When Your Appetite Disappears

Food has stopped being interesting. You get to the middle of the afternoon and realize you have not eaten, and the thought of a plate of anything is faintly unpleasant rather than appealing.

People tend to treat this as a minor thing, or even a lucky one. It is not. Not eating makes everything else you are dealing with harder, and the reason it is happening usually deserves attention.

Why it happens

Appetite is one of the first things to go when you are struggling, and it goes by a few different routes.

Low mood flattens the signal. The same system that stops things being enjoyable stops food being appealing, and the hunger cue itself gets quiet.

Anxiety does the opposite thing to the same end. A body braced for something shuts digestion down, which is why worry comes with a closed throat and a stomach that says no.

Grief, exhaustion and pain all do it too. So do some medications, and so does simply having got out of the habit, because appetite is partly learned and it fades when nothing arrives at the usual hour.

Eat by the clock, not by the signal

This is the single most useful change. If the hunger cue is broken, waiting for it means waiting all day, so take the decision away from how you feel.

Set three or four times and eat something at each of them, whether or not you want to. Not a meal necessarily. Something.

Appetite tends to come back after eating rather than before it. The first few bites are the hard part, and the wanting often arrives halfway through, which is a strange and useful thing to know.

Make the portion small enough to be unthreatening

A full plate when nothing appeals is a reason to walk away, and the smaller version gets eaten.

Half of what you think you should have. A side plate rather than a dinner plate. Something you can finish, so that finishing is possible.

Then, if you want more, have more. Starting small is not giving up on eating properly. It is removing the obstacle.

Go for the easy things when chewing feels like work

On the days when food is a chore, the goal is not a balanced plate. It is getting something in.

Things that tend to go down when little else will: milk, yogurt, soup, cheese and crackers, peanut butter on toast, eggs, bananas, ice cream, a smoothie, a nutrition drink from the pharmacy.

Drinking is easier than eating for most people, so a glass of milk or a smoothie counts and counts well.

Cold and plain beats hot and strong-smelling. Smell drives a lot of early appetite, and a kitchen full of it can switch you off before you sit down.

Take the cooking out of it

Cooking is several decisions, a stretch of standing up, and a mess to clear. Any one of those can be the thing that stops you eating.

So keep food that needs nothing: bread, cereal, fruit, cheese, canned soup, frozen meals, nuts, the pre-cut things that cost more and are worth it this month.

Let somebody else cook if there is anyone to ask, and let the answer to how are you be I am finding it hard to eat. People can help with that.

Eat with someone if that helps, or alone if company makes it harder. Both are true for different people.

Watch for the things worth noticing

Most of this settles as whatever caused it settles. A few things mean it should be looked at sooner rather than later.

Weight dropping without trying, clothes getting loose, feeling faint or dizzy when you stand, being too tired to do ordinary things, hair thinning, feeling cold all the time.

Pain on swallowing, food sticking, throwing up, or a stomach that hurts after eating is a reason to see a doctor regardless of how your mood is, because that is a body question and not a mood one.

And if you notice relief at not eating, or a part of you that likes the number going down, that is worth saying out loud to someone. It is far more common than people admit and it is treatable.

Treat it as information

A missing appetite is usually your body reporting that something is too much. That report is worth reading rather than ignoring.

So ask what changed. A loss, a job, a diagnosis, a stretch of not sleeping, a new medication, a season of trying to hold everything up. The food will often follow once the thing underneath has somewhere to go.

In the meantime, eating by the clock keeps you functioning well enough to deal with it. People underestimate how much of the fog, the short fuse and the flat afternoons come from having eaten almost nothing.

When to get help

Please see your doctor if your appetite has been gone for more than a couple of weeks, if you are losing weight without meaning to, or if eating hurts, because both the mood reasons and the physical reasons are worth ruling in or out properly. Say plainly how little you are managing, and if a medication started around the same time, mention it, since a dose or a switch may be all it takes. A therapist can help with the low mood or anxiety underneath, and a dietitian is practical help rather than a lecture. If you are feeling hopeless, or you have had thoughts of not wanting to be here, please tell someone today. In the US you can call or text 988 at any time.