If you’re thin, what does the voice in your head say?

[SunshineAndFizz]

If you’re offered a biscuit, or need to make a selection in a restaurant, what does the voice in your head say to help you make a healthy choice?

Kate Moss famously said ‘nothing tastes as good as skinny feels’. And my aunt used to say ‘oh I don’t like to feel full’.

If you’re thin, do you have a healthy phrase you tell yourself to help keep on the right track?

I’m a healthy weight / thin and I LOVE food. I often find if I go to a restaurant others will be saying they’re ’so full’ and can’t eat their main, whereas I can easily do a starter and full main. I literally pick what I want and really enjoy eating out.

Im not really a dessert person though and would typically go for a crème brûlée over a chocolate fudge cake.

Day to day I try to make healthy choices and cook a lot from scratch.

For biscuits I’ll have one with my afternoon cup of tea, but just one. In an evening I’ll have one square of dark chocolate. I actually couldn’t even contemplate eating one of those large dairy milk bars or similar, I’d feel sick.

Other times I think ‘is this worth the calories?’. So a crappy processed shop bought cake, no.

A lovely fresh homemade slice of cake, absolutely, will eat the whole thing.

The voice in my head is quite.
I don't have food noise. I have a small appetite. Not because I want to be slim, I've been actively trying to gain one stone, but I have to remind myself to eat.
Food just isn't special for me. Unless in a restaurant
I put it off and grab snacks if I'm stressed or busy.
I had an eating disorder that lurks as if I get depressed I lose my appetite completely and lose weight quickly.
I know that I'm unusual.
I'd prefer a crispy salad with coleslaw and fries over a burger meal or Chinese takeaway as I always feel bloated after a takeaway.
I'm always fidgeting too, find it hard to sit down, so I use unnecessary energy.

It says nothing because I don’t demonise food. Having a biscuit or a meal out has zero impact. Having a packet of biscuits everyday and eating out everyday might.

The problem with these situations is seeing food as “bad”. Nothing is “bad”, you lose weight by only eating chocolate hob nobs as long as you maintained a calorie deficit (which is how you lose weight, the rest is just noise). I doubt you’d be healthy from a nutritional point of view though 😂

I always thought 'I've tried that before.. do I need to try it again?" answer was most often no... unless it was something I had not tried - in which case I would eat it.

Do I actually fancy that? I try not to eat out of obligation or because it's there. But I wouldn't deprive myself of something I actually wanted. Thankfully I'm super picking with sweet treats so most store bought biscuits and the like don't appeal to me. My weakness is fried foods.

I'd say no to the biscuit as I don't particularly like them, the menu I'd just look at everything to see what I fancied.
Never been bigger than a size 10, and I'm post menopausal.

I’m 45, 5’5” and weigh 53kg, sometimes up to 55kg but not more. Size 8.
I don’t eat any refined carbs. No pasta, bread, biscuits, cake, breakfast cereal etc.
Other than that I eat exactly what I like. Loads of cheese, nuts, meat. Also I love potatoes. I have been around the same weight for 8 years since my second was born.

This! Eating "what you want" can mean anything.

I try not to have treats in the house that I would struggle to resist. I tend to have a couple of things in for the kids that I wont really fancy. At the moment for example we have chocolate covered rice cakes (chocolate covered cardboard to me). No biscuits or crisps as they are harder to resist. I don't find restaurants a challenge. Generally for mains I prefer the healthy options. My brain will say 'ooh dish with lots of interesting vegetables, spices, herbs etc - that will be tasty. Hmm burger and chips might sound like a fun food but will make me feel bloated and sluggish'. By the time I've eaten a healthy main course and feel full my brain will say 'hmm sticky toffee pudding is delicious but I already feel full and dont like feeling sick... maybe I'll just nab a bite of DH's'.

Edited to say I went through a stage of being overweight when my brain got into a habit of saying 'ah now the kids are in bed, reward myself with just a few crisps.... oh dear now I've eaten the whole sharing bag', so definitely not having things in the house and trying not to use food as a reward for a tough day or a way of managing tiredness.

I'm around 8 stone and 50. If someone offers me a biscuit them I'm going to say yes! The key to staying a healthy weight for me is to not eat huge meals and to do plenty of walking. I also try to eat wholemeal everything rather than white - bread, pasta, rice - and eat fairly healthily ie chicken thigh (skin on) or pork chop, fist sized portion of rice and lots of veggies would be a main meal. I see people with their plates piled high and i just couldn't eat all that. I'm not going to say no to a biscuit though, why would I?

I've been able to maintain a weight somewhere in the middle of a 'healthy' BMI for my adult life. I get cravings and I can be an emotional eater. I'll raid cupboards if I'm stressed out or something is bothering