Do you get tired of eating?

unknown

At 9:22pm last night I found myself needing another 500 cals to meet my daily quota (and that's only to gain 1 lb/week).

I try to eat every 2 hours, usually 5-6 meals, and it feels like a full-time job plus overtime. It's real life stuff.

It's one thing to get 1,000 cals from a take-out, but preparing healthy food at home and trying to gain weight is almost insanity. There's so much more volume. I'll be plowing through a meal and be like, "how is this only 450 calories? bro lol".

How many meals do you eat? How often do you eat?

Do you ever sit down to eat but you're already satiated to begin with? lol

unknown

Sometimes low appetite can be caused by a number of real medical issues. One of the most common is gut dysbiosis, bacterial overgrowths... h. pylori, SIBO, candida, etc. There's also low digestive acid and enzyme output--caused by h. pylori, gut damage, and stress among other things. That's one reason that fulfilling calorie requirements with sweets (or foods that set off inflammation or mental health symptoms) for you is not a good idea. That is, sweets feed microbes... and eating foods that you don't get along with will add fuel to the vicious cycle. Some people aren't affected by these things, some people are, some people are slowly becoming affected but don't realize it yet.

I'm not saying that if somebody struggles to eat a somewhat high calorie goal they necessarily have these issues, though. Mainly if it's hard to even meet a regular calorie goal, that's something to check out. Even then, when eating healthy meals that are a bit monotonous, appetite tends to decrease. This is why virtually any weight loss diet works, if people stick to it, until they start manufacturing tasty snack foods that fit into the confines of the diet. And man, yes, cooking is nuts. I slowly get better at making it efficient, but I really mean slowly. To make things more appetizing I use healthy fats (calories!), garlic (a head of roast garlic will add some actual calories, but minced and just barely cooked adds a lot of taste), herbs especially fresh, and acids like lemon or vinegar. Also roasted sweet-starchy veggies... I find a mix is more appetizing than "sweet potatoes again?" or "yay, parsnips." Consider sauces that include nut/seed butters such as tahini, both caloric and appetizing. And of course batch cooking large amounts and eating leftovers, but I still don't make usually them large enough.

If eating is uncomfortable although you know you should be very hungry, these health issues above are something to look into. There's a lot of other possibilities too, though microbes and basic gut health are factors almost no matter what the main issue is.