Food noise. Why can some overcome it and others can’t?

[Foodnoisebattles]

There’s a lot of talk on threads, especially the weight loss injection threads, about food noise. A lot of posters will say that the drugs turn off their food noise and allow them to lose weight. That’s a very simplified version but essentially what is being said. They will say that this lack of food noise must be how slim people stay slim and they dread it returning once off the drugs.

I used to have a severe eating disorder (hence the name change) and food noise was a 24/7 battle. I ignored it. I’m recovered and have been for a long time but still get food noise a lot of the time. I ignore it if I know I don’t need to eat. It’s a challenge and I did gain weight over the Covid lockdowns and tipped into the overweight category but lost it again and am now smack bang in the middle of my healthy weight range. I still get food noise. Every day I find myself wanting to eat, especially things like chocolate, doughnuts, sweets, cake, and lots of it but I tell myself no. I will eat what is a portion of these things then say no more.

What makes some people able to ignore their food noise and others not? I hadn’t heard of the term food noise until I came on mumsnet but it’s a good description of the brain constantly telling me to eat something I shouldn’t because I’m not actually hungry. It takes a lot of self control for me personally. Why is that different for me and people like me? Is it a chemical thing? Behavioural? Do some people not have food noise at all so they don’t need to battle it? It’s worse if I’m bored. If I’m busy I’ll forget to eat. The food noise sets in if I’m not doing much.

Maybe for some people the food noise is a barely perceptible whisper and for others it's the roar of a jet engine.

I would love to know op.

My friend is baffled by people who regularly eat things like cake, biscuits. She can easily just eat one, doesn't overly enjoy it and isn't tempted to have another. She's very slim. Generally she doesn't ever seem to crave food, is a bit picky and is frankly a bit disgusted by anyone who isn't slim, she doesn't understand how they have eaten so much.

I battle against my love of food. I am not picky, i love a delicious meal whether savoury, vegetarian, sweet etc. I genuinely enjoy a tasting menu of rich food. I don't eat a lot of processed junk, the sweet/carby foods etc I eat are home made and baked from scratch. I am at the top end of healthy weight and just struggle to lose it because at my age it means pretty much never eating a warm ginger biscuit, or crusty sourdough toast with salted butter, a fresh scone with homemade jam on a summer afternoon. It makes me sad never enjoying those simple pleasures. I manage it for short stretches but end up giving in. I do quite a bit of exercise including muscle work and was very thin until mid thirties but now find nothing compensates for my enjoyment of food. I can't tune out those cravings. Im not sure mounjaro would even work on me as i can enjoy a dessert even when full from a good meal.

Low carbing turns it right down. You have to cut out all refined carbohydrate foods though, no sugar, no fizzy drinks, no bread, potato, cakes, biscuits, pasta, rice, cereals etc. It's difficult for about three days then your sweet tooth diminishes and you stop feeling hungry all the time as your blood sugar stabilises. If you're climbing the walls, you can have a keto pud or make something with almond flour and xylitol. You can also have full fat Greek yoghurt with berries and xylitol sprinkled on.

Mine is a full on roar. If I do sometimes over indulge I would then not eat again until genuinely hungry though so that it balances out.

Is the same as some people find gambling addictive or smoking - I can’t really comprehend either… but food rules my life. Brains are weird old things.

It sounds like you are really motivated to manage your weight and therefore make the effort to say 'no' to yourself a lot of the time. I think a lot of people lack that motivation - or lack it consistently. For some the positives that they associate with over-eating (be that pure enjoyment of taste, the sense of freedom, the pleasure of shared treats, the use of food as a way of coping with boredom or with more painful emotions, the convenience of unhealthy options etc) are more compelling than the many, many negatives (physical health consequences, impact on appearance, judgement from other people, internalised shame, etc). Some people would rather reach for those biscuits than not reach for them.

I suppose at an extreme end, an actress who has to stay very slim for the purpose of their career and who has their body frequently scrutinised is going to go through a different biscuit cost-benefit analysis than someone whose body shape has little impact on their work. Likewise a woman who has been brought up to believe it is shameful to be larger will go through a different cost-benefit analysis to someone who is less judgmental of and more relaxed about their body. There are infinite variations between people. Some of us who say they want to lose weight / stop overeating / be healthier just don't want it enough... or we do want it but we are more internally conflicted than it is socially acceptable to let on.

