Appetite

Not sure if anyone else has made a thread about depression and anxiety as it relates to appetite. I searched briefly but didn't find anything.

I'm just wondering how other people's appetites are affected by depression and/or anxiety. Do you eat more or less in response to one or both of those?

For myself, it seems complicated. Sometimes depression leads me to overeat or to eat junk food to feel better temporarily, but other times I lose my appetite completely. I think, though, that I lose my appetite when the depression is accompanied by anxiety. The weird thing is it depends on the nature and cause of it, if I can pinpoint the cause. Sometimes anxiety makes me want to eat comfort food, other times the thought of eating anything makes my stomach hurt. Sometimes depression is just a feeling of emptiness about my life and I want to fill that feeling with something that feels good, but sometimes the depression is due to something more acute, and the sharpness of it completely erases any desire for food (although I still think it is combined with anxiety, but the two are often intertwined so strongly they can be hard to distinguish from one another).

I am just curious what others experience and think about this. I'm tired of going through it and it has gotten to the point where I have gone whole days barely eating anything, which messes my blood sugar up and makes me even worse, but I can't even eat something bland like a banana without revulsion.
 

AtTheGates

Banned
The only thing that keeps me from eating to much is staying busy....I have a schedule that I alter every now and then just to change things up...but when Im sitting around the house on a saturday or sunday i'll definetly eat just out of boredom...when I was a bit younger i'd deal with a bad day by stopping by the liquor store and wendy's on the way home..like it was almost just an IMPULSE reaction to having my feelings hurt or having a bad day at work...anyway, I was young...these days i just push through the negative feelings and try to keep myself on schedule.....its not that I dont over-eat at ALL anymore..I just wait til the weekend to do it.
 
What I realized lately is, that depression in my life was always in direct proportion to lack of sleep. The worse the lack of sleep was, the worse my depression was. Often acompanied with suicidal thoughts. Given that in my life I lacked sleep almost chronically, also my life was one constant depression. I was desperately trying to find a solution, but went in circles always coming to the same conclusion, that there is none, none whatsoever. That I am doomed, my life has ended long ago and the only reasonable solution - for me and for society - is that I end it. When I sleep sufficiently, I still feel sad about my loneliness and life and hopeless too, but not quite in the same way. It somehow doesn´t hurt so badly and I have some space left to still do things and not be paralyzed by despair.

There is also a correlation between food, depression and sleep. In times when I was severely sleep deprived, I just used to binge. Often long into the night, which was further cutting into my sleep time. Then the spiral continued till I completely broke down..

Hope this was a bit helpful, sorry for my retarded english.
 
What I realized lately is, that depression in my life was always in direct proportion to lack of sleep. The worse the lack of sleep was, the worse my depression was. Often acompanied with suicidal thoughts. Given that in my life I lacked sleep almost chronically, also my life was one constant depression. I was desperately trying to find a solution, but went in circles always coming to the same conclusion, that there is none, none whatsoever. That I am doomed, my life has ended long ago and the only reasonable solution - for me and for society - is that I end it. When I sleep sufficiently, I still feel sad about my loneliness and life and hopeless too, but not quite in the same way. It somehow doesn´t hurt so badly and I have some space left to still do things and not be paralyzed by despair.

There is also a correlation between food, depression and sleep. In times when I was severely sleep deprived, I just used to binge. Often long into the night, which was further cutting into my sleep time. Then the spiral continued till I completely broke down..

Hope this was a bit helpful, sorry for my retarded english.

People always say that when their English is perfect :p I didn't even realize it isn't your first language. No problem there.

I haven't had the best sleep schedule lately, and I'm sure that is aggravating things, maybe more than I realize. Also, I know junk food aggravates it, but people seem to neglect not eating whatsoever as a contributor, or not eating enough. For instance just eating say a fruit and vegetable and a handful of almonds or something all day - it's good to be eating those things but if it's too little calories you're still going to screw up your metabolism and blood sugar which means lack of energy, anxiety, depression, etc.

I berate myself for eating junk but I haven't gotten on myself about ONLY eating a couple "healthy" food items all day, until recently, when I've found the effects have been severe in terms of my mood and anxiety. Low blood sugar = nervous wreck and ultimately worse depression, which causes me to shun food more.

I actually lost the few pounds I had put on recently and I'm glad but it was partly due to a lack of adequate calorie intake, which is never the way you want to lose weight.
 
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People always say that when their English is perfect :p I didn't even realize it isn't your first language. No problem there.

I haven't had the best sleep schedule lately, and I'm sure that is aggravating things, maybe more than I realize. Also, I know junk food aggravates it, but people seem to neglect not eating whatsoever as a contributor, or not eating enough. For instance just eating say a fruit and vegetable and a handful of almonds or something all day - it's good to be eating those things but if it's too little calories you're still going to screw up your metabolism and blood sugar which means lack of energy, anxiety, depression, etc.

I berate myself for eating junk but I haven't gotten on myself about ONLY eating a couple "healthy" food items all day, until recently, when I've found the effects have been severe in terms of my mood and anxiety. Low blood sugar = nervous wreck and ultimately worse depression, which causes me to shun food more.

I actually lost the few pounds I had put on recently and I'm glad but it was partly due to a lack of adequate calorie intake, which is never the way you want to lose weight.

