Why Do I Feel Full When I Haven’t Eaten Anything

A loss of appetite is a symptom that can have many causes. This occurs when you don’t feel hungry. The medical term for a loss of appetite is anorexia. This is different from the eating disorder anorexia nervosa. Identifying and treating the underlying cause of a loss of appetite will help you feel better.

Loss of Appetite

A loss of appetite is a symptom that can have many causes. This occurs when you don’t feel hungry. The medical term for a loss of appetite is anorexia. This is different from the eating disorder anorexia nervosa. Identifying and treating the underlying cause of a loss of appetite will help you feel better.

Overview

What is a loss of appetite?

A loss of appetite occurs when you don’t feel hungry or have the desire to eat food. This could cause you to:

Feel full.
Not enjoy the taste, sight or smell of food (food aversion).
Not want to have meals with others.

There are several possible causes for a loss of appetite. It can happen suddenly or gradually over a long period of time. A loss of appetite is usually a sign of concern if it lasts for longer than a week.

A loss of appetite can come with additional symptoms like:

Fatigue or low energy.
Nausea or vomiting.
Muscle weakness.
Constipation or diarrhea.
Changes to your skin, hair or nails.

What’s the difference between a loss of appetite and anorexia?

The medical term for a loss of appetite is anorexia. When you have a loss of appetite, you don’t feel hungry. Anorexia isn’t the same as the eating disorder anorexia nervosa. A person diagnosed with anorexia nervosa may feel hungry but restricts food intake. When you have a loss of appetite (anorexia), you don’t feel the need to eat food because you’re not experiencing the feeling of hunger.

What are the signs of a loss of appetite?

Signs that you have a loss of appetite could include:

Having little to no interest in food.
Not eating your favorite foods.
Missing meals.
Changes to your weight.

Possible Causes

What are the most common causes of a loss of appetite?

There are several possible causes of a loss of appetite. The most common causes are:

Physical changes to your body.
Emotional changes to your mental health.
An underlying health condition.
A side effect of a medication.

Physical causes of a loss of appetite

Changes to your body can affect your ability to feel hunger and could cause a loss of appetite. These causes could include:

Pain.
Dehydration.
Dental problems or tooth pain.
An injury.
A loss or reduction of taste or smell.
Recovering from surgery.

Emotional and psychological causes for a loss of appetite

Your emotions play a role in your appetite and your ability to desire food. Emotional causes of a loss of appetite could include:

Anxiety.
An eating disorder.
An emotional reaction like grief, fear, sadness or shock.
Depression.
Stress.

Underlying health conditions that cause a loss of appetite

An underlying condition could change your appetite. Some of the common conditions that cause a loss of appetite include but aren’t limited to:

A common cold.
An infection.
Cancer.
Dementia.
Diabetes.
Food poisoning.
Heart, lung, kidney or liver disease.
HIV and AIDS.
Hypothyroidism.

Medications that cause a loss of appetite

A loss of appetite could be the result of medications or supplements you take to treat an underlying health condition. Common medications that have a side effect of a loss of appetite include but aren’t limited to:

Care and Treatment

How is a loss of appetite treated?

The treatment for a loss of appetite depends on what’s causing it. Your healthcare provider may run some diagnostic blood or imaging tests to learn more about the causes of your symptoms to help treat them. Treatment could include:

Eating small meals regularly throughout the day.
Managing any illnesses, infections or underlying conditions.
Taking medications to stimulate your appetite like low-dose corticosteroids, cyproheptadine, megestrol and dronabinol.
Receiving IV nutrients which are liquid vitamins and minerals that you receive through a needle into your vein.
Talking with a mental health specialist about your eating habits if they’re irregular.
Changing the dosage or type of medication you take. Your provider will make this change for you.
Meeting with a dietitian to help you manage your eating habits.
Taking vitamins or supplements under your provider’s recommendations.
Visiting a dentist if you have tooth pain or dental problems.

When the underlying cause of a loss of appetite receives treatment or resolves, your appetite should return to normal. If your appetite doesn’t return to normal after you recover from an illness, injury or infection, contact your healthcare provider.

What can I do at home to treat a loss of appetite?

You can treat a loss of appetite at home by:

Eating regular meals: These meals can be smaller than normal. Try to eat small meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner, even if you’re not hungry.
Consume liquid meals: If you’re not feeling well, consuming your daily amount of calories via a liquid meal may be easier to keep down. Choose liquid meals like soup broths, fruit juices or sports drinks with electrolytes. Follow your healthcare provider’s instructions for a liquid meal.
Eating bland foods: Bland foods are usually soft and low in fiber. They don’t include spicy or fried foods. Bland foods include dairy products, unseasoned meat, vegetables or potatoes, breads and crackers. These types of foods won’t irritate your stomach.
Choose foods high in protein, vitamins and minerals: Foods high in protein, vitamins and minerals can help replace any nutrients that you’re missing quickly.
Schedule meals with family or friends: Having a support system during meals can help encourage you to eat the nutrients your body needs.

What are the side effects of a loss of appetite?

