To ask what causes 'food noise'?

I find this interesting regarding compulsive behaviours. I used to pick the skin around my nails constantly, to the point of bleeding. It looked awful and I found it really difficult to stop. I started Mounjaro and realised a week in that I hadn't picked my cuticles for a week. My skin was healed and looked great. I hadn't even noticed, and I'd been doing it for years.

Me too. However, I'm on cyclical HRT and still get food cravings in my progesterone phase, great 🙄. Not as bad as some of the episodes in my 20s when I felt I could uncontrollably eat yet it wasn't even touching the sides.

Look at the ghrelin hormones created by the stomach. Some individuals have a natural higher levels of this hormone. Is commonly called the hunger hormone.
Some gastric surgeries eliminate this hormone, therefore you eat less, there’s no food cravings/desire, and on top of that, you get your stomach reshaped and your intestines re-routed to “host” less food.
GLP-1 also acts as a inhibitor of this.

Hey, at least it's low calorie 😆 (but very time consuming, I've been there too!)

That’s literally the point of WLI is it not? Food noise is a symptom of a lack of GLP1, I would imagine the professionals know about it.

Yes, had it from childhood personally. You’ve only recently heard about it because up until now everyone who experiences it thought they were a freak and if only they had a bit more willpower they would be thin.

I have experienced just that. When I had bad PMDD I would be mindlessly shoving the vegetables I was chopping for dinner into my mouth. Anything. When I was/am more hormonally regulated I just wouldn't think to do that.

There's a growing body of evidence that GLP-1 agonists like Mounjaro, Wegovy etc, can also be used to tackle drug and alcohol addiction. So, that in mind, 'food noise' is another form of craving and reward-seeking behaviour. I think some of it is biological and some learned behaviour, often from childhood relationhips to food, but it's not easy to unpick the two. More about that here:

https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2024/10/18/nx-s1-5156068/ozempic-semaglutide-alcohol-drug-treatment

For me, yes, MJ definitely helps me enjoy my food - I always loved food, but it changes it from 'this meal is delicious' to 'this meal is delicious and I will not stop eating it until I'm in pain'; also using food as an emotional crutch. I came off it for a few months earlier this year before returning for a second round, and found that in the interim period, my 'food noise' had mostly gone.

I don't think food noise is hunger or cravings. For me it wasn't a specific craving, it was just a constant, relentless awareness of food, when I last ate, what I would eat next, when I could find an excuse for a restaurant get together, popping to the shops and coming out with twice as much as I planned, at bedtime getting in bed all sleepy and feeling like I NEEDED four slices of toast and jam before I could sleep. It wasn't a specific food, and I wasn't hungry.

I just bloody LOVE food, so much, really relish it, enjoy it, enjoy trying things, socialising over it, everything. I feel like that's one thing different between people with food noise and not, or differing amounts. People who are foodies probably have a lot more than people who are nonplussed, eat for sustenance and aren't easily impressed with foods!

I wouldn't say it was so much the psychology of eating, as the biochemistry.

I used to have constant 'sex noise' but never food noise!

I remember being so hungry as a child, all the time. My mum was very opposed to the concept of snacking and I remember a lot of shaming comments from all family members along the lines of 'you can't possibly be hungry, this is just greed' - but I was hungry, I really was! I was a fussy eater and I likely didn't fill up well on my meals, I definitely wouldn't have been eating much protein or anything satiating. We were a typical 80s low-fat household, so the fact that I wasn't so keen on meat or fish meant I mostly ate the carb components of meals and in retrospect that set up a craving cycle.

In later years, me and my mum have talked about it and she has said she can't understand now why she didn't just give me snacks, and why she'd insist on me waiting til mealtimes even on special occasions when we'd be going out and eating later. I remember feeling faint in restaurants on holiday, and my bad temper in such situations is a family legend now!

It drove me to secret eating and set me up as a binger. I would obsess about food and eat whenever I got the chance and it created such disastrous habits. I was so ashamed. My sisters were naturally like my mum - they ate well at meals, they didn't turn food into a battle and they just weren't very hungry between meals. I couldn't understand what was wrong with me and thought I just had no self control.

I think food noise comes from restriction. I have taken care to listen to my children's needs when it comes to food - one of mine can't manage big meals and is naturally more of a grazer. I've always endeavoured not to make a thing out of it, and no one in my house ever asks incredulously 'how can you possibly be hungry?' My mum has really changed her attitude too. It was a product of the time and the advice given back then. It definitely created food noise for me - the combination of a bigger appetite, lots of fussy preferences around food and a low-fat dieting household. It gave me a drive to eat, and to overeat, that I couldn't fight against.

Is that the one that's also called ghrelin? I agree. The other variable is how well equipped you are to resist the cravings. If you're in a bad way, stressed, poor or have a chaotic life you often don't have the energy to fight them.

Not as much, but honestly, it’s a relief to not have it the centre of your existence

Food noise: waking up thinking about what you will eat that day, thinking about what you will eat next while you’re still eating something else, best part of Christmas being aaaall the food, all the time. Actually it’s worse than smoking because you have to eat to live, and I thought about food far far more than I thought about the next fag.

Ex smoker 16 yrs.

I think food noise happens for various reasons. For me it was a symptom of PMDD. For a couple of weeks every month I was obsessed with food and eating.
I got fat as a teenager and struggled to lose weight all my life.
Then peri menopause started and I lost 100ibs fairly easily. Because it was hormonal it was literally like a switch being flipped and my whole personality changed.

It's the difference between having no willpower, constantly craving junk food and not even needing willpower because the thoughts just aren't there.

I had a dreadful abusive childhood. I have always experienced “food noise” including dreaming about food, since being very very young.

I have been on Mounjaro since January and have lost four stone. I don’t think about food at all now unless I am physically hungry, with rumbling tummy etc.

I think for me, food noise can be driven by boredom or emotional responses, but it consists of me constantly thinking what’s going to be the next meal. I’m never, ever hungry. What a PP said above also resonated for me - I think it’s dopamine seeking in my case, as it’s triggered by my moods, and since I’ve been on Mounjaro my mood fluctuations have been far less severe. And I actually threw out stale cake! Unheard of.

I don’t know whether food noise is even specific to food.

People gain weight because they are eating to excess. People who do anything to excess tend to become obsessed with it. For example, you get people who are ‘addicted’ to buying excessive amounts of clothes and they probably think about clothes all the time, and constantly browse for new items that they don’t need. Would this be ‘clothes noise’?

I would say exactly this. As someone on GLP’s, I would obsess 24/7 about food and I had a LOT of food noise. It absolutely felt like an addiction or a crutch that I would reach for when things felt tough, I used food to soothe me at the bleakest time in my life. It isn’t ‘funny’ but I joke to people that I put on six stone rather than become an alcoholic or a drug addict. It felt like that was my coping mechanism and I could easily have turned to the other two, but I chose the more ‘socially acceptable’ form. The GLP’s essentially eradicated those cravings and desires in me. I felt like my mind was peaceful and quiet whereas before I was honestly like an addict wondering when I’d get my next hit of food (sugar). It’s been life changing for me ❤️