How to be less of a hangry, tired toddler

March 8, 2022 3:15 PM

I get cranky and disagreeable when I am hungry or tired, it seems (to me) more so than most people. I’ve been working on this by being more attentive to when I’m starting to feel it coming on, and having a quick solution on hand (having a snack or excusing myself to close my eyes in a quiet room, for instance). But sometimes it’s just not possible or practical to do anything about it immediately - is there some way I can “train” myself to function better when I’m feeling this way?
posted by btfreek to Grab Bag (14 answers total)

I'm prone to these moments myself, and it's recently come to my attention that it could be electrolyte issues. (I'm prone to it, because of medications I take.)

I keep a homemade solution of rehydration powder, just salt, sugar, and a smidge of jello gelatin mix for flavor, and stir a teaspoon into some water when I feel the attitude coming.

I feel much better, very quickly, and it's easier than a snack.
posted by champers at 3:30 PM on March 8, 2022 [3 favorites]

I think you probably could train yourself if you intentionally left yourself hungry for a while. I never get hangry and I credit at least some of that to fasting during Ramadan. A month of not being able to eat or drink when you want to gets you pretty good at regulating your response to being hungry for the rest of the year.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 3:58 PM on March 8, 2022 [4 favorites]

Maybe not. Data point: my sister has been like this her whole life and finally gave up several years ago and started carrying granola bars everywhere.
posted by Melismata at 4:13 PM on March 8, 2022 [4 favorites]

Getting diagnosed with diabetes and cutting my carb intake helped immensely with this for me. It stabilized my blood sugar levels and more or less got rid of the hangriness and irritability. Maybe try a low-carb diet for a bit?
posted by music for skeletons at 4:41 PM on March 8, 2022 [6 favorites]

The people I know who get hangry are also usually hypogycemic and do best when they set alarms to eat at an interval that keeps them out of that low blood sugar zone. That means always having snacks around and eating them on a schedule (hence the alarms) and they also carry candy in their bags in case they need a boost but can't eat right then.
posted by quince at 4:41 PM on March 8, 2022 [3 favorites]

Gaining weight reduced this a huge amount for me.
posted by metasarah at 4:54 PM on March 8, 2022 [2 favorites]

Agree with music for skeletons: I found myself much much less hangry after I started a ketogenic diet. I definitely think it helped stabilize my blood sugar. I also feel more even-keeled and just better in general. Also anecdotally, my husband, who gets extremely hangry and irritable normally when he has gone too long without eating, had some abatement of this when he has flirted either with a ketogenic diet or prolonged fasting (which, as I understand it, mimics a ketogenic diet physiologically in terms of ketones and fat burning).

If you aren't interested in changes that significant, it might be worth consciously making sure that your meals have good amounts of fat, protein, and fiber, and cutting back on simple carbs. Simple carbs, especially unbuffered by fat and fiber, tend to produce that hangry blood-sugar roller coaster that you're describing. So, for instance, you could add in a handful of nuts after a meal, or some full-fat yogurt, or a couple of hard-boiled eggs, or what have you. Worth trying various ideas of course, but I think some of the simple carb suggestions above about granola bars and sugar may make the problem worse.
posted by ClaireBear at 4:58 PM on March 8, 2022 [2 favorites]

Sometimes when I get hangry, if I just notice that that's what's going on, take a deep breath, and make a plan for when I'll be able to eat, thats enough to carry me through whatever's in the way between me and food.

So I'll notice myself getting upset, say to myself, "ok, I'm just really hangry right now, but I just have to deal with this last meeting of the day and then I'll swing by the gas station and pick up a snack for the drive home." And then I've at least had a deep calming breath and know when the next time I'll be eating is, which helps me relax about it a bit.

I've also started keeping snacks in the car for unexpected traffic during my commutes, and I agree with what everyone said about better diet overall contributing less to wild swings in hunger.