A loss of appetite could cause malnutrition and weight loss. If a loss of appetite persists without treatment, it can cause serious health problems. You need to eat food or ingest calories regularly to stay alive. A loss of caloric intake can cause your body systems to weaken and not work as they should, which can be life-threatening.

How can a loss of appetite be prevented?

Since there are many possible causes of a loss of appetite, it can be difficult to prevent. To reduce your risk of losing your appetite, you can:

Manage any underlying conditions.
Ask your provider about the side effects of any medications you need to take.
Avoid skipping meals.
Get regular, light exercise.

When To Call the Doctor

When should a loss of appetite be treated by a healthcare provider?

Visit your healthcare provider if your loss of appetite causes you to:

Have the same symptom for more than one week.
Suddenly lose weight.
Feel additional symptoms like fatigue, weakness, nausea, a rapid heart rate and irritability.

A loss of appetite can be serious if it persists and doesn’t receive treatment. A sudden, unexplained loss of appetite can be a sign for your healthcare provider that something is wrong. Make sure you contact your provider if you don’t have an appetite.

Additional Common Questions

Can CBD cause a loss of appetite?

Yes, a side effect of CBD is a loss of appetite. CBD, or cannabidiol, is a chemical from the sativa plant. This is also known as cannabis or marijuana. CBD doesn’t contain THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol, which is the chemical component in marijuana that causes a high or euphoric feeling.

Is loss of appetite a sign of pregnancy?

It’s common for pregnant people to have a loss of appetite during the first trimester of pregnancy. During the first trimester, your body is going through several changes to help the fetus grow. As a result, what you eat, when you eat and how much you want to eat can change. You may have nausea or vomiting (morning sickness) that can affect your desire to eat. You might not feel hungry for some of your favorite foods or have an aversion, which is an extreme dislike for certain foods that can make you nauseous if you taste or smell them. These changes to your body are common and normal. If your loss of appetite prevents you from eating or consuming the nutrients you and the fetus need to stay healthy, contact your healthcare provider.

A note from Cleveland Clinic

A loss of appetite is usually a temporary symptom. Once you and your healthcare provider uncover the cause of your decreased appetite, you’ll feel better and the symptom will go away. Your body is constantly changing as you get older, so some foods that you used to love might not be your favorite today or tomorrow. If you experience a sudden loss of appetite, changes to your mood or weight, don’t delay and contact your healthcare provider. The sudden onset of symptoms can be a sign of an underlying condition that needs treatment.

6 Reasons You May Be Feeling Hungry (Even If You Just Ate)

It’s 11:00 am and all of a sudden you’re hungry. Not just hungry, you’re famished. It’s too early for lunch, and you ate your breakfast just like you were supposed to. Or, maybe it’s 1:00 pm, you just finished your lunch, but you’re already hungry again . You just ate, “why on earth am I already hungry AGAIN? ” you shriek internally. Then your inner hypochondriac chimes in: do I have a case of the munchies? Am I getting my period? Is this what happens when you have a tapeworm? (disclaimer: it’s not). You rack your brain to justify it instead of thinking maybe, just MAYBE, there is a totally normal, nothing-to-be-concerned-about reason for why you’re feeling hungry. In fact, there are a handful

l of things that can be causing your tummy to rumble like you’ve never eaten before, and guess what? They’re totally normal. Here are six reasons you could be feeling hungry even though you ate.

Why you’re feeling famished – and what to do about it once and for all!

(1) YOU’RE NOT EATING ENOUGH FIBER

High fiber foods curb hunger. Fiber fills you up and keeps you feeling full, yet the vast majority of people don’t eat enough of the good stuff. So, if you’re puzzled as to why you’re feeling hungry, your fiber intake is often the first thing to look at. The average American diet is heavily comprised of refined carbohydrates. Refined carbohydrates (otherwise known as simple carbohydrates) are sugars and grains that have been processed and stripped of fiber, vitamins, and minerals. They are foods like cookies, crackers, and sweets, but also breakfast cereals, white bread, pasta, bagels, and white rice. When you eat too many refined carbohydrates, your body digests them quickly, and the sugar enters your bloodstream rapidly, causing blood sugar spikes and subsequent crashes. When your blood sugar crashes, you feel weak, cranky, tired, and hungry, and thus are compelled to eat again, even if your last meal was not so long ago.

However, if you eat a meal containing ample fiber, this scenario will play out differently. Fiber is indigestible, so foods that contain fiber take longer to digest than foods that don’t (like refined carbs). In effect, eating foods high in fiber slows the digestion process down. This helps to prevent the blood sugar spikes and crashes that can drive you to crave more and keeps you feeling fuller for longer. Fiber adds bulk to food, so foods high in fiber are more voluminous. Fiber also swells in the stomach, so when you eat high-fiber foods it takes up even more space in your belly before moving along the GI tract, which it does slowly because the fiber is (again) indigestible. It’s for these reasons why swapping refined carbs out for fiber-filled carbs satisfy your hunger for longer. Click here for DELICIOUS, EASY to make, FIBER-filled Recipes!

