I have gone for weeks with very low appetite due to illness, and I often ate very small portions of food before feeling totally full, but during these time, I practically never felt tired or weak. Once my stomach was better, however, I was able to eat a lot more food, and as soon as I feel hungry, I usually also generally feel fatigue and muscle weakness until I have eaten. How is it possible that I can feel less weak when I am consuming less food?
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**How much energy are you using up?** Combined between ‘healing’ and ‘physical movement’ and ‘mental work’ <— all of these use up energy/nutrients. By reducing mental & physical work, you’re reducing the amount of nutrients/energy your body is using up, at a cellular level.
So if you were sick and were ‘taking it easy’, it could be that you were eating enough, without overloading your stomach.
What are you eating a lot of?
1. Carbs & sugary foods – Eating a big meal with lots of carbs, your blood sugar can spike, which make your insulin spike, which creates drowsiness.
2. When you eat a big meal with lot of tryptophan (found in turkey, chicken, milk, bread, peanuts, oats, etc) your body creates melatonin and serotonin and makes you sleepy
3. When you eat a big meal with lots of fat, CCK can be released in the blood to help you break it down, which *also creates drowsiness*.
People tend to be more sensitive to the big dips/crashes when they go from ‘small meals’ to ‘big meals’ abruptly. – it’s why huge feasts often make people really sleepy.
But that’s all *after you eat*.
If you’re feeling weak *before* you eat, it might be **Low Blood sugar**.
People who are sensitive to low blood sugar triggers a ‘must eat now’ kind of hunger, where you’re weak, irritable, maybe lightheaded – flags your body uses to signal ‘EAT! NOW!!’ (Hangry!)
If you regularly experience weakness alongside trembling, sweating, heart palpitations or unusual anxiety, you may want to get checked by a doctor because it could signal Hypoglycemia, diabetes, or pancreatitis. That’s *dangerously,* *extremely* low blood sugar
You might have been avoiding those symptoms by eating smaller meals more frequently throughout the day. With fewer, larger meals, your body has more time to do the ‘blood sugar spike, then massive drop’ cycle.
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I should note that your particular example is not really normal, as far as I’m aware.
The only time I get weak/fatigued-feeling BEFORE eating is when I’ve skipped meals entirely, and my blood sugar is low at the end of the day because I was fasting.
The “weak” feeling has less to do with the amount of food in your stomach and more to do with your overall blood sugar levels. The goal of the human body is to maintain balance (homeostasis) and it has many, many mechanisms to maintain that balance. Some do involve the state of your stomach, and when it’s empty there are hormones that can be released to tell you “Hunger”…
But that is separate from what many people associate with “Hunger”, the dragging, the weakness, the “Hangry”…those all are happening because your body isn’t getting its preferred fuel source: Glucose ( a type of sugar).
Now the body can break down stores of fat to generate energy without using Glucose (ketosis, whole idea of the Keto diet), but that’s less efficient and takes longer to get the same result…it could break down its stores of Glycogen (condensed sugar essentially), but again that takes time….or it can influence you to just eat something else, ideally a simple carb that will give it that sweet, sweet Glucose (actual pure glucose tastes nasty btw).
This is part of what makes giving up refined/processed foods so hard. You brain is the biggest Glucose wh*re of them all and guess who runs this show? Your unconscious knows what it wants, and it rewards you when you cave. The “rush” from bingeing on treats isn’t your imagination, your brain really does release Dopamine (a neurotransmitter associated with pleasure) while you’re mowing down.
This was the long winded explanation you didn’t ask for, and it’s a bit simplified, but I hope it gives some understanding to the wild world of your endocrine and digestive systems.
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