HANGER MANAGEMENT 101

Hunger + Anger = Hanger

HAVE YOU EVER felt angry because you were hungry? Have you ever raged at a colleague, friend, or family member who politely asked you to please just eat something? If so, you’ve felt the sensation of hanger, and you know that it’s no joke.

Low blood sugar is the main contributor to hanger, and, generally speaking, comes from waiting too long between meals, or from eating things that break down very quickly and don’t fill us up. When we start feeling hangry, our energy, focus, productivity, and mood all take a hit.

How It Works

Carbohydrates—found in grains, fruit, starchy vegetables, and the like—raise our blood sugar. Protein, fat, and fiber counteract that effect by slowing digestion. When we eat a meal or snack that contains a combination of carbohydrates and protein and/or fat, we experience slower breakdown of the carbs, and, therefore, a more stable blood sugar level for a longer period of time after eating. This helps us feel more satisfied and energized and supports a more stable mood so we’re less likely to want to bite someone’s head off.

The lactose in milk products is also a form of carbohydrate, but how quickly it breaks down depends on whether it’s in the context of a full-fat or low-fat dairy product. Cheese, for example, is essentially the protein and fat from milk, whereas the lactose in a glass of skim milk will hit the bloodstream more quickly and be broken down more rapidly.

When we eat carbs (especially refined or “simple” carbs like pastries, white bread, etc.) on an empty stomach, we get a sharp rise in glucose and insulin, followed shortly by a crash. That’s why a donut or a plate of pancakes may leave you hungry again and ready for a nap an hour after eating. That’s hardly going to help you get through a busy morning.

On the other hand, having a breakfast of, say, a slice of whole grain bread (whole grains, an example of a “complex” carbohydrate, digest more slowly than refined grains like white bread) with an egg (which provides protein and fat) and half an avocado (a great source of both fat and fiber) will help us feel satisfied and alert for several hours. This helps us focus and have a more productive day. It also makes us less likely to want to smack a colleague for talking too loudly or having an annoying sneeze. It helps us have smoother interactions with others we encounter throughout our day.

Friends and Frenemies

When it comes to nourishment and stable blood sugar, it’s important to know the difference between “friends”—typically unprocessed foods—which do you favors by providing lots of nutrients, and “frenemies”—foods that might seem fun and nice, but which ultimately make you feel like crap.

While your diet doesn’t have to consist 100 percent of friends, they should make up the majority of your diet. A 90:10 or 80:20 ratio of nourishing, healthy foods to treats can be a sustainable balance to strive for.

Foods That Do You Favors:

• Fruits

• Vegetables

• Nuts and nut butters: almonds, hazelnuts, pistachios, walnuts, peanuts (technically legumes but have a similar nutritional profile) etc.

• Seeds and seed butters: pumpkin, sunflower, sesame, chia, flax, hemp, etc.

• Avocados

• Eggs

• Fish

• Lean meats: chicken, turkey, lean beef, and pork

• Beans, peas, lentils

• Whole grains

• Dairy: yogurt, cheese, and milk*

• Unrefined oils: olive, avocado, and sesame oil

Frenemy Foods:

• Added sugar (this can include its many forms, such as cane sugar, fructose, sucrose, dextrose, etc.)

• Artificial sweeteners (a few common ones include aspartame and sucralose)

• Refined grains (pastries, white bread, white pasta, etc.)

• Processed snacks like chips and cookies with lots of preservatives and other additives

• Trans fats (partially hydrogenated oils)

• Foods with artificial coloring or dyes

You’ll notice I left some things off the “frenemy” list (butter, bacon, honey, lamb, maple syrup, to name a few), and that’s because these are things on the “in moderation” list, meaning that regularly consuming them as part of your daily diet may not be healthy, but it doesn’t mean you can’t ever eat those things—they’re just better off as an occasional treat. They may even offer some nutritional benefits—but the amount and frequency matters. Lamb, for example, is a great source of protein and iron, but a high intake of red meat has been linked to colorectal cancers.

Think of the frenemies as foods that really aren’t offering any nutritional benefits and that might make you feel uncomfortable afterward. I want to be cautious about saying you should never eat them—more so, it’s just important to know what you’re dealing with. I don’t consider any particular food “evil” or something to put permanently off-limits if it’s something you truly love. You just need to be mindful about making it part of an experience you’ll actually savor and can move on from, rather than going down a food-guilt spiral.

The key is that including more of the foods that do you favors in the context of your diet will help you feel healthy and stable, but still leaves room for other things you enjoy simply for pleasure. For example, maybe you’re roasting nutrient-rich brussels sprouts to eat with your baked salmon, but then you add a crumbled strip of bacon to the batch for extra flavor.

As far as liquids go, water is your best bet for hydration, but if you want something a little different, seltzer is a great alternative. If you just can’t get into the unflavored stuff, squeeze in some citrus or add a splash of juice.

Coffee and tea are beverages that have been shown to have some potential health benefits but may not be appropriate for everyone. You’re the expert on you, so be honest with yourself about how caffeine impacts you.

Alcohol is another beverage that’s been noted for some positive effects, but again, limit yourself to an amount that’s appropriate for you. Current recommendations are for men to stick to two or fewer alcoholic drinks per day, and for women to consume one or fewer. If you’re not sure what one drink looks like, that’s either 12 ounces of beer, 5 ounces of wine, or 1 ounce of spirits.¹⁸

Portions Count

The ratio of carbs to protein to fat also plays a role in how quickly a meal breaks down. If you go online looking for information on the exact ratio to eat to be healthy, you’ll get an overwhelming amount of opinions, some of which have more grounding in science than others. Pay attention to which foods and combinations of foods make you feel energized and satisfied and which ones make you feel more prone to hanger.

Just because some random person on social media who lost a lot of weight says she feels like a magical unicorn eating a certain way, it doesn’t mean that what worked for her will get your body to function at its peak. We’ll talk more about this later, but as a general guideline, though, aim to fill half of your lunch and dinner plate with non-starchy vegetables, a quarter with protein, and a quarter with carbohydrates.

* People who are lactose intolerant don’t tolerate dairy well and may wish to avoid it. It’s also okay if you follow a vegan or dairy—free diet—just be mindful to cover your nutritional bases to account for that. There are plenty of alternate ways to get the nutrients found in milk from other sources. For example, you can get calcium from tofu and certain leafy green vegetables like broccoli and bok choy, or from a fortified nondairy product.