HOW to eat when your stomach doesn't growl?

I'm a little confused as to what you mean by "doesn't growl". Are you saying how do you eat when you're not hungry or how do you eat when your stomach isn't making noises that are audible to the naked ear?

Know what a 'growl' is. It is the noise of food and gas moving in your digestive tract. That happens after you've eaten.

Know what leptin and ghrelin are. They are the hormones of hunger and satiety. They are silent.


If you believe the noise is the signal to eat more, you're just eating too much.

Essentially, one's stomach can grumble/growl/make noise that's audible with or without the aid of a listening device in the absence of hunger. It's completely and utterly normal and presumably happens to everyone with a functioning lower GI system. In fact, those noises that you (among other people) attribute to being from your stomach, actually coming from your intestine. It's often (mostly?) not related to being hungry. Look up borborygmus. If your GYN is actually worried about a lack of sounds in your bowel, then they need to refer you to a GI specialist.

I suspect one of the issues that you're dealing with is that you've come to associate that noise with hunger when that's not actually what it's about. It's as if you've been using that as a cue to eat. You need to realize that you can be hungry without hearing or feeling fluid (gas is a fluid) moving making noise and that you can hear those noises and not be hungry. This is likely not about "restarting your [GI] system", rather it's about retraining yourself cognitively about when you are and aren't hungry.

agree it's not clear what the exact issue is. is it just "forgetting" to eat? Is it that you cannot physically eat when your stomach is not growing?

set a schedule that works for you. it can be two big meal. one big meal. one big meal and two snack. three meals. it really does NOT matter, just something that works for you.

for a little while set your phone or computer with reminders to eat. eat at those times. You can play around with them as needed as you figure out what works best. Meet your daily calorie goals in those meals. You can look at foods high in calorie density if you want to reduce QUANTITY of food to eat.

The schedule should eventually become routine and you won't need the reminders.

I also do NOT wait until my stomach is growling as that leads to making bad food choices and over eating.

KristiH2244 wrote: »

See I knew this was hard for me to explain. Lol. One commenter got it best. I’ve apparently learned to wait until my stomach growls as an indicator to eat.

A typical meal for me is a salad or some rice or something. I know I’m not overeating because even if I eat a junk snack, I log it, and when I complete the diary, it says it can’t tell me how I could be doing because it looks like I’m not eating enough.

Are you weighing all of your food via a kitchen scale?

You could try eating on a schedule whether your stomach "growls" or not, and tracking what you eat to ensure you are getting both enough calories and proper nutrition. Really, it's not rocket science.

I’m really struggling to understand this challenge. Presumably you are a grown, responsible adult who has had to meet commitments, stay on a schedule at various points in your life, right? Eating a calorie appropriate diet that ensures you are neither too hungry nor too full can be the same thing. You don’t have to wait till your stomach growls to eat. Plan out a day of eating . Try 3 meals and two snacks. Prelog food to ensure it fits in your day. Set an alarm on your phone as a reminder. Do this for 1-2 weeks and track how your hunger is responding. Are there certain times of the day you are feeling hungry to the point of over doing it? Change the schedule.

This is just one option for how to plan your day. Some people eat more often, some eat less often. The point is that a grown adult shouldn’t need to ask for advice on how to know when to eat if your stomach doesn’t growl.

Why not just schedule your meals instead of waiting until you get a physical indicator that you are hungry? My stomach very rarely growls, I would probably never eat either if that was the only thing I was depending on to know when to eat.

KristiH2244 wrote: »

See I knew this was hard for me to explain. Lol. One commenter got it best. I’ve apparently learned to wait until my stomach growls as an indicator to eat.

A typical meal for me is a salad or some rice or something. I know I’m not overeating because even if I eat a junk snack, I log it, and when I complete the diary, it says it can’t tell me how I could be doing because it looks like I’m not eating enough.

If you are logging accurately (using a food scale and using correct MFP entries) and you are getting a warning when you close your diary you are under eating. This is fine if you eat those calories on another day but if you do not it could be very unhealthy for you.

You can eat when you are not hungry. I do it pretty much everyday. I seldom have a cue to eat food after lunch but I typically eat a small snack-sized dinner anyway. I don't eat breakfast either so from about 1:30 PM to 11:30 AM the next day I have seldom had more than 200 calories. I do eat a healthy number of calories though. I just eat almost all of them at lunch.