What does it mean when you're really, really hungry but nothing sounds good?

Appetite is unpredictable and mercurial. For six weeks after my major surgery this fall, nothing seemed appetizing. The anesthia lingered on and on.

Why not?

It happens to me a lot. You know what always sounds good to me? Chocolate. Right now I’d give anything for those Kisses with the almonds in them. Mmmmm!

To me, it happens when I have my mind set on something. For example, I can be extremely hungry but my hunger craves Indian curry, and then nothing else sounds good.

I have experienced what you’re describing, but not in a long time. I recall it happening more when I was limited to what we had in the household, and those options were unappealing either because I was not the person who did the shopping (when I was a kid/teen), or because my income was limited. I used to consider what I would choose if I could have anything delivered to my door for free, and then try to conjure up something with similar ingredients, flavors, and/or textures.

I also used to get very specific cravings at times, but that seemed tied more to emotional eating and comfort foods. Now when I am very hungry, I often can’t choose what to eat because I’ll eat anything, not because none of it sounds appealing. Where we live, there’s a multitude of restaurants from various cuisines around the world – our problem is having too many choices.

I have learned that when my sweet-tooth is nagging me, it actually means that I’m thirsty. I don’t get thirsty often, and as a result I tend to be chronically dehydrated to some extent. So when I’m craving sweet or fruity, I try to make myself drink some herbal tea of a similar flavor to what I’m craving instead. So perhaps your ‘hunger’ is actually thirst?

You are obviously not in the mood to cook or do dishes. Time to order out.

I cooked and did the dishes! I heated up a piece of pizza in some foil. I ate the pizza and then threw the foil away. I’m not lazy. Pfffft!

Hm. Would you be surprised to hear that that pizza isn’t sitting very well.

Expand the list. What DOES sound good?

@Dutchess_III Have a bite or 2 of pineapple. That will calm the pizza down

I don’t have any pineapple @Cruiser. I looked for some to put on my pineapple pizza because there was no pineapple on it but I didn’t have any.

@stanleybmanly Honest to goodness, NOTHING sounds good! And I have some of my favorite foods in the house, like tinned oysters. Maybe fresh, warm, sweet crab sounds good. If someone would pry it out of the shells and feed it to me.

I just thought of something! There is a coffee shop here in town that makes the YUMMIEST cold macaroni salad! That does sound good! Will somebody go get me some??

Dutchess, It’s very short notice after all, and to actually come to your house would involve 20 hours of travel time for me to get there. If you waited that long, you might actually faint from hunger!
So, try this. It’s only made with that super curly ampersand macaroni, but the taste is out of this world! And oh, so e-lishious!
. @@
@@@

Thenk you!!!

I do this all the time.

I tend to eat out of boredom. So whenever I just feel like eating – like, I want to go through the process of eating, but I don’t actually want anything in particular, I make a coffee or a cup of tea, and find something else to do with my hands – like knitting, or painting, or playing cards with the kid.

Or, you know, murder a bag of Funyons.

When that happens to me I am either

a) thirsty
b) so hungry I can’t think straight or
c) not hungry enough

First world problems…

I’ll go with a). Getting water now.

That happens to me. I drink water, and it helps.

I will remember that about the water.

Hunger and appetite are often out of sync. I, too, can be very hungry yet be unable to find the appeal of food. By contrast, haven’t we all eaten and enjoyed something when we had no hunger pangs?

Go to McDonald’s.

Didn’t want to go out plus they weren’t serving breakfast at that time, but that would have been good @JLeslie.

It means you’re pregnant! Congrats!

But seriously, when that happens to me I try to think of a food I love but seldom eat. Fried egg and cheese sandwiches usually do it for me. Peanut butter, I like a lot, but never seem to eat.

In any case, I find it’s better to just pick something and eat it. Otherwise you’re likely to sample until you’re stuffed and miserable.

You know @ibstubro I was just thinking that a peanut butter and strawberry jelly sandwich might have hit the spot earlier today. Maybe peanut butter and honey. I’ll remember that for tomorrow for it it happens again and 50 gallons of water doesn’t help.

I am not pregnant. I know pregnant. I am not that.

