Hangry in the field: On the impact of hunger on anger, irritability, and affect
journals.plos.org
journals.plos.org
I'm currently in the middle of a hardcore body recomposition routine that involves eating 200g of protein a day on a 1400-1600 calorie budget (so ~60% protein, but not keto)
Workouts are mentally draining, and obviously muscle gain is slow (some people think you can't gain muscle and lose weight... unless you're a competition prepped body builder with 6% body fat you don't need to worry about that).
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Before toning things down a bit I had a few episodes where I'd enter ketosis, not necessarily from avoiding carbs, but from completely depleting my body's glycogen stores during a workout (cyclists and runners know it as bonking).
It can be a horrible feeling because a truly deep part of your mind is convinced it's trying to preserve you, and it deeply affects your emotional state. Each time it happened I'd spend the next day feeling like crap despite upping my carbs again
Based on what I have experienced I think it's fine provided you're still maintaining an overall balance in the long-term. As in, on the non-fasting days you're eating enough of (if not more than) everything your body needs for your training regimen.
but such a hard change of diet or be planned, perhaps ask your doc / trainer first
The only thing I would like to add is that going low carb does not necessarily have to be extreme (20gms per day or similar). It could be just cutting out high GI foods, or having such food in small quantities after your main meal. Tolerance for carbs varies in individuals and all you need to do is find your limit. Also, 48 hours fast is great but you can do as little as skip a meal every day (say 16:8 intermittent fast) to start seeing benefits: improved mood and energy.
I wanted to chime in just to make sure that people do not read your comment and say "oh, that's beyond me." A small step in the general direction of reducing carb intake and fasting for a few hours a day will go a long way for most people.
From what I have read, our body is healthier with "regular" cycles / habits - sleeping and waking up at the same time, eating regularly at the same time, exercising at the same time etc. so that all the "body clocks" (apparently we have many, like for sleep, releasing hormones etc.) get in sync. So things like intermittent fasting kind of goes against that logic because it creates stress in the body. (Though I have read that intermittent fasting can be helpful to reset some of the body clocks, but I am still not sure how to best use it in our daily life. Islam, for example, prescribes monthly (full day) fasting every year, but because of the lunar calendar that is followed, this happens at different period every year. That's one established / tried and tested way of doing it "intermittently". Some sects of Christianity and Hinduism prescribe some particular days every year for fasting. That's another way old way of doing it. But is there a scientifically studied way or regimen in our modern times to do this safely and effectively?)
In my experience, this is a kind of carb withdrawal. If your body is accustomed to not having a lot of carbs available constantly, you won't suffer from this. If you're eating lots of carbs, and especially sugary foods, the day(s) before IF, you'll get hangry.
As with any form of withdrawal, coming out of it doesn't happen overnight though. You need to soldier through a few days and then it subsides. The first time I did this it took me around 1 1/2 to 2 weeks of IF. After that, I could go 20-22 hours without feeling hungry or hangry.
These days, when I fall off the bandwagon, it takes me a couple days only as I'm more used to the feelings and sensations, and I guess my body knows it needs to adapt.
This is highly anecdotal and empyrical though, so take it with a grain of salt.
I generally avoid high GI foods, and consume carbs with high fibre content only so that the sugar is released more slowly into the body ( https://www.health.harvard.edu/healthbeat/a-good-guide-to-go... ). I am loathe to completely avoid all kinds of carbs as it is essential for our health.
How often do you skip meals? You have to make your body get used to your stomach being empty and burning fat. It is like walking, if you don't do it regularly then all the systems in your body that are there to burn fat aren't ready so they wont work properly. But if you practice it regularly then after a while it wont phase you at all, humans are made to function well without constantly eating meals.
It has nothing to do with low carb btw, I can do it just fine with high carb. Just have to get used to your stomach being empty from time to time.
> it creates stress in the body
Yeah, and training makes your muscles hurt and damages them when you haven't trained in a long time. Still training regularly is the healthy thing to do, and then your muscles will be just fine. Similarly skipping a meal doesn't damage you if you are used to it, your body just starts burning fat instead and everything continues like normal.
