Should you eat if you're not hungry?

Answer 1

Not if you want to gain weight without really satisfyng your stomach; sometimes when you think that you feel hungry, the case is that you actually might be thirsty. Try drinking some water first, to see if that 'empty' feeling will go away.

Answer 2

Not necessarily. It is true that when your body weight becomes too low, then the hunger signals will shut off to enable energy to be used in your body in other more important ways (e.g protecting your vital organs, keeping you awake etc). However, when you are within a healthy BMI range, it's likely that you've eaten a little more than your body needed at the previous meal and so should eat a little bit less next meal time. Remember that its still very important to eat at every single meal time (breakfast, lunch and dinner) even if it's just a little bit. Not eating can result in binge eating junk foods later on, when your body needs to get energy into the system very fast.