It's taken me months to notice but I get to be a real irritable pain in the ar$e when I am in high calorie deficit, like today.
It's not because I am hungry or even feel the urge to eat. It's just a mood like the one I used to get into when I was giving up smoking.

It gets partcularly bad when I am super-active, like I have been today.

Anyone else get mean?

No, however, those around me become particularly irritating.

I don't...and I quit smoking the same day I started dieting about 3 months ago. So, if doing both together wasn't enough to make me irritable...

Low seratonin levels could be the cause of your irritability. If your diet permits it, you could have a snack that's relatively high in seratonin, which would include a banana, avocado or pumpkin seeds (plus other things that I don't remember).

That's hilarious...thanks for my laugh of the day!

*raises hand* That's one of the reasons that I've purposefully slowed down my weight loss. I was just turning into a witch on wheels on a very regular basis. I was also struggling with deprivation/binging cycles.

Yes! And they don't even know it until I HAVE to yell at them!!

I've learned that being in a pissy mood is hunger, in fact if I'm eating low-carb it's the only hunger I will experience before getting quite ill. If I ignore or don't recognize the mood as hunger, the next symptom is suddenly feeling very ill (light-headed, nauseous and light-headed) which is swiftly followed by passing out if I don't eat something immediately.

The sick stage progresses to the passing out very quickly, sometimes only a minute or two, so I try to recognize irritability as hunger. Hubby usually notices before I do, and will ask, "how long has it been since you've eaten?"

If you don't have blood sugar issues, you probably can safely ignore irritability as a symptom of hunger, but I believe that it still IS hunger. I wonder if it isn't why human beings in almost all human cultures tend to offer food to comfort and "cheer up" irritable friends and family - because it usually works.

Being hungry makes me quite irritable, especially from about 4PM on. Since I know that about myself, I try hard to leave a lot of calories for the evening. (calorie counting) I can deal with little to eat much more easily in the morning, and I do NOT want to spend some of my only time with my husband grumpy.

Now I'm wondering if this is why I snapped at my coworker last week...

He is irritating no matter what my intake for the day, but this was the first time I let it out.

I definitely get pissy and moody and get a very short fuse; I also tend to get frustrated really quickly and am prone to start crying because I'm so frustrated when I'm hungry.

Too bad that I can go from "not hungry" to "way too hungry" within about 20 minutes. And then if I don't have the specific food around that I want to eat and I have to make it / wait for it ... it's pretty bad.

The good thing is that this kind of experience has been pretty rare since I've been maintaining instead of losing, so there's light at the end of the tunnel.

I get very irritable when I'm in a high calorie deficit.

This ^^, however, people around me are even more irritating when I'm working out. I seriously hate all the people when I'm exercising...

That about sums it up. I felt like a jerk within 10 minutes. It's all good though. I didn't say anything that horrible and honestly it was somewhat deserved - my other coworkers thought it was hilarious I finally said something. So maybe I don't get more irritable, I just get more honest?

I'll go with the "Every one else is more annoying" thought. LOL!

Yes, hunger makes me really short tempered.