When I try to eat healthy - esp. fruits, nuts, vegetables etc., I am usually loosing weight and feel terribly tired. Just recently I got a blackout after standing up quickly and felt in the doorway, wounding my head. I have to remember to be careful. Btw I think it´s good to eat small amounts more frequently, then the blood sugar stays more contstant. But when I say I am tired in my case I guess it´s also due to different things than blood sugar. Especially anaemia, which I have quite severe, and other things. I am going to try supplementing B12 and wonder if it gets better.
 
I find people's experiences of depression and appetite very interesting! :)

It also makes me feel a bit abnormal, because when I have related how I have fought depression since my teens to doctors and psychologists, their automatic assumption is that at times, I must not feel like or be able to eat much.

When I tell them that I have never had my ability to be able to eat food diminish even during the deepest depressions, even when being close to ending my life, they look at me as if I have 3 noses.

I eat nice food for the same reason alcoholics drink.
It fires off an amazing amount of serotonin and dopamine in the pleasure and reward centres in my brain.

I actually envy people who can't even bring themselves to eat anything when going through periods of severe depression. For the result of eating high sugar foods when you are feeling down results in the "sugar high" which is always followed by the "sugar crash", which can make you feel even worse.

Which is worse though....ending up with low blood sugar from not eating or ending up with diabetes one day because you eat so much sugar your pancreas decides goes on strike one day because it has had enough of the roller coaster rides you put it through? :thinking:
 
I find people's experiences of depression and appetite very interesting! :)

It also makes me feel a bit abnormal, because when I have related how I have fought depression since my teens to doctors and psychologists, their automatic assumption is that at times, I must not feel like or be able to eat much.

When I tell them that I have never had my ability to be able to eat food diminish even during the deepest depressions, even when being close to ending my life, they look at me as if I have 3 noses.

I eat nice food for the same reason alcoholics drink.
It fires off an amazing amount of serotonin and dopamine in the pleasure and reward centres in my brain.

I actually envy people who can't even bring themselves to eat anything when going through periods of severe depression. For the result of eating high sugar foods when you are feeling down results in the "sugar high" which is always followed by the "sugar crash", which can make you feel even worse.

Which is worse though....ending up with low blood sugar from not eating or ending up with diabetes one day because you eat so much sugar your pancreas decides goes on strike one day because it has had enough of the roller coaster rides you put it through? :thinking:

When I go through depressive episodes in which I overeat or eat junk food - which is more common for me than not being able to eat, since that is in response to more severe stress - I envy people who can't eat, too, because I feel so guilty for doing it and I'm afraid I'll gain weight.

I find it odd that they expected you to not be able to eat - not everyone has the same reaction to these feelings. For me I think it is mostly anxiety, but I can't be sure. So I guess they would think the same of me.

Diabetes is obviously worse, and I am by no means claiming not eating enough is way worse than overeating. They are both really bad in their own ways. I think it depends on the duration, though. Overeating puts on weight over time obviously, as well as other health problems as you said, and undereating can lead to malnutrition, loss of muscle tone, messed up metabolism, etc. Both equally bad over the long term in my opinion.

I know how frustrating it is to want to put the brakes on and not be able to, though. I find that a lot more frustrating than not eating enough, because it's easier to make yourself eat something than to stop yourself from eating when you realllyyyy want to.
 
It fires off an amazing amount of serotonin and dopamine in the pleasure and reward centres in my brain.

Good point , you summed up what I was about to post.

When I feel rattled after a bad day, I tend to eat more for the reason that BlueDays has given, mostly whole grain carbs and other stuffing food, but definitely not junk food.

You might find the following story quite interesting:

Before my vacation and whenever I was exposed to a stressing situation I used to compulsively eat good tasting food just for the sake of my mood improvement, without any surprise I got morally worse because of this .... downright vicious circle : you feel bad -> you eat to fuel your dopamine-> you feel awesome in the short term but bad in the long term... with extra body weight to top it off!

So I told myself, let's try something which involved staying home for 2 months without any or very little social interaction, I bought some packs of :lentils /beans/ chickpeas / rice , canned fish, and oranges/grapes/dark chocolate with some flat-bread that I thereafter put in the freezer , I cooked the rest in a very rudimentary manner without adding anything to flavour them , put them into plastic boxes and stored them into the freezer as well.

My objective was to make that bad habit go away while at the same time see how it would turn out,Just so you know, I wasn't fat or something , looking like the average person (between 75-85 Kg for 178 cm) , my goal wasn't to lose weight or watch what I was eating , but just to stop eating because of stress.

Here I started my thing :

Within the first week, I managed to only eat 1 dark chocolate potion+ about 5 grapes for breakfast.
half a flat bread and about 15 oz of food (freezed in a plastic box) + 1 cup of orange juice between breakfast and dinner.

I felt so good about isolating myself and not having the least argument with anyone for that long that I didn't pay attention to my appetite anymore.

As the weeks passed, my mind was able to adjust so that I could eat 1 meal a day (half a bread + a full plastic box of legumes + fish or chicken + 1 orange juice) this became normal to me..... during that time I was also able to start doing sport (yes sport at home like push-ups, jumpingjacks, rope jumping, squats...etc).

After a month, this became part of my routine , I felt so damn good about it.

Same thing for the second month, this went perfectly as expected.

Then I resumed "normal life", and to my great surprise all the people I know told me that I looked a whole lot thinner (just telling by my face).

I forgot to mention that during these 2 months : no sex whatsoever (this includes internet), no junkfood, only listening to music, watching movies on internet, playing games sometimes and learning languages....I was so proud about what I have achieved , this was pure self-discipline!

this was 7 months ago , I was able to keep up :)

Bottom line : YES, stress sure made me eat more.
 
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