why they're underweight usually find the opposite.  If you've lost you're appetite, chances are you're undereating even though you think your meals are 'adequate size'.

I'd suggest you take a look at the amount you're eating and maybe tot up the calories as a spot check if that's something you feel comfortable enough to do.  And then plan how to get the 2500 cals a day in that you're going to need in order to gain weight at the required rate of 1lb a week between now and the start of term.

Focus your meals and snacks around high-cal, low bulk items so that you can eat more calories without feeling uncomfortably full.  That means going heavy on things like cheese, oils, avocados, nuts, eggs, red meats, oily fish, butter, dried fruit.... and not so heavy on the low-cal, high-bulk foods such as salads and vegetables which fill you up for not enough cals.  Complex carbohydrates are the best thing to eat if you want to gain weight rapidly.... so serve a good-size portion at each meal.   3oz dry weight pasta, rice, noodles, bread, breakfast cereals.  8oz of potatoes.  Cakes, biscuits, chocolate... it's all good.

And to spark your appetite back into action how about getting inspired in the kitchen?  Could you take a cookery course during the holidays perhaps?  Human beings are a creative species with a long tradition of making fantastic dishes from a wide variety of foods with wonderful, exciting flavours to tantalise the taste-buds and get the digestive juices flowing.  Indian, thai, mexican, french... so much choice.  On a boring diet we're as miserable  as battery hens pecking seeds mechanically from a feeder!

More often than not, what works for me is opening our spice cupboard and taking a deep breath in - uh, not directly from the bottles, though. Might burn the nostrils. More specifically, the smell of oregano makes me hungry. '__'

Damn, now I want italian.

The only way I've found to increase my appetite is to eat. Terribly obvious, but when you eat & start up your metabolism, it's gonna keep wanting more. You have to just eat, & eat a lot.

Thanks, but the thing is I don't actually have any fear foods, in fact I believe I am completely over the mental aspect of my fear foods- I don't look at labels anymore, I eat out at restaurants without questioning the butter/oil content of foods, basically there is nothing I would be 'afraid' to eat so it's super frustrating that my appetite is not coming- and I don't actually think its from undereating, because the past few months I have not gone a single day of restriction- and I've even cut down on vegetables and been generous with olives/olive oil/avocadoes/etc- I eat nothing fatfree or 'diet'...ahhh.

And this morning right after my usual breakfast I was just reading a magazine and I bent over to pick something off the floor, and I threw up completely unintentionally. (Btw I have no history of purging/etc) so that just pissed me off further.

Haha about the marijuana thing, my doctor actually suggested that if my appetite doesn't come back I might be prescribed some sort of marijuana tablet? I didn't even know any of that existed? Kind of weird...but funny.

If you just bent over and randomly threw up I think there's something going on with your digestive system. I strongly suggest going to a walk-in just to be safe.

Yeah, I actually had to choose a drug project for my health class so I chose the medicinal uses of marijuana.  Even though modern society seems to view cannabis negatively, it has, in fact, been a well known remedy for quite a few ailments for hundreds of years.  In fact, some doctors will precribe it to both cancer and AIDs patients to alleviate their nausea and vomiting, and to help them regain their appetites.

The pill that your doctor suggested prescribing was probably called Dronabinol (Marinol) which is a manufactured version of THC, (delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol) marijuana's primary component which creates the pyschoactive effect.  From what I've read, these pills aren't addicitve, and you wouldn't have to worry about the health risks of smoking the plant either.  You may want to consider it if nothing else seems to be working. 

If not, good luck anyway :)

Thanks for the info! yeah, Marinol is what my doctor was talking about, but of course my mother is sceptical because when she thinks of marijuana she just thinks, "ohmygod drugs, absolutely not!" But, I have another appointment next week so if things don't get better by then, I will talk to my doctor more about it :) until then I've been watching obscene amounts of Food Network to try and tempt myself ;p

I know how you feel...I go through periods of just not being hungry but I think the best way to deal with it is to eat more. Even though you may not be hungry at first, I found that eating anyway can help you to become hungry. Sounds weird, but I think it's because increasing your calories and eating more frequently really does speed up your metabolism and thus makes you hungrier!

I had a problem feeling hungry for several years. Sometimes I would try to eat, and after 4 or 5 bites, I'd feel so full I wanted to puke. I've never had weight issues, so I went to 3 doctors trying to figure out what it was. Turns out I had a combo of GERD and minor IBS, and that can make your brain stop producing the hunger urge. Have you gone to a gastro doctor? You might have a GI problem that is adding to your lack of appetite.

