Hungry Days

Are you ever really hungry one day and then the next your appetite disappears? This happens to me all the time. One day I’ll eat like a 280 pound linebacker and the next day I just forget to eat. Is it because I ate too much one the day before or I didn’t eat the one day so the next I am starving? Am I more distracted one day and don’t eat because of that and just bored so I eat a ton because of that? I needed answers because it just didn’t make sense to me that someone’s appetite could change that drastically from one day to another, but apparently there are many reasons this could happen.

Over-eating on certain days can be related to lack of sleep. A study done by German and Swedish Universities found that the ghrelin (an enzyme in your stomach which stimulates appetite) in your blood rises when you are sleep deprived. The study also looked at physical activity to relate how active and hungry someone is from day to day. It was found that there is a possible correlation between lack of sleep and lack of energy for the next day, which makes because if you don’t sleep then you are “recharging” yourself so to say and then you will be running on low levels of energy. If you are sleep deprived, you are most likely energy deprived, which means you are going to be lazy with your food choices and eat unhealthy things and you will mindlessly eat as well, causing you to overeat.

Being stressed out can lead to over or under eating, which I never really thought about, but I can see no why it is a factor. When someone is stressed, they tend to stress-eat to get their minds off whatever they are stressing about. People who are stressed tend to eat more so they stay distracted and don’t have that empty feeling their stress is giving them. Fats and carbs help people ease their mind and so the more they eat, the less stress they feel. There are some people though that get so stressed sometimes and forget to eat all together because their mind is so engulfed with their stress. Scientists found that stress increases the release of endogenous opioids in the brain, which is our addictive response coming out. The more this is released, the more food people are going to want to eat from their stress.

Maybe you aren’t even hungry at all and are just bored, but your brain is saying eat it anyway. You could have just left the dinner table and sat down to do something else, but it’s boring and you hate school work so your brain starts to wander. It wanders all the way to the fridge, but why? Because the chemical dopamine in our brains is related to motivation and drive and this comes out when we are bored and trying to think of something quick and easy to do, and what’s easier than opening the fridge and grabbing a snack? Dopamine in our brains encourages you to find something that will fill your boredom quickly. We overeat when we are bored because our brains are thinking it is filling the boredom, but really all you are doing is wasting time and well, overeating.

So I guess I did have a pretty good idea on what was happening when I indulged one day and not the next. Maybe I’m a stressed out person or just extremely bored on somedays, could be a combination of both. The chemicals in our brains can play pretty tricky tricks on us and force us to do stuff that we really don’t intend to do, like excessively eat or be so engulfed in something where we forget to eat. I’ll have to keep these tips in mind next time I have a bad day and decide to eat everything in my fridge. (P.S. This doesn’t happen a lot, it’s not like I have an eating problem, I’m a pretty active and healthy person, everyone has those days though.)

but really, who doesn’t feel like this sometimes

One thought on “Hungry Days

  1. Raychel Johnson

    I found this blog really interesting because of how much I can relate to it. There are some days I don’t have time to eat lunch because of my class schedule and by the time I get ready to eat dinner, I’m not even that hungry; compared to other days where I consume way too much in one sitting. I know when I’m stressed out I find myself eating more but when I’m more nervous and have anxiety over something I tend to eat a lot less. When I’m nervous, the last thing I think about doing is eating. Does anyone else feel the same way? I also find it interesting how our brain pretty much points us to the fridge when we are bored. Since the fridge is so easily accessible, it makes it even easier on us to to get up and start looking around in it.

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