Fast and Furious: How I Tamed This Hangry Beast by Starving It.
Conquering hunger and hangriness through intermittent fasting.
Growing up, the shadow of scarcity sometimes lurked at our dinner table.
As early as elementary school, I’d hide behind a column or tree to eat my two hard-boiled eggs or bread slices slathered with butter and dulce de leche, all wrapped in a wrinkled plastic grocery bag. My peers, in turn, bought hamburgers, empanadas, and hotdogs from the canteen.
But my parents couldn’t afford to give me money for the treats my peers enjoyed daily.
In middle school, my sister and I would sit on a bench during recess and watch other kids devour strawberry wafers and chocolate sandwich cookies. We never asked for a single crumb. Once, we faced a dilemma: spend our return bus fare on a single empanada to share or endure the hunger until we got home.
Two hours later, we begged strangers for spare change to buy another bus ticket.
As teenagers, my middle sister, baby brother, and I used ruthless tactics to steal food from our baby sister. We rapped songs about eating green mucus, hot vomit, or clotted blood to make her lose her appetite.
In later adulthood, I was fiercely protective over my meals, becoming a hangry monster if I didn’t have breakfast immediately after waking. Believing breakfast to be the most important meal and needing an arsenal of snacks, my Mary Poppins bag carried nuts, chocolate protein bars, mandarines, and sometimes my old friends, the hard-boiled eggs.
Then came the summer of 2019. My partner and I visited my sister and her partner in Sarajevo. We had breakfast together every morning. One day, an early morning tour forced us to delay breakfast.
With smoke coming from my ears, I transformed into a ravenous were-woman lunging for my partner’s limbs.
My partner rushed to buy čevapi (succulent grilled meat from the Balkans) and stuffed them into my mouth to avoid catastrophe. My middle sister called me out for making my partner’s life a nightmare, and I knew she was right. I was fed up with myself, too. The Sarajevo 2019 meltdown was the fork in the road. It was time to tame the beast.
Enter intermittent fasting.
The intermittent fasting bug bit me after the Sarajevo incident. I stumbled upon Dr. Jason Fung, MD, nephrologist and intermittent fasting expert. His analogy about our bodies acting as a fridge and a freezer, switching between using glucose and storing fat for energy, opened my eyes.
The idea that I’d get into“starvation mode” if I missed a meal was a thing of the past. Armed with this new knowledge, I went from feasting to fasting.
It took a four-year journey to narrow my eating window to 8 hours daily. I played with my routine, sometimes skipping breakfast, other times dinner, letting fasting weave into my social and work schedule.
In revisiting the hunger days of my youth, I realize that not eating what my peers ate or not eating enough may have given birth to the hangry beast within me.
But hunger isn’t always an emergency anymore. I can wait, and I’m not less of a person for it. Eating less frequently made me more. More in tune with my body’s needs, in control of my reactions, and appreciative of my food.
Fasting didn’t just starve this beast within me. It nourished a fresh perspective on hunger.
This story reflects my personal experience and isn’t intended as medical guidance. Before changing your diet or lifestyle, always speak with your healthcare professional.
I really enjoyed this essay, Vinka. It felt like a playful dance: light-heartedly wrapping humorous personal anecdotes with important observations.
Wow, you inspired me to start fasting! Thank you for sharing your story with us, Vinka!