(2) YOUR MEAL LACKED PROTEIN

Metaphorically speaking, think of fiber and protein like peanut butter and jelly. Both are good on their own, but together they’re even better. If your dish contains fiber but lacks protein, you may find yourself hungry soon after.

Protein is satiating; it helps you feel fuller without having to eat more. This is in part because protein isn’t digested very quickly. So, when you eat protein, it slows the movement of food through the GI tract—and slower stomach emptying means prolonged feelings of fullness. Protein also impacts our hunger and satiety hormones: ghrelin and leptin. It helps reduce ghrelin levels (the hormone that tells us it’s time to eat) and may increase leptin sensitivity (the hormone that signals to us that we’re full) 1,2 . Lastly, if you had filled up on more protein there’s a chance you wouldn’t have relied on other, less healthy foods that don’t keep you feeling full. Like fiber, if your meal lacked protein, there’s a good chance it was comprised primarily of refined carbs, which, as noted above, can cause your blood sugar levels to spike, crash, and leave you feeling like you need to eat again.

(3) YOU DIDN’T GET ENOUGH SLEEP LAST NIGHT

Whether it was a night spent tossing and turning, or you stayed up past your bedtime, a poor night’s sleep could be what is driving you to want to eat. This is because the amount and quality of your sleep also affects those hunger and satiety hormones, ghrelin, and leptin. After a good night of sleep, these hormones work as they’re supposed to, making us hungry when it’s time to eat and telling us to put the fork down when we’re full. A poor night’s sleep, on the other hand, throws these hormones out of whack; ghrelin (the one that stimulates appetite) levels soar, and levels of leptin (the one that tells us we’re full) plummet. So, even if you ate, you may be feeling hungrier than normal, and less satiated than you otherwise would.

Aim for 7-8 hours of quality sleep to keep your hunger and satiety hormones in check—and to wake feeling well-rested.

(4) YOU’RE NOT ACTUALLY HUNGRY – YOU’RE THIRSTY

Sometimes, our hunger is really thirst in disguise. The symptoms of dehydration mimic those of hunger. We don’t enough H2O and thus we feel like we’re hungry; we feel weak, cranky and tired, and think oh, I must be hungry. Water is also great for digestion and plays a key role in nearly every bodily function, so drinking up is always a good idea. Aim for 3 liters of water per day to ensure you’re staying properly hydrated.

(5) YOUR DIET LACKS FAT

Fat may have a bad rap, but we do need some of it in the diet. A little bit of fat at each meal helps to decelerate the digestion process. Similar to how a meal with fiber or protein slows digestion, this helps keep you feeling fuller for a longer period of time than a meal that does not have any. So, if your last meal lacked fat (olive oil, cheese, avocado), you may be feeling hungry again sooner than you’d expect. With that being said, the calories from fats do add up fast so if weight management is your goal, it’s important to be mindful of portion sizes. The F-Factor Diet Book provides a list of fat exchanges for reference.

The recommendation on fats is to opt for the unsaturated fats and use them in moderation. Roughly 30% of your calories per day should come from healthy fats, which equates to ~33g of additional fats (ie on top of the fats your proteins include) if you are on Step 1 of the F-Factor Diet.

(6) YOU’RE RUNNING ON NOTHING

Long treadmill session this AM? That may be the reason you’re counting down the minutes to lunch. When you do physical activity, your body uses the glycogen it has stored from what you’ve eaten as fuel. This happens whether the activity is simple, like getting out of bed, or intense, like a full-on triathlon. The difference is the amount of energy the body burns for the activity; light activity uses a little glycogen and intense activity uses more. When you do intense physical activity, like a sweat-pouring-out-of-you cardio session, your body uses a lot of glycogen, and can even use up all the glycogen you have stored. We often refer to this as emptying your glycogen stores. This is why athletes “carbo-load,” so they have plenty of glycogen to fuel their physically strenuous activities. Back to your workout and subsequent rumbling tummy, your body knows that the current sweat-session isn’t the last activity for which you’re going to need energy and thus wants to refuel in preparation for the next activity. The result: you feel hungry.

Aside from the physiological reasons why cardio stimulates appetite, there’s a mental part of the equation too. Often times we overestimate how many calories we burn during a workout. We know we need to refuel and believe that since we worked out so intensely and burned so many calories, we ought to eat a much bigger meal than we actually need. That mindset in itself can add to our in-the-moment feelings of hunger.

THE MORAL OF THE STORY

Things happen! Feeling extra hungry one day is no cause for concern. Keep the above factors in mind and next time you’re feeling inexplicably ravenous, skip the webMD search and have a little snack. Need some snack inspiration? Check out our products and some of our favorite snack time recipes!

Blom WA, Lluch A, Stafleu A, et al. Effect of a high-protein breakfast on the postprandial ghrelin response. Am J Clin Nutr. 2006;83(2):211-220. doi:10.1093/ajcn/83.2.211
Weigle DS, Breen PA, Matthys CC, et al. A high-protein diet induces sustained reductions in appetite, ad libitum caloric intake, and body weight despite compensatory changes in diurnal plasma leptin and ghrelin concentrations. Am J Clin Nutr. 2005;82(1):41-48. doi:10.1093/ajcn.82.1.41