Not eating as much as I used to

[PallElendro]

Since the start of the year, I've just been eating a lot less. About a third of what I'm used to eating. It's not even a New Year's resolution; I'm a fit guy and I love eating. Though so far, I'm starting to get less excited about what I'm eating to the point I lose my appetite. I was thinking I could ask here, maybe there's some insight to why. I don't know where to start, so I figured whoever is reading can ask questions first, then I can clarify.

[BWR]

General rule: if you are concerned about this, see a doctor. Don't ask random strangers on the internet.

Sharing my own experiences with lessened appetite:
It could be age. Personally, I noticed a drop in appetite when I passed 25 to the point where now, 11 years later, I eat half to a third of what I did from 15-25.

It could be stress. Too much to do, lack of sleep and a feeling of always needing to do things can really mess up your appetite to the point where you go a day or two and don't really feel hungry.

Depression. Yeah, this can really **** you up.

[Taet]

It hit me last month too. I am not sure why. Maybe it was because I had a few days of almost no sugar. Maybe it was grief. Maybe it was I got used to the winter and stopped wanting more food to keep warm. Maybe it is something in the California water or the unhappy cloudy sky.

[Flickerdart]

Have you been skipping breakfast? In my personal experience, if I don't eat breakfast then I'm not really hungry all day, but if I do have breakfast then it kick-starts my appetite and I'm hungry again before noon.

[PallElendro]

Breakfast, I do frequently skip to get to my classes on time

I'm 18
Stress, definitely

Depression, no. I don't feel sad. A little blue at times, but it's not chronic.

[Flickerdart]

Breakfast, I do frequently skip to get to my classes on time

Grab an apple or something that you can eat on the go. You're not going to perform well in class without some kind of energy source.

[AMFV]

Since the start of the year, I've just been eating a lot less. About a third of what I'm used to eating. It's not even a New Year's resolution; I'm a fit guy and I love eating. Though so far, I'm starting to get less excited about what I'm eating to the point I lose my appetite. I was thinking I could ask here, maybe there's some insight to why. I don't know where to start, so I figured whoever is reading can ask questions first, then I can clarify.

Well have you been losing weight? Muscle mass? Strength?

Why is it a concern, is kind of what I'm getting at, if you're still healthy and can do all the things you want to, I wouldn't be overly worried about it. If you're starting to have other symptoms or signs that it's a problem (faintness, weakness, dry mouth, or anything else off) then I'd worry. If you want not to lose weight then your going to have to figure out a way to make the calories up. If you're not counting it makes it more difficult, but you can try doing things like adding liquid calories (not alcohol, but other sources), that helps me when I'm trying to put weight on, especially when I'm at like a million calories and feel like I'm going to gag if I eat anything else (if it gets much worse than that, you can do drastic things like melt coconut oil and drink it, which isn't super healthy, but if you're running low on fats it can be.)

Also is it possible that the problem may have to do with lack of variety in food? I've noticed that I tend to get less excited about food the less varied the food I eat is. For example, if you eat only chicken breasts, that gets very old, very fast.

[TechnOkami]

So, story time here! I'm fat. I'm a fatty fat Mc phat guy who clocks in just over 260 lbs in weight, and those are the blunt facts. I'm also lazy as hell. How? Well, I don't work out for one, and yet I still want to lose weight, so how have I been losing weight? Eating less. It's like a functional starvation diet, basically.

Here's a lot more detail.

So, after doing this, I really started listening to my body. I started listening to when I was really hungry, that is when my stomach actually growls at me for something to eat, versus just filling my gullet out of a sense of boredom or depression or loneliness or what have you. The funny thing is that I really did start losing weight, as I ate, maybe, one to two major meals a day. It's incredibly interesting to me, because as much as this is a personal thing I also believe it's a societal thing, society preaching the whole "three square meals a day" adage, even if the world is going super healthy fit 24/7 all the time.

But uh, yeah. I eat less, and it doesn't really bug me because for once I feel like I'm eating on the terms of my body's needs rather than my terms or whenever I feel like it, which is oddly refreshing to me.

[AMFV]

So, story time here! I'm fat. I'm a fatty fat Mc phat guy who clocks in just over 260 lbs in weight, and those are the blunt facts. I'm also lazy as hell. How? Well, I don't work out for one, and yet I still want to lose weight, so how have I been losing weight? Eating less. It's like a functional starvation diet, basically.

Here's a lot more detail.

So, after doing this, I really started listening to my body. I started listening to when I was really hungry, that is when my stomach actually growls at me for something to eat, versus just filling my gullet out of a sense of boredom or depression or loneliness or what have you. The funny thing is that I really did start losing weight, as I ate, maybe, one to two major meals a day. It's incredibly interesting to me, because as much as this is a personal thing I also believe it's a societal thing, society preaching the whole "three square meals a day" adage, even if the world is going super healthy fit 24/7 all the time.

But uh, yeah. I eat less, and it doesn't really bug me because for once I feel like I'm eating on the terms of my body's needs rather than my terms or whenever I feel like it, which is oddly refreshing to me.

One trick you can do is to eat things that are dense in terms of the amount of food but aren't calorically dense. It's why salad is thought of as a health food (one of the reasons), because a huge bowl of a salad may only have around 60 calories (and that's a HUGE bowl). Which can result in satiating you. Also if you're more cognizant of what you're eating and why, fats tend to be the thing that makes you feel full, so if you increase those before the times when you would eat out of boredom, you'll probably wind up with reduced calories.

Also with a caloric deficit you may want to start taking multivitamins, or vary your diet more drastically, since you won't be getting as much micronutrients as you probably need. Your body can subsist on your stored fat for a very long time (depending on how much you have), but it sure as heck isn't going to be able to make Niacin out of it (or any of the other things you need to avoid dying painfully).

[TechnOkami]

It's funny, I used to not like salad, but then I realized salads are an amorphous thing that's good for you, and satisfying when you put all the things you want into it and being generally light on the salad dressing.

For the most part though I tend to just eat sandwiches as my main meal because it has a little bit of everything to me (and I just like sandwiches).

Although back when I had a less stringent schedule, I really enjoyed making soup. It's such a nice resource of food to pull from, not to mention tasty.