Of course many people say that the negatives of over-eating DO outweigh their positives and still find it really hard to stop, so what's going on here? It seems obvious but important to point out that the positives of overeating tend to be to do with instant gratification whilst the negatives tend to be cumulative, longer-term effects. Some people seem to be better than others at sacrificing instant gratification for a longer-term goal. I'm sure that temprement and willpower play a role in determine whether this is achieved, but so do things like habits, the eating behaviours and attitudes of the people in our lives and other aspects of our environment. I therefore don't see it as just being about virtuous self-control winning out over laziness when one person says no to food noise and another doesn't.

My food noise is often boredom, otherwise it doesn't bother me. Can overrule it though. I do think eating fewer carbs helped. Exercise also helps - never hungry after working out, though I know others are different. And intermittent fasting - not intentionally, just I often get distracted and don't get round to eating.

One thing I also wonder is, with the current thoughts and advice about having 3 meals and 2 snacks per day, I think many people don't know what real hunger (as opposed to emotional or boredom hunger) feels like, and so it may be harder to differentiate "this is my body telling me it needs food" vs "this is my body telling me it wants comfort or stimulation".

And also, because it's almost normalised to eat frequently, then ignoring/saying no to hunger feelings may not be something people are used to.

Some people seen to have a metabolism where small frequent meals suit them better. I prefer to eat one massive meal a day, or maybe one small and one medium, but hardly ever three. Many friends would struggle to eat like that, and I would struggle to eat as they do - but it's often proposed as a one-size-fits-all approach, and I don't think that's true at all.

I hadn't heard of food noise until on here. If I want to lose weight which I am doing at the moment. I cut out sugar, biscuits, crisps and chocolate. I am not hungry when I eat them so I don't need them so tell myself don't have them and I don't it's just willpower.

Either it's not a full on roar, or you simply couldn't ignore it, or you are just superior to fatties in every way with your iron will. 🙄.

I am fat, I don’t actually know what food noise is I don’t really understand that concept, I eat when I’m hungry, till I’m full, my problem is I’m always hungry and I don’t get full easily?

I think the answer is that everyone experiences these things difficultly?

I am obese and on Mounjaro currently which makes an enormous difference to food noise for me.

But on the other hand, I have been a very moderate gambler for many many years and genuinely feel no compulsion to gamble more or recklessly.

Why are these things different for me? I have absolutely no idea but I don't think compulsive gamblers choose to be so

I feel like you're fishing for the answer that they are less morally virtuous than you are, certainly many people who post on this subject are. Id that is the case, I am not going to be able to argue you out of wanting to feel superior but I would suggest that you might be a happier person if you didn't get want to judge other people

Oh and this idea that you can cut carbs/sugar for a few days and it solves it always cracks me up. Ive done as long as a month with no carbs/sugar (genuinely - paying attention to even things like fruit, drinks etc). It gets marginally easier to resist but I still LOVE tasty food and end up eating more of it than i need - i just end up enjoying a cheesy omelette or a delicious steak with bearnaise sauce instead of a cake.

There’s no judgement from me. I’m interested in how things are different from one person to the next when they both experience significant food noise. If others want to judge me then that’s their prerogative but I’m not judging them.

@Greywardenthat’s interesting, thank you. It’s an area I find very interesting.

I live on carbs mainly. Restricting food groups is not good for someone with my history.

Do some people not have food noise at all

Yes, I don’t. I’m just not fussed about food, I’ll eat if I’m hungry but it really doesn’t occur to me to eat if I’m not. So for me it’s not anything remotely related to willpower, or self control, or commitment to health etc. I don’t feel like I have to resist food because when I’m full I don’t want anymore.
This has caused me to always be a bit underweight, and to struggle putting weight on, because I don’t want to eat more than I do.

I don't have food noise, or very little. Maybe once a month or if I am on a flight.
My mum deserves all the credit for feeding me an incredibly healthy diet with almost zero UPF. Treats were allowed but in moderation. 2 biscuits at a time, not the whole packet.

Why are some people prone to anxiety, depression, addiction, low self confidence, etc etc. Everyone is an Individual.

My 'food noise' I find is a comfort to my very overwrought mind. It gives me something to focus on. I like to work out something that I'm really desperate for,like build up a craving for something, and then get the satisfaction of finally getting it and eating it.

Without that I feel like I'd starve to death. I really love thinking about food all the time. Like it's there in the middle of my brain.

When I was hospitalised for anorexia all the joy was removed from food and eating. Even though it saved my life, I feel like I really need food to be a pleasure and something emotional. As opposed to simply functional.

Oh and i grew up in a healthy home. Home cooked food, treats in moderation but not restricted to the point of becoming forbidden/desirable.

