April 30, 2024
Sometimes you don’t feel like eating and suffer from a reduced appetite? This may be due to stress. But there are even more causes (and solutions).
If you eat healthy and sufficient food, it is normal to feel slightly hungry about an hour before your next meal. But sometimes that healthy appetite doesn’t come and you don’t feel like eating. Biggest culprit: you emotions. Stress, sadness, fear or anger can ensure that you cannot and do not want to swallow something. When you have negative emotions, you produce less serotonin, a neurotransmitter that is also sometimes called the ‘happiness hormone’. This plays an important role not only in your mood, but also in your appetite.
Disease
Also little exercise, flu and colds and fatigue can reduce your appetite. Just like heat. Your body produces heat when you eat, so at high temperatures, for example on holiday in a tropical country, it can feel like too much for your body. Also some medicines, such as certain antibiotics, can satisfy your hunger. Decreased appetite can also be a side effect of a more serious health condition, such as inflammation in the stomach or stomach
intestines, kidney, liver or thyroid disease, gallstones, the Eating Disorder anorexia nervosa, a depression or chronic condition, such as diabetes and fibromyalgia.
Vicious circle
Because you eat less, you get… fewer nutrients inside, such as proteins, vitamins and minerals, while they are so important. This can lead to a vicious circle; you feel lethargic and tired, you exercise less, become more susceptible to viruses and your appetite decreases even further. It is therefore extra important that what you do eat is very healthy, so that you still get all the nutrients.
Also read: 6 reasons why your weight fluctuates
When to go to the doctor?
If you continue to lose weight and your appetite does not come back or if you have other serious or unexplained (mental or physical) complaints, go to the doctor.
Solutions for Loss of Appetite
- Exercise for at least half an hour every day, preferably outside. That stimulates the appetite.
- Drink enough. This makes your food easier to digest, so you become hungrier.
- Fresh foods are often ‘easier’ to eat and stimulate your appetite. Such as pieces of fruit, yogurt or (homemade) juice.
- Some broth half an hour before the hot meal can whet your appetite. Alternate your diet to prevent ‘eating cravings’. Also alternate between savory and sweet, for example.
- Eat several small meals and eat at fixed times (helps to automatically get hungry).
- Make sure your food looks and smells attractive: use different ingredients and colors, add spices, eat from a nice plate, set the table nicely – even if you eat alone.
- Sometimes it can help to eat with others: seeing food makes you eat.
Editor’s tip:
In When your body says no Gabor Maté states that hidden stress can seriously damage our health. Modern life causes a disconnect between body and mind, which affects our health. Drawing from his medical experience, Maté underlines the mind-body connection in illness and emphasizes that people have the inner wisdom to heal. For more information, click on the button below.
SOURCE NUTRITION CENTER
TEXT MARA RUIJTER
IMAGE UNSPLASH
