How to stimulate appetite?

[Annie_777]

Please help me - my weight dropped from 123 to 103 in 3 months.  I cannot afford to lose any more weight.  But I suffer from poor appetite and early satiety.  I tried many different kinds of food, but always feel full and nauseous after a few bites.  This has been progressively getting worse.  I cannot even take in the amount of one full meal per day now.  Can you please share what can be done to stimulate appetite?  

I'm starting to become symptomatic from the rapid weight loss - dizziness, heart palpitations, fatigue...... Please help me!

[betty1973510]

Hi.  Well first off I'm a retired nurse my advice is if you are still throwing up and having diharrea stop eating!!  Just eat a brat diet for a couple of days.  Like drink plenty of Gatorade and sprite to rehydrate your self and toast and crackers and broth then slowly getting back to regular foods...  Also take a anti -diahrea medicine.
Please keep me posted I am concerned lots of prayers

[Paxiled]

This person has a significant health problem, and putting tons of sugar and phosphate into her might be exactly the wrong thing to do.  Without a diagnosis, she has no way to proceed.  There are a lot of ways to get electrolytes that don't involve overdosing on sugar-saturated unhealthful drinks like Gatorade and Sprite.  Again, we can't tell her what to take or what to do until she gets a thorough exam from a doctor.  At that point, she can make a plan, but not before.  

[Annie_777]

Thanks!  That's what I did - focus on  hydration. I drink lots of ginger tea, which helped with nausea.  I have to cut down carbs because they make me feel extremely exhausted.  Part of me was thinking the GI symptoms might be related to gallbladder problems resulted from rapid weight loss.  But they are so unmanageable now.  I'm just stuck in this vicious cycle...

[Paxiled]

Remember, carbs are the healthiest foods on the planet.  Veggies are carbs.  Whole grains are carbs.  Legumes are a combination of carbs and protein.  I think what you mean are simple carbs, such as white flour.  But I'm going to repeat, you can't solve a problem unless you know what the problem is.

[Paxiled]

Do you suffer from any mental problems such as anxiety or depression?  These can cause appetite changes both up and down.  Have you seen your doctor for an extremely thorough work-up (most docs don't do thorough exams, so you need a good doctor).  There could be hormonal things going on, either sexual hormones or thyroid hormones, which are also intimately connected to adrenal function, could be nutritional deficiencies that are driving you to starvation-like responses, could be blood sugar problems.  Could be an eating disorder -- ever had anorexia?  How's your relation to your body image over the years?  Do you exercise regularly -- do you earn hunger?  You could also have a gastrointestinal problem such as ciliac disease or intolerance to certain foods that have built up to the crisis threshhold.  Getting nauseous from eating can be psychological but it also could be a sign your digestive system has overloaded and is rebelling.  Here's the thing -- stimulating appetite is hard.  Eating more is easy.  There a lot of things we don't like doing that we do because we have to in order to survive, like going to work every day so we can earn a paycheck.  Life is full of this stuff.  You can do things you don't want to do if it's the difference between being healthy and being sick.  Eating small meals through the day might help.  Juicing might help -- if you can't eat, you can drink your food until you work out what's going on, which might take some time.  It doesn't seem like it right now, but how often you eat is within your control.  Liking it isn't right now, but you can do it.  You also say you've tried different foods, but don't mention what your diet is like on a regular basis nor do you mention if something happened recently that might have affected you -- this can include travel to a foreign country where odd diseases reside or emotional events.  If you've been eating poorly for a while it can catch up to you in unexpected ways.  But first thing, see a doctor, and force yourself to not starve.

[Annie_777]

I tried to force myself to fight the nausea and eat more after reading your comments.  Now I'm having severe abdominal pain and diarrhea all night.  I'm dehydrated, in pain, and my belly is so bloated.  

I have not told my doctor about this.  I have a history of GI cancer.  So maybe this could be"normal", but it wasn't always like that for me.

[Paxiled]

You need to see your doctor first, that's what I said.  Yes, you need to eat more, but you always need to know what you're dealing with before you make changes.  What you're describing isn't normal.  It's either an emotional problem or a physiological one, but you need to know first.  Get an exam and then go from there.  All the best.