Maybe it means you don’t really need to eat. Have you gained some weight lately? When I get up to my very fat weight I actually start losing my desire for food even though I still can eat.

@JLeslie I get this way even at my lowest weight. If she feels really hungry like she says, I doubt it means she doesn’t need to eat. It doesn’t sound like she lost the desire for food at all, just that she can’t decide what would “hit the spot.”

@livelaughlove21 I think my husband gets like that. I realized recently that I just have to put food in front of him. Asking him what he wants doesn’t work a lot of the time.

I’ve lost about 5 pounds, actually @JLeslie. On purpose.

Anytime I’m fixing myself something to eat, if I ask my husband if he wants some, he always says “No.” It’s like a knee jerk response. It’s a bit annoying. The other day I got a bowl of vanilla ice cream. I made some home made chocolate sauce to put on it. My chocolate sauce is really, really good. I walked into the living room and asked if he wanted a bite to try my home made chocolate. He said, “No.”
I turned and walked away. Suddenly he goes, “Wait, what?” like what I had said just registered and he actually WOULD like a bite. I just kept walking because it annoys the hell out of me when he does that.

My husband does the same thing, but a little differently.

I’d make the bowl for myself, and ask him if he would like a bowl, too. And he says no, he’s not hungry or whatever. So I sit down with MY snack, and he’s all “Lemme have a bite!” And I’m like “Frak you, you said you weren’t hungry.”

I mean, I made that bowl with the exact amount of ice cream I wanted, and you want to cut in on my rations. Jerk. Haha

@Dutchess_III @Seek_Kolinahr My husband has a couple different scenerios. One is he gets starving and I tell him two or three choices I can make him, and he just can’t decide, and nothing sounds good, and inevitably he decides on the least health thing. Sometimes it isn’t one of my suggestions, but something we have in the house like a frozen pizza.

The other scenerio is I’ll ask him ahead of time what he might want for dinner when it is still early in the day. Maybe he just ate his breakfast or lunch, and he will say he can’t even think about food because he is so full. His mother complains about this with regarding her husband and all her kids (I didn’t know this until I was already married several years) that she has always basically planned the meals and cooked, and when she asks what the family might want they all criticize her for constantly thinking about food and asking about meals way in the future. She points out that it takes preparation to make a meal, sometimes letting something defrost, so it pisses her off. She’s right. I have the same complain she does at times, I really empathasize.

Here’s the thing, my husband, his father, and his sister for sure, I don’t know about his brother, generally are not in tune with feeling hungry or predicticting when they will be hungry. They are like 5 year olds. Want to keep playing or working on a project and when they finally stop they are starving. Or, know dinner will be late that date, maybe 8:00, meeting up with friends or an event of some sort, but still skip lunch, or not pay attention to eating any lunch, and then either at 4:00 they can’t stand it anymore and eat and ruin their dinner, or are suffer until 8:00 whilst being total assholes to everyone around them because they are so hungry. They never will agree it is from the hunger though.

Here’s the thing, if I make something and have it ready for him, most of the time he will eat whatever I put in front of him. He just can’t make food decisions very well,

When I was cooking for the family, I never asked what anyone wanted. I just made it.

I wish we had enough food that I could ask my husband what he wants for dinner every morning. Do you go to the grocery store multiple times a week, @JLeslie, or do you have a lot of food stocked up in case he asks for it? We grocery shop once a week and we both contribute to the list so that it consists of 5 nights worth of dinner (we eat out on weekends) and that’s all we get. I might ask him the night before which dinner he wants first/next, to which he usually replies “what are my options?” as if he wasn’t sitting there when we were deciding what dinners we were going to have that week. Men…

Our biggest problem with dinner, and the reason that making the grocery list is the worst part of our week, is that we both get sick of meals very quickly. I no longer make many of the dinners I used to because one or both of us got tired of it. We do this with restaurants as well. We don’t eat at Burger King because he used to eat it every day for lunch a few years ago, and we don’t eat at Wendy’s because I ate one too many Baconators during our first year or two of dating. Soon we’ll be out of options both in and out of the house.

