The Intersection of Food Aversions & Hangriness
Over the last year since my layoff, I've experienced a significant drop-off in food aversions (especially in the first half of this year). However, I encountered them again during my random interview spells, which I detailed a bit in my latest posts. Holy shit, it's truly so annoying. I don't think a ton of people relate to this unless they are children, pregnant, or are autistic with this particular issue. My aversions directly coincide with my anxiety levels, what access to food I have in the moments leading up to me realizing I missed a hunger cue and am now ravenously hangry, how many days it's been since I've been eating the available food, and how tired I may be.
Hangry
To everyone close to me's dismay, I have also been deemed a hangry person. I have vivid memories of this happening when out with my mom as a child. I was the "I'm hungryyyy" kid, which would always be stated at the most inopportune times. My mom would respond after a while, "Nice to meet you hungry. I'm S". I did not know how to combat that when I was 9 tbh.
When I am hangry, my mood shifts almost in an instant; I get that "verbal shutdown" feeling, I feel weak and sickly, nauseous too, and processing information is far more challenging. This becomes an issue because once I cross this threshold, it is close to impossible for me to understand what I want and verbalize what I need. M will say, "What do you need right now?" and I just stare at the floor or groan. He has gotten better about just bringing me snacks or to a place that may have things I'd like when he sees the signs. He has gotten very good at detecting when I am hangry before I even realize.
It is funny that I did not realize I was missing my internal hunger cues my whole life. I thought I was just moody? I believe I am actually experiencing a lack of interoception. Often, if I am on the verge of a meltdown, missing a hunger cue frequently is a big player in why.
It can be embarrassing, especially in front of people whom I have not told my diagnosis to. When I start to crash, M just says, "hold on, I need to feed my wife", lol. This happened two weeks ago when we were in NJ for that wedding. M's parents/my in-laws have gotten used to this phenomenon over the years and also acknowledge that I will not be able to speak until I've consumed something. In the beginning of our relationship, the hanger attacks made me feel self-conscious, and there was a lot of confusion. Eventually, I was able to describe them as being similar to a blood sugar crash, which apparently M's dad sometimes experiences. A bridge was built between my and my FIL's (Father-In-Law) ailment, and my MIL (Mother-In-Law) and M having to deal with it. Sometimes it is good to have people accept things without digging deeper into the subject.
+ Aversions
Food aversions, though, make being hangry a whole other rollercoaster. It cannot just be fixed with some food; it has to be the right food. Otherwise, I'll only start to feel worse, and the nausea will make me incapacitated. During the winter, I was out with M and my MIL when a hanger attack was coming on. We happened to be near a grocery store. I was roaming the aisles for a while. I just couldn't find something that seemed robust enough and not gross to eat. My MIL kept offering me suggestions, and I just had to keep mumbling no over and over. I ended up with something that did not really help. Going to the MoMA during the busy tourist holiday season when hangry is not a vibe.
I stress about potential aversions. If we are traveling somewhere new, I wonder what options I'll have and if they will be acceptable to that future self in that particular moment. That is the thing with aversions: some days a food will be perfectly fine, and then other moments I want literally nothing to do with the food, even if I "like" it. This becomes really hard for me and M to navigate, especially once I crossed that aforementioned threshold. Like with my MIL, the food I bought I do like. It was some kind of trail mix. I think I got it because the M&Ms go really well with my sugar crash excuse.
Sometimes I just have to bulldoze through, which fucking sucks. Speaking of the aversions crawling their way back up over the last few weeks at the beginning of this post, I had to run off to an interview early one morning. I need to eat generally first thing in the morning. If I don't, I find that my aversions can be triggered more easily later on in the day. That morning I forced down a typical yogurt bowl (something I like!). (TW: avoid following sentence if you have emetophobia). I literally was gagging after each swallow - ugh. I just hate that shit. Like, my nerves are making me hate this food I like and need AHHH. I only eat, generally, 3 different breakfasts - all with similar ingredients. Disliking this one most likely means the others won't fare well either.
So I've been caught up about aversions lately. I haven't had to work in an office in years. It is easy to hide this side of me when I am home. But I really don't know how it will go. M and I live in an "ingredient household". We don't really have many snacks. Just foods to make meals that require prep. Something about "snacks" really triggers my aversions. So, more than starting a new job after almost a year unemployed and many more years since being in-office, I worry most about my lunches.
How to go forth
I don't want this post to come off as an obsession around food. It's more an obsession about not wanting to feel sick. I hope you understand. I plan to start a snack/lunch itinerary on this blog. I see some bloggers (i.e., irony machine, A parenthetical departure, sweetfish) documenting recipes and cooking tricks, and I have been inspired to come up with something that works for me. It is very good for me to have options written down and collected in one place. It reduces the impact of decision fatigue and hanger-induced brain-breaking shutdown syndrome lol.
I am curious if anyone reading deals with these issues. Feel free to email me or sign my guestbook if so, or if you relate in some other similar way. No one in my life personally does, at least not to my degree. This post is not only an entry to describe something I struggle with, but a jumping-off point to motivate me to improve this facet of my life, particularly as I enter a new chapter/big transition phase. Thanks for reading.