if I am alone in never having felt hungry in my life?

[itsallsohard]

TW for anorexia and apologies for those with weight struggles, but I'm not and never have been a sufferer from anorexia nervosa. I've been steadily BMI 20 or so all my life, without much effort, and am nearing 60... and looking at my husband, who has weight issues, and my children and siblings, who are like me, it has recently dawned on me that I have no idea at all what people mean when they say they "feel hungry." I say it when I see something I want to eat, but I want to eat it because it looks delicious, not because I feel anything else. I eat when it's conventional to do so (lunchtime/ dinnertime) but I am entirely capable of totally forgetting if I'm on my own, and so are my siblings and now apparently my kids. I'm not sure I've ever felt hungry (and we were poor growing up - food-bank poor). I think somehow I just don't have those sensors. Is this possible? Anyone else out there?

I am the same and always have been (37 now). Occasionally I get the shakes when I’ve forgotten to eat so I mostly eat on a clock because I don’t get the usual hunger feeling others seem to get. I also can’t eat to the point of feeling “stuffed” or it triggers my nausea and gag reflex. My BMI hovers around 19.

I was like this until I got pregnant.

now I’m not.

My BMI is around 19-20 too like OP and PP. I wonder if we don't feel hunger like others do because were at our 'optimal weight?' I don't know if there's any backing in that but our bodies aren't telling us to over eat because we're not underweight or obese. If it was the case evidently the hunger noise would be different for underweight and obese separately but I wonder if that has something to do with it.

I eat because I enjoy food, but I rarely feel actual hunger. I do drink lots and feel thirsty if I don't though.

How do you do that? Asking for a friend 🤥🤥🤥

I’m like this too OP. My dad the same and I can see it in my ds too

i do get hungry, but I don’t really experience thirst

How interesting! So you don’t get a rumbling tummy when it’s really empty?

I don’t feel like this - I get hungry (more so when I exercise a lot or eat less than usual) but I have no issue managing my weight. I like a slice of cake but i don’t find it hard not to overeat. What you have described must be very unusual because from an evolutionary perspective it sounds disadvantageous in an environment of scarcity?

Woah, really? Why do you drink? Because you know you need to?

I never feel hungry. My stomach roars but my brain does not register that I feel hungry. I read that it could be part of a sensory disorder. I just put it down to a childhood of being told I was fat and my constant diets?

You probably have really low levels of ghrelin production. It’s a hormone that tells your brain you’re hungry. Leptin is the opposite and tells the brain it’s full. People genetically have different levels of these signal hormones, different levels of hunger at which they’re released, and can be more or less sensitive to them.

Mounjaro works because it lowers the levels of ghrelin released. So you basically have natural Mounjaro.

I'm not that poster but I never get thirsty either. I drink a bit of water in the morning because I know I should, and to take my meds, I might have a herbal tea in the afternoon, and if I remember I try drink water through the day but I never feel thirsty, not even doing cardio at the gym, and I can easily go all day without drinking and not realise.
I do get hungry though, and my food is fruit, veg, soup, curry, stew, so I guess I get fluid in that.

This is nonsense. The body doesn’t work like that. Even when my BMI was 20 I still felt faint and extremely hungry and irritable when I didn’t eat enough. It’s your hormones (see above post about ghrelin) not your weight controlling you.

Seems odd, been hungry till it really aches.
Luckily not having to go without food

I'm 'optimal weight' and have been for years but I definitely get hunger pangs if I need to eat!

I feel like this with thirst mostly. I used to do full workouts and not feeling thirsty.

There is a sense called 'Interoception' it's basically your ability to read internal sensory cues such as thirst, hunger, need to the the toilet etc.

This may be part of what you are experiencing OP. Poor interoceptive awareness.

I don’t get hungry, but I do get short tempered which is normally an indicator I need to eat!

I think it's so interesting that finally this is being discussed now that there's medication which addresses this. I feel hungry a lot. Like it can override every other thought in my brain and I feel nausea from lack of food, even though I'm just a bit late for a meal or have had salad without carbs.

I wish there was more medical research into how much this is nature or nurture, but it must be influential in people's ability to control weight.
Everyone in my family is like me, we're all overweight and many of us diagnosed with under active thyroid. The only times I've been within the healthy weight range I ate dangerously little, frequently blacked out and wasn't eating a healthy diet. Weight is clearly such a complex issue with so many myths and so much shaming around it, and it causes so many other health problems. I hope that somewhere there's some research going on about people like OP to find out more.

I don't get hungry often either. I only realise I'm hungry when I start eating something I enjoy - despite me thinking I'm not very hungry when I sit down to eat. I skip breakfast and have breakfast at around 1pm, maybe a bit of fruit before then, and then dinner. I'm slim and have always been so, now 50.

This doesn't make sense to me. I equate my stomach roaring with feeling hungry!

We are all on a spectrum. Those like the OP who never feel hungry all the way up to those who need medication because they always feel hungry.

only those with constant hunger signals will find it near on impossible to be slim due to their biology and people judge their character for it when they are in fact fighting their biology every waking minute

I’m the exact opposite. My GP told me it’s delayed satiety. I don’t feel full until an hour after I’ve eaten and I’m nearly always hungry.

I've never been overweight, but I'm hungry a lot. When I was younger and had a BMI of about 20 I would become shaky and faint if I was late for a meal. That doesn't happen now that I'm BMI of 24, as I obviously have more reserves, but I'm still hungry quite a lot. If I ate every time I was hungry I'm sure I would be overweight. So it's not necessarily the case that slimmer people don't feel hunger, although I'm sure that is the case for some.

Same here OP, rarely feel thirsty either. I eat and drink because it's conventional, but could happily go 24 hours without eating; would just start feeling a bit cold or shakey

Occasionally might feel slightly peckish if really physically active. Am not underweight though as I eat when everyone else does

I might be over thinking it now reading these replies, but how are you defining hungry?

I don't usually eat until 1-2pm but that's because I start feeling tired and a bit snappy 😅 I'm not eating because I want food as such but because I need it?

The only time I actively fancy food is of an evening.