You should also try weightlifting. If its not a GI problem, maybe you just need to trick your body into thinking it needs more nutrients. Weightlifting can burn energy real fast without the weight-loss involved in aerobics (muscle weighs more than fat, too, so you'll gain weight faster and safer than piling on empty calories), and after a few days you should find you are hungrier. As skinny as you are, you should start with 5 lb dumbells and maybe an 8-10lb straight bar. Work on your arms one day, then your legs the next. Do core training (sit ups, etc) a little every day. You want to do at least 3 sets of 4 reps, and do them really slow - if you're doing a bicep curl, try to count from 1-7 from the rested to curled position, hold for 4 seconds, then count to 7 again when you are going back to the rested position. You should feel it burn (not hurt, just burn) after the 2nd set.

Thanks! Yeah I have checked with my doctor before if I have a GI problem and it doesn't seem to be the culprit- but I definitely have been lifting weights for the past year or so and it's blessed me with some good arm/thigh/calf tone-age ;)...when I was on holiday last month however I didn't have my dumbbells with me so I'm now getting back into doing the lifting every other day to help put on more muscle mass- and thankfully today I got quite a bit of an appetite...I was at work today and didn't have a long enough break to get a real lunch like I normally do so instead I had one of those new Starbucks Vivanno smoothies (270 calories/21g protein...healthy and quite good) along with a kashi granola bar to balance it out and then by dinner I was nice and hungry and had some delicious tacos my mother and I made :).

And yeah, you're right about the gaining hunger by starting to eat, because that triggers hunger signals I think when you first taste the food :)...

If you go to any health food store they should carry alfalfa. It comes in tablet form in a bottle, and it will increase your hunger through the day. Just get one with tablets that are around 500mg, and take one every morning. You'll start feeling hungrier almost right away. I suppose it could have different results for different people, but it is always at the top of the list for appetite increasers, and it worked for me! Hope this helps!

Well there are some great posts here, but I had the same problem, to busy to eat so I ignore the hunger then im not hungry...no good.  I talked to my doctor and he gave me Periactin 4mg tabs.  Its an old school antihistamine that has also been proven to boost your apetite.  With me it takes about 20 min, so I take it as I am preparing a good meal and am starving by the time its ready :)  You can take it up to three times daily which works perfect, and I'm noticing I'm having more of an apetite when I don't take them now, I guess regulating it :)

Original Post by kate777:

Yeah, I actually had to choose a drug project for my health class so I chose the medicinal uses of marijuana.  Even though modern society seems to view cannabis negatively, it has, in fact, been a well known remedy for quite a few ailments for hundreds of years.  In fact, some doctors will precribe it to both cancer and AIDs patients to alleviate their nausea and vomiting, and to help them regain their appetites.

The pill that your doctor suggested prescribing was probably called Dronabinol (Marinol) which is a manufactured version of THC, (delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol) marijuana's primary component which creates the pyschoactive effect.  From what I've read, these pills aren't addicitve, and you wouldn't have to worry about the health risks of smoking the plant either.  You may want to consider it if nothing else seems to be working. 

If not, good luck anyway :)

 I was going to suggest this....it is very very usful....seriously.

Try 10 - 15 minutes of stretching and situps in the morning when you wake up and then have a nice glass of water .  I'm never hungry when I wake but this always makes me hungry and craving some breakfasty goodness.

 

Obviously don't overdo it, just do what you feel comfortable with

HI

I have this exact same problem!  But i can tell you something that works amazing.  YEars ago when i first suffered anorexia and started to get better i experienced it too...at that time i tried 2 things that really helped.  First zinc..it helps increase your appetite...i took 15mg per day.  Also there is a homeopathic remedy called Lycopodium that is just amazing.  It is for people who feel full after just a few bites.  You take 4 or 5 of the little homeopathic pellets several times a day.  I guarantee you this stuff really works.  ANd it has no side effects like some prescription meds.  I've been wanting to get some to deal with my current underweight status...im 93 pounds too..but 5 feet 5.5inches.  Please try this stuff...it reallyworks...im going to get some this weekend!

*Giggles* If anyone's still desperate, they could try artificial sweetners. I'm ALWAYS hungry after I consume those.