Yes, that’s what the sleeves of saltines are for!

Not that I’m a huge fan of eating either, but for me it’s the cooking I can’t be arsed with. I’d rather eat cereal or a bowl of nuts than cook a proper dinner - or sometimes I’ll just skip eating altogether and go to bed hungry.

Had it frequently throughout highschool whrn I was taking my ADHD meds. I hated it, I’d go for a long day of school, only to get back home in the evening, touching none of them

Not so much eating, but having to choose what to eat, prepare/order it, and clean up afterwards. Sometimes, after a full day, it’s one chore too many.

I’ve just had a bad relationship with food forever

For the first 15 years of my life, I have to give my mom credit, she did a lot better than most moms. She believed in cooking and greens on every plate. She was a horrible cook and most stuff was frozen and bad quality but at least she tried.

But from around 16 to 40, I just ate like trash. But by that point my alcoholism was already in the swing and my priority was booze, not really eating well.

Once I sobered up, there was five straight years where I would just ignore my hunger signals until I had a freak out and then I would eat like seven “family” bags of chips. Those were like 700 g, and they don’t sell them anymore lol

My relationship with food got better when I went to attachment therapy. The therapy really didn’t address the food issues, that was sort of a wonderful side effect of the mental healing

Then what happened is I taught myself to cook from scratch, and I ended up losing 130 lb. I had only planned on losing 40, the rest was kind of an accident and I also got fit by accident

I enjoyed for about four straight years, a totally normal relationship with food where I could eat when I wanted and my body would clearly signal to me what it needed and I would listen to it

Now in the last couple years, something is creeping back where I ignore the hunger signals and I freak out. I’m still very fit and I’m not obese anymore, but I can totally see my food patterns reverting to early post-sobriety. If you looked at me you would think I was a fitness professional, but now my food scheduleing life is verrrry poor

Part of that is because being fit and muscular makes it so that you actually have to eat so much it becomes an exhausting task. Needing to eat 4,000 calories a day just to stay alive is actually a daunting task when it’s not fast food that passes straight through you

I’m struggling with wanting to lose some muscle, and get back to some form of normalcy where I only have to eat two or 2,400 calories a day

I actually don’t really know what’s going on right now, I know I have to stop ignoring my hunger signals, and I know I have to eat. But knowing is useless because it’s all emotional at the end of the day

I’m kind of in a shitty place right now but things are actually okay in the grand scheme

Yep. Often and for various reasons, usually related to some mental anguish. In times like this, plain buttered toast with maybe a little salt sprinkled on top is the winner for me. With a glass of water to help chase it down. Definitely not the healthiest thing you could eat but it works for me when I’m hungry but have no appetite.

Absolutely. When I’ve been in a bad place mentally in my life, I literally wouldn’t eat except about once a day when I became starving. It was like the whole system that was supposed to make sense of what I was feeling and take actions to fix something that was producing a “bad” signal just was burned out, not working at all.

I started seeing a therapist, and a big part of her solution was for me to go on antidepressants. I refused, stopped seeing her, and continued roughing it out unsuccessfully on my own. Great stuff. Better now. I would say that not being able to function enough to feel hunger or eat when you’re hungry is a bad place though. That’s pretty far down. I would take it seriously.

I have not a lot of input about how to get yourself out of that way or what to do. Not sure if you’re even looking for advice anyway, or just curious. If you are looking for advice, then about all I can come up with is this: A lot of life is habits. Habits don’t consume mental energy, and so if you have a lot of good ones, you’ll automatically be doing a bunch of great stuff without having to expend. It’s like autopilot. And, it feeds on itself: As you’re taking better care of yourself you’ll have more mental energy to expend to make deliberate choices and put in effort, and you can get to new places. It’s crazy how much freedom life really has, it’s wide open. But it’s not automatic and your brain and your self are one of many types of limited resource that can stop you from getting there.

A lot of it starts with just your thoughts: Your visions for what you’re trying to get to. It has to translate to action to do anything, but having the vision will make the action easier, it’ll give a reason. But recognize that setting the habits in the beginning is mad hard. Chip away at it, keep building up that consistent track record of the stuff you want to see yourself doing starting small, try things and adjust as you go. It’s harder than it seems but you can make small changes consistently and it can work. It’s just hard.

Seems like most people have given their stories so I’ll shy away from mine (mainly because I don’t feel like typing everything out), but I DO want to say that for those of you who feel like this, I strongly recommend some kind of nutritional drink/complete meal shake to keep on hand.

I was using Soylent for a long while, and honestly it is my personal preference, but recently (for like a year now) they have been out of their powder so I’ve been shopping around for alternatives. Huel is okay but is too gritty for me, never seems to smoothen out enough for my liking, no matter how much you mix it.

I just got an order of Plenny Shakes recently and I prefer it over Huel, but it was a bit of a bummer to find out the flavors for Plenny aren’t that strong. They’re very “La Croix” in the flavor area. But they do smoothen out nicely after half a minute shaking.

I still mainly recommend Soylent (they do still have premade shakes,) and a soft recommendation to Plenny Shakes, but hell even Boost Shakes or Slimfast shakes would do.

Mainly try to keep an easy shake meal for when you don’t feel like eating or cooking. It’s not an ultimate answer, but drinking a meal is better than not having one at all.

Yes. it’s tied to my depression. I know I need to eat, I feel the hunger but it’s just: meh.

One thing that does help when I’m like that are things like Ovaltine or the Muscle Milk I drink every day at work to get an extra dose of protein. I’m old now and it really does help. I buy the Muscle Milk powder and have a couple of shaker bottles, it’s really hard to mix otherwise. I chose that brand because it’s super cheap and has a tolerable taste/texture. Some of the whey products are almost chewy.

I either eat nonstop or don’t eat for 2 days. There’s rarely an in-between. Friends have said I eat like a snake lol.

Definitely not. Making food and eating are among my top pleasures, I’m always motivated to do that. So I rather have to be careful to limit my intake when I’m feeling down.

I get this way with cooking. Like, I don’t want to cook, prepare, or go out to get food. I’ve found that having other people to cook for makes me much more motivated to prepare meals.

Sometimes I will be hangry but no particular food seems appetizing, if that makes sense. It’s like my body wants food but my brain doesn’t. Eating just seems like a chore sometimes but I can’t focus on anything if I skip it.

Definition of first world problems, I know

It’s my weight loss strategy

Soylent sounded like it was intended to address this - like a high-calorie SlimFast. But the actual goals, marketing, pricing, and even form factor ultimately weirded me out.

How is there no commoditized oatmeal shake in a can? Gimme a 600-calorie bottle of lightly-flavored goo.