Even now I eat a "good" diet, plenty of veg & protein, healthy fats, fish, but I love all food and just struggle badly to cut out carbs the way I would have to to be slim.

I think there is a genetic element but it's hard to separate nature Vs nurture.

I grew up with an extremely healthy diet but because my mother's family has a long family history of obesity (I literally have seen family photos going back to the 1900s with my ancestors and seen the obesity!) I also I think am genetically prone to having more compulsive attitudes to food.

But it is hard to separate from the fact that my mother had very disordered eating and in many ways controlled my food because she couldn't control her own but the example she put in front of me was her starving herself during the day and stuffing herself with rubbish secretly at night. An example that I followed for a while - was that nature or nurture or a bit of both? So hard to know

For Me, when I think of food noise - the only thing I can explain it as that saying ‘money burns a hole in your pocket’ except it’s food. The noise just means that I can’t quite stop thinking about the food if it’s there.

I am on Mounjaro right now and never quite realised until last week just how much those intrusive thoughts aren’t there.

I guess I am weak if you are able to ignore it and I can’t. Does it matter to you though?

As someone who would have considered herself to have quite strong 'food noise' at one point in my life, i do slightly worry about some people going 'it's food noise' and not looking at the varying factors that can make up food noise.
You get lots of comments like 'overweight people know what's healthy, don't be patronising' but I've lurked diet threads for bloody years and yes, some people do but some people don't - and thats not a bloody moral judgement, it's me saying you don't know what you don't know!

From my own experience, my 'food noise' was made up of 3 parts:

• low level dehydration
• a raging sugar addiction
• habit habit habit. I would have sworn on my life i had raging food noise, but I had to relearn my hunger cues and after years of trying (and failing) I broke the habit. It's horrible and hard. Some people can't. But I think it's really unhelpful to say 'overweight people know where they are going wrong' when sometimes they don't!! I didn't know!! I thought i was just destined to be perpetually starving forever!! It's not just 'eat healthy' some of us are battling with individual and multiple addictive behaviours, deficiencies and habits and we need to help people more aware of what these look like and crucially how to tackle them individually! I worked with a lady who asked me how I lost weight and I told her about my realisation that my eating was a habit and I might not actually be hungry, so I had to re-learn actual hunger and it was a bloody light bulb moment for her and she's since herself lost weight. For some people, it might be other things! But we need help to uncover what these are. And it's not bloody helpful to go 'don't you think an overweight person's tried everything' do you think a random person off the street would know all the individualised treatment and recovery paths for anorexia? No! It's not helpful! But i totally understand why some people do get defensive - and much love to those people as no voice is bigger than our own, but we're not all the same and pretending that that EVERY person knows and has tried EVERYTHING and is COMPLETELY POWERLESS is just as damaging as saying 'this is just a matter of willpower' no it's bloody not!

@Daisyvodka that’s an interesting point. Habit plays a big part for me personally. I come in from
the school run and have a cup of tea and often want to eat something. I’m not really hungry. It’s just I want to eat.

I’m reading an amazing book at the moment called ‘Women, Food and God’ by Geneen Roth at the moment. I’m having to read it in small chunks because it’s so rich. It really gets to the heart of what’s going on underneath food struggles for me - not the food but the emotional pain underneath that I eat away. I reckon food noise is the brain’s attempt to distract from feeling difficult feelings, for me anyway - I think this is a very complicated subject for people, hence the amount of almost conflicting advice out there.

You describe using energy to counteract Food noise.

If you have elderly parents, a sick kid, a stressful job, and you don’t quite make enough money to cover bills, the energy needed to resist food noise is just a little more energy than you have.

If you have a loving family, good friends, and active support network and a partner that meets your needs emotionally and practically, you probably don’t need to comfort eat quite as much as someone who handles life alone.

I’m the supporter, facilitator, in my world. I get everyone’s needs met, cook food everyone else likes, organise the house around people’s work etc. I check in on how everyone is feeling, I keep an eye out for stressed friends, I ring my mum and do various chores for her.

I can’t remember the last time someone went out of their way to be nice to/ask after/check in with me.

So I get my good feels from chocolate. I work hard at looking after myself, do various health focused activities, but when the shit hits the fan, chocolate or crisps are what stands between me and a meltdown. Frankly.

Lockdown was amazing for me. Stress stopped. No one could expect much from me at all. I was able to do slimming world and lost loads of weight. I could ignore the food noise because I had energy available to do that.