Hope that helps!
posted by carlypennylane at 7:22 PM on March 8, 2022 [3 favorites]

You can train yourself to regulate your schedule. Eat healthy regular meals. Eat fiber to help your body process carbs more slowly. Eat the kind of diet someone eats to manage pre-diabetes; what you describe as hangry may be low blood sugar. Get in the habit of keeping some healthy snacks available - peanut butter crackers, an apple. Develop the habit of drinking water. If you can add a little extra exercise, that'll help, too.
posted by theora55 at 7:44 PM on March 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

Data point against "you can train yourself not to be hangry": I didn't grow up fasting for Ramadan, so I'm definitely not at that level, but I did grow up fasting regularly for political reasons (I grew up in '80s South Africa under apartheid with politically conscious parents and fasting in sympathy with hunger strikers and detainees was a common feature of my young life)
Reader, I still can't conquer the hangry.
Or, not without regular small snacks. It's really not a "mind over matter" thing that I can train myself out of, and there's no reason to force my body to adapt to an artificial "only 3 meals a day" structure when there are more reasonable alternatives.
Thanks for asking this question, I am taking notes of the answers.

On preview: by "you can't train yourself" I mean, not by purely mental, mind over matter methods. Training yourself to change your eating habits totally doable.
posted by Zumbador at 8:06 PM on March 8, 2022 [3 favorites]

I agree with the answers that the only effective way to deal with this sort of issue is to try not to be in the low blood sugar situation. For me, at least, it feels like I am uncontrollably taken over by some sort of malevolent entity. I will not only say things I would never say normally, I will have awful thoughts I would never think in a rational state. The only thing I've ever been able to do is to keep my mouth shut as much as possible, to trap the horribleness inside with just me rather than inflicting it on other people. (It's important that people then not pick at me about why I am being quiet until I snap; "you know what happens when I don't eat" usually works for me these days.)
posted by LadyOscar at 10:13 PM on March 8, 2022 [6 favorites]

In reading all your responses, I feel less alone in this battle. LadyOscar deserves an Oscar for that description of the malevolent entity.
posted by McNulty at 11:50 PM on March 8, 2022 [3 favorites]

I used to blame my own occasional irritability on low blood sugar until I tried wearing a continuous glucose monitor for two weeks and checking the app whenever I felt hangry (these things are designed for people with diabetes but nothing stops you from just buying one and slapping it on for personal research purposes).

I found to my considerable surprise that there was no reliable correlation between periods of low blood glucose as logged by the monitor and periods of irritability. I could get the hangries at pretty much any blood glucose level, and I also had several episodes of hours-long low blood glucose without getting hangry.

I'm a great believer in not wasting effort on trying to solve the wrong problem. Might be worth your while slapping on a CGM and actually finding out whether blood glucose is your issue. Because it could easily be that for you, as for me, mood has much more to do with what the gut is up to than what the blood is.

Another highly worthwhile exercise I've devoted considerable time to is training myself not to be a pill to others around me for no better reason than that I feel irritable. Unlike toddlers, adults can maintain a civil relationship with those around them even when feeling completely terrible on the inside. Well, most of the time at any rate.
posted by flabdablet at 4:26 AM on March 9, 2022 [7 favorites]

Another highly worthwhile exercise I've devoted considerable time to is training myself not to be a pill to others around me for no better reason than that I feel irritable.

This is what is useful for me. A few deep breaths, a reminder that I feel bad for explicable reasons, and a decision to not make that someone else's problem.

But yeah I am a small person who eats normally and exercises a decent amount and the dividing line between "Could use a snack" and HANGRY is sometimes narrow. So I try to keep my eyes on the prize of not being a grump because I've misjudged my food intake and then I try to adjust. During COVID it's definitely been easier to have this under control (I have more time at home, I have all the foods I like here) but I do also have a granola bar in my glove compartment and in my backpack just in case I misjudge.
posted by jessamyn at 10:24 AM on March 9, 2022 [2 favorites]