Have you noticed that when you’re nervous, anxious or sad your interest in food goes through the floor or that your digestion is profoundly affected?
The short answer to the question “why do I lose my appetite when I’m stressed” is because you are a human being.
The specific intricate ways in which your body goes about inhibiting your appetite when you’re stressed are numerous and ingenious but at the end of the day each of them come down to one overarching reason human beings lose interest in eating when we’re stressed. The simple fact that during acute stress eating is simply not a priority.
Loss of appetite is a straight up biological response to exceptional stress (think break-up, loss of a loved one or miscarriage level).
To understand why this is true rather than assign self-blame or frustration at yourself, it is helpful to look to evolutionary biology.
Your body isn’t going to waste time telling you to eat let alone wait for you to eat, if it is concerned only with running or fighting the danger at hand.
The stress response is an ancient adaptation dating back to when our most common stressors were physical and presented an immediate threat to our life.
As far as your body is concerned it is time to first mobilize all resources to survive the lion attack and then when it’s safe reassess the eating thing.
If your body were to send you any signals that you need to eat before you run or while you’re running, you’d be far less likely to be successful at surviving.
Hunger is a pretty big distraction.
After all there is no point wasting energy and time eating, having sex or planning for your future until your body knows that you do indeed have a future!
Let’s look at the number one reason you lose your appetite under stress a little close. Plus what you can do about it to ensure you’re taking best care of your health and not stressing your body even more because the thing with not eating when we are stressed is that pretty soon the stress of not eating becomes a stress in itself which can make it even harder to recover from the initial stress…
The #1 Reason You Lose Your Appetite When Stressed; Priority
In a nutshell stress and in particular depression (which can arise from prolonged stress) is a means by which your body shuts down energy to wait out a period of time until the circumstances improve.
With a shutting down and conservation of energy the desire to care for yourself including preparing and eating food diminishes. This loss of energy, spontaneity and interest in life is heartbreaking to both experience and bear witness to in a loved one but thankfully with the right help it’s not a life sentence (even though it can feel like it when you’re in the midst of it).
A Brief Look at The Science of How Your Body Decreases Your Appetite During Stress
During times of stress your sympathetic nervous system (SNS) is in charge.
SNS activity (fight or flight) leads to the release of appetite inhibiting hormones which control a number of digestive changes which overall serve to suppress eating1,2.
Among other changes blood is diverted from your digestive tract and to your skeletal muscles with the purpose of enhancing your ability to protect yourself (run or fight).
What Can I Do?
So you’ve lost your appetite due to stress?
Congratulations, you’re human.
We hear a lot about stress eating and emotional eating and I think this leaves many of us feeling as though we are strange or somehow abnormal for losing interest in food when we are stressed. However, the reality is and as I hope you’ve gained an understanding and appreciation of after reading this post, a loss of appetite during stress is absolutely “normal”.
If you’d like to understand the contradiction in why sometimes you may completely lose your appetite while other times you may stress eat or binge eat during times of stress, see last week’s post “Why Do I Eat When I’m Stressed?”.
Us human beings are a little bit simple and a little bit complex all at once and it is about understanding that while there are overarching principals that connect us all in order to go far and truly succeed in life it comes down to investing the time and effort into finding what works for you.
You can have all the money and all the time in the world but if you don’t have the health to use it let alone enjoy it, it’s value is negligible.
Most of us can afford to skip a meal here and there (some of us truly can’t, including if you’re in recovery from anorexia nervosa) so what is the big deal with loss of appetite during stress and why would we even bother addressing this?
The big deal is that if you are constantly finding yourself with little appetite or often unable to eat or eat adequately and you don’t have an underlying physical reason for this you can through not eating adequately be enhancing or at least preventing yourself from getting free of the anxiety, stress or depression.
Without adequate nutrition your brain may not be able to get out of the stress, anxiety, depression cycle because as much as diet industry would want us to believe otherwise it requires a great deal of nutrients and energy for a human brain to function well let alone at its best (and we’re always aiming for best).
If you have noticed, you have no or low interest in food and eating feels like a chore or an impossibility and this is lasting for more than 2-4 weeks it’s time to address it.
Consider making an appointment to see your GP, a dietitian or psychologist.
I understand taking responsibility for your health and believing that anything you do can make it better or finding the energy to invest in making it better is incredibly hard from a place of stress and sadness. I and I myself have been stuck here as well as seen others stuck here in the “what’s the point?” trap.
Which is exactly why I implore you to seek help because the whole point is that you cease to feel that way.
With great help you can become curious and excited by your life once again or if working with me my goal is always to facilitate you to reach a higher level than you have ever experienced before.
The way things have been in your past or the way things are in your now do not determine what you are capable of in the future.
There is a life waiting for you which you cannot yet conceive and a huge step to reaching it is feeding your brain great nutrition.
If you know that your mood is telling you that you need to make changes in your life, you live a busy life and you know you could benefit from guidance on specifically how to do this please get in contact with me and you can decide if what I have to offer is of value to you.
With my whole heart I hope you found this information useful and inspiring.
Become Great. Live Great.
Bonnie.
Reference
- Blair, E. H., Wing, R. R., and Wald, A. (1991). The effects of laboratory stressors on glycemic control and gastrointestinal transit time. Psychosom. Med. 53: 133-143.
- Wing, R. R., Blair, E. H., Epstein, L. H., and McDermott, M. D. (1990). Psychological stress and glucose metabolism in obese and normal-weight subjects: A possible mechanism for differences in stress-induced eating. Health Psychol. 9: 693-700.
