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How do you deal with loss of appetite?

How do you all handle loss of appetite? I’ve been tracking the number of calories I take in daily, for the first time ever since I was a body-image obsessed teenager, and I am shocked at how little I eat. I find I have this impression that if I don’t feel good, I shouldn’t eat because for me it’s what causes symptoms so often, especially when I don’t know a food is a trigger. So I want to eat less, then feel even more depleted, and flare even more easily. I feel stuck in that cycle. I need to eat – and not eat what I crave because I can’t have it (bread!) but eat what I need, although I don’t want it (steamed veg and broiled chicken – yeck).

What started this line of thought examination for me is that I’ve been reading “The Man Who Couldn’t Eat” – written by Jon Reiner, who suffers from Crohn’s and describes himself as a “glutton in a greyhound body”. I’ve only gotten about a 1/3 through the book, but his whole relationship with food really hit home with me. I wonder if anyone else has read this?

While he’s recovering – trying to figure out what he ate that precipitated a flare – he writes: “It’s a bad habit of mine, living life in the rear-view mirror, wanting to understand what cannot be understood, to change what cannot be changed.” That’s how I feel about food, and all the other triggers: stress, amount of sleep, anything and everything that could have triggered a flare. I feel like if I can figure it out, like tumblers in a lock, I can learn the combination that leads to remission. But food is always the big one – I want stuff I can’t have, and don’t want the stuff I can, and end up in the middle with no appetite. :pale:
 
This is a huge problem with me as well. I am starting to get into lifting and bulk gaining but its tough. My daily goal is around 3100cal a day and I find my self shoving the food down my throat, literally. I will choke half the time just because I am not hungry whatsoever. I find that always having water there helps things go down but still never perfect.
 
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