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Writer's pictureDr. Maria Paredes

Hangry Birds

Updated: Apr 29, 2020


photo of 2 kids making angry faces with definition of Hangry: Stage of Anger Caused by Lack of Food

Nothing like parental miscommunication to illustrate eating disorder concepts. This morning, my partner and I couldn't figure out why our older 2 were so off kilter and emotionally dysregulated. What I like to refer to as the exorcism-head-spinning, award-winning tantrums.

"What'd you feed them this morning for breakfast?"

"What are you talking about? I thought YOU fed them breakfast!?"

Doh!

Our bodies have a wonderfully resilient way of letting us know when they need something. In this case, food!

The even cooler thing is that the longer our bodies go without it, the louder and more aggressively our bodies will communicate. Resiliently protecting itself from starvation.

What are the ways YOUR body communicates its hunger (physical hunger or other types of hunger) to you?

Irritability, stress headaches, lower tolerance of distress, more negative mood, higher anxiety, dizziness, lethargy, fuzziness, memory gaps, distractibility, higher sensitivity, higher emotionality or higher reactivity?

What about binging?

Yup, the more restriction our body experiences, the higher likelihood our body will respond by binging.

I'll say this another way:

When you restrict yourself--whether through actual restriction OR psychological restriction, you are more likely to binge. When your body is denied the nutrition it needs--or FEELS like it is denied the nutrition it needs--it resiliently communicates louder for food AND often takes in MORE food, partly out of the fear it will be denied the food again in the future.

So, moral of the story?

If your body is speaking to you, LISTEN! It has this really neat way of knowing what we need AND asking for what it needs.

Our job = Listening

That's all for now.....I need to go feed my hangry birds!!

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