Also, sometimes Rick and I go eat breakfast at a local cafe. A couple of times, as we’re leaving the cafe Rick has said, “What do you want for dinner?”
I said, “I have no idea! We just got done eating and food is the last thing on my mind right now!” He doesn’t ask that any more.

I guess I don’t get planning the next meal before you’ve even finished your current meal.

There are some great meals-in-a-bag now, in the freezer section, @livelaughlove21. Many under $5 and if you add (say) bread and a salad, plenty for 2 people. You can’t eat hamburgers at home for that anymore, if you have to add sides and fixings.

When you try something new and you both like it, you could keep a list. When you plan the week’s dinners, mark that 5 off the list. It’s an expanded version of “Which of the 5, 4, 3, 2 do you want tonight. Keep you from running out of ideas, and add anticipation to future meals.

@ibstubro We don’t do pre-prepared meals. Too much sodium usually and we are both extremely picky about veggies. Those bagged meals are usually filled with veggies.

I like your idea about the list. I attempted something like that in the past, but I didn’t keep up with it. I might try again.

To tell you the truth, @livelaughlove21, there are only a couple that suit us. No carrots, no beans (of any form, including peas), no overt onions. Stouffer’s has one with roasted chicken and squash that’s good. You probably don’t use the Ragu non-red sauce. I use quite a bit of the white and some of the orange. It’s a good base.

I think the easiest way to have a running list is on the computer. Two files, “To Eat” and Eaten” When you pick your 5, just cut them from the Eat and paste to Eaten. Then you can print a copy for the week. If you wanted to be super organized you could list the ingredients needed. lol

@livelaughlove21 It’s not a daily thing. I don’t ask him daily what he wants to eat. I cook lunch for him usually 4 out of 5 times during the work week. Sometimes I might ask him what side he wants, like if I made chicken does he want pasta or potatoes that sort of thing, but the majority of the time I just make the lunch. Same with dinner, usually I just make something, but about 20% of the time I ask for his opinion on what he is craving.

I go grocery shopping about twice a week. Usually one major trip and then a second one to pick up a few things if I ran out. Some fresh fruit or a veg, maybe a premade item from the store so I don’t have to cook his lunch the next day. The milk might be running out, that sort of thing.

I almost always have a stash of some frozen food though. Out of the list I am going to name I might have 25% of it on hand at a given time. I almost never have a packed full freezer or fridge. A frozen pizza. Stouffer’s lasagna, Stouffer’s chicken a la king, Stouffer’s beef macaroni, Stouffer’s breaded chicken and mashed potatoes, and a couple others here and there. Biscuits (really rarely). Waffles. Chinese dumplings or eggrolls. Frozen sticky rice. Frozen fish. Frozen chicken strips or breaded chicken breast. Frozen raw beef, pork, or chicken to defrost to cook. Frozen veggies like french green beans, spinach, peas, and corn. Frozen tator tots or waffle fries. The only frozen things I would serve him for dinner that are premaid like a TV dinner (Stouffer’s) are the lasagna or the pizza (the pizza isn’t Stouffer’s). Everything else is either for him to take to lunch if I am lazy one. Some of what I named of the Stouffer’s items he doesn’t eat and I do. The other items in the freezer were sides or breakfast items.

I have some canned and pantry goods too. I have black beans where I add jalapeños, tomatoes, and onion to make soup. Pinto beans to make refried beans. 3 or 4 cans of soup. Tuna. One or two canned veggies. Spaghetti sauce. Sometimes a backup of a condiment. Cous cous, rice, and pastas. Cereals.

Probably only ⅔ of what I serve my husband is truly from scratch and that is including the fresh piece of fruit he has for a snack or when I serve him salad. Some weeks it probably is as low as 50%. A lot of things are semi homemade. Like canned beans to me can’t be counted as scratch, but I am not sure if I should feel bad about using canned beans? I do think we eat a little too much prepackaged goods.

We too go through getting tired of the same meals over and over, especially my husband. I would say I try about once every two-three weeks or so to throw in something new. Sometimes a completely new meal, or sometimes it is only a part of a meal like a side dish. Sometimes it is bringing back something I used to make and haven’t in a long time.