We've all been in a similar situation: your alarm goes off on Monday morning. You hit snooze. One minute later, your alarm sounds again, you hit snooze again. You repeat this five more times until you fall back into a dead man's sleep before waking 45 minutes later, gripped by confusion and panic, as you check your phone to discover you're three minutes late for work.
You leap in the shower, attempt to brush your teeth while grappling with your housemate's expensive bottle of tingly mint bodywash, and try to think of ways you can convince your boss that this was down to a rail strike. You eventually arrive at work, sweating, broken, without even a nanosecond of time for anyone's shit.
Of course amidst the chaos you skipped breakfast, and now the slightest interaction is causing a blood-boiling, relentless rage. Even when Steve, your least objectionable colleague, quips "heavy weekend?" as you slump into your desk, you briefly entertain the idea of beating him to death with your shoe. And why? Because it's Monday and you're hungover? Possibly. But it's more likely due to your failure to eat your porridge this morning - and you're not you when you're hungry.
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Even if you skip breakfast, by the time you've exchanged small talk with your colleagues and spent 20 minutes making an instant coffee, you're probably only a few hours from lunch and that delicious meal deal. At last salvation, arriving in the form of a pre-packed sarnie and a bag of overly-salty crisps.
But, alas, this full feeling of wonder only lasts for so long, before you start nodding off over a PowerPoint presentation and Steve makes another pithy comment. Oh god, that is so Steve. It's at this point a snack becomes imperative, or you'll never make it to dinner without ramming your fist down Steve's stupid throat.
According to Ruth Kander Bsc, a consultant dietician, you're certainly not alone in these hunger fuelled mood swings: "What I find in my clinic is that people go for very long without eating - particularly lunch to dinner, they go for seven hours without eating and then you've got the whole scenario of 'oh my God I'm starving!' and they eat everything in sight, or they get home and they're cross with everyone."
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Pay attention: Hungry + Angry = Hangry. You may have seen the term plastered across various memes, and while made up words accompanying memes should usually be dismissed as inane garbage, hangry is very much a real thing.
And, says Ruth, 'hangry' is more than just an amalgam favoured by attention-seekers on your Instagram feed. "If you've not eaten for a while, you've got a predisposition for your blood sugar to drop. When your blood sugar drops it causes a number of problems, and one of them is the reduction of serotonin released from the brain. Serotonin balances your mood and your appetite as well."
A 2014 study by Florida State University even found that low blood sugar resulted in increased beef between married couples. During the experiment, each participant was given a voodoo doll representing their spouse. Sure enough, when blood sugar bottomed out, the hangry person inflicted severe pin-punishment on their partner's stuffed proxy.
Now, I know what you're thinking. You're probably recalling the numerous times you've skipped breakfast, only to treat your colleagues/classmates/voodoo dolls with the utmost courtesy. Well, that may just be down to your character. As Ruth explains: "I find it very much depends on your personality in the first place. If you're someone who's often moody and frustrated anyway, the effect is going to be more pronounced. If you're a miserable old git - you get very hungry, you're going to be a nightmare."
As we talked hangry on the blower, Ruth theorised that January could actually be the hangriest month of all. "Now is the time that people are going on diets, and some people are going on crash diets and some people are going on detox diets, and they could get very hungry and that could trigger the whole hangry thing." Naturally, this is supposition, but it plays to think that even the happiest dieter could go postal after his 13th carb-free day in 2017.
So Ruth put it to an informal test, asking her Facebook followers if January diets have ever made them feel "angry, irritable or have less patience as you are eating less or feeling hungry." Of the 23 who replied, 20 gave a definitive 'Yes', and I refuse to think every one of them is just an angry, irrational person by nature. I mean they follow a dietician on Facebook.
Granted, it's not exactly a peer-reviewed paper in a medical journal, but it shows that Britain is a hangry place, and the feelings only get worse when people are subjecting themselves to diets. If you're currently in the midst of a New Year New Me retox, then you'll understand why January is probably a very hangry month. And, if you're not, you still probably think January is pretty bleak.
So let's have another go at Monday. Your alarm goes off. You stand up. You shower. You eat breakfast. You get to work and don't entertain the idea of beating Steve to death with your shoe. You have lunch, enjoy a mid-afternoon treat and get home to dinner without a warrant out for your arrest. You are a lover, not a hangry-er. Your belly is full and so is your heart.
Being hangry is real. Don't let it get the best of you.
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WORDS BY JACK BLOCKER
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