Also, try to predict what happens when your body isn't used to burn fat, and instead you just eat more every time your body starts to try to burn fat? Do you think that is healthy?
With training, it matters greatly how much and how often you train. It is easy to over-train and even easier to cause yourself an injury.
The freedom in daily planning and mental stability (never hangry) I can recommend anyone.
Low carb, skip a meal every now and then. Gets you 90% of the way there.
I can skip breakfast altogether, if I don't do any sport I can skip lunch too and don't feel much difference. My wife (and her side of family generally) is opposite - feeling weak and irritated when hungry.
Genes play a big role, as in everything body-related.
1. felt amazing
2. surprised my hangry stopped kicking in
That said, I’m enjoying this person’s YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/XCvUf9WU4qI
He at least refers to physiology and his videos avoid taking about toxins, acidity and other woo too much.
I accidentally did a nearly 60 hour fast for the first time ever last week as a result of watching that channel and doing some reading. Ate dinner on Monday, I was aiming for 36, felt fine on Wednesday morning so extended to 48 then decided to push on and skip dinner. Woke up at 3am on Thursday feeling such a genuine hunger that made me realise I’ve never been more than ‘peckish’ for most of my life. I caved and ate a small spoonful of ghee (pure fat) which lit my brain up like fireworks. Hunger immediately abated, the physical relief was incredible.
The main advice I followed was to drink more water, probably about double my usual consumption and take electrolyte salts.
https://reddit.com/r/fasting is also a pretty good resource
I’m often irritable anyway. Eating doesn’t help unless I have low blood sugar to the point of being fatigued. It often makes it worse.
What on earth are you eating?
I wish I was like that. I love eating though and I also enjoy a few more bodily functions!
> by most people.
Uhuh. Who cares. This is my subjective opinion only. Yet more invention of stuff that was never said.
> To assess trait anger, we used the German translation [44] of the Anger subscale from the Buss and Perry Aggression Questionnaire (BPAQ) [45], which consists of 6 items (sample item: “I have trouble controlling my temper”) rated on a 5-point scale from 1 (do not agree at all) to 5 (totally agree). Cronbach α for scores on this subscale was .81 (for more details, see S1 Table)
They focused on an "anger" measure at face value without much insight into what anger was.
The useful part of managing "hangry," on OMAD is that you can convert the extra aggression into focus and creativity. The paper calls it "ego depletion," and notably, what they did not find (or state) was increased neuroticism or agreeableness or any of the other big-5 personality traits, and particularly whether people suffering from an excess of these traits experienced relief as a result. While not a cure, managed hangriness via fasting could be an interesting hack for someone with a percieved anxiety disorder. Ironically, when you look at the anecdotal history of cultiness around fasting, it's primarily high neuroticism high agreeableness people who claim to benefit from it, and the increased aggression from fasting gets channeled into offsetting the suffering of an imbalanced personality.
Ater 24+ hours without eating, I'm not hangry, I'm an existential hero on an epic quest for food. It's just a question of attitude. ;)
Get a healthy daily dose of chelated magnesium and most of these non-life-threatening outbursts simply disappear.
Listen to accounts of people who actually starved for months, like those lost in the wilderness, bodybuilders in extreme cutting sessions, or from the Minnesota Starvation experiment. They describe how they stopped caring about anything but food to an extreme degree, even sex drive. That’s what serious hunger can do to you. It can make you depressed and uninhibited and directly lower your QOL and intelligence. At that just accepting fat might seem like the sensible option.
Fortunately you don’t have to get this type of hungry even when losing weight, unless you have a hormonal issue. You can be 15% body fat and not physically “hungry”, even 10% if you have good genetics or take pills. This is why CICO, while absolutely true, is generally bad advice, and eating whole foods and weightlifting, while not guaranteed to cause weight loss unless CICO, is strongly recommended.
People who tend to get "hangry" kind of make me feel uneasy because such behaviour suggests that if it comes down to that, they will surely try to kill me for food or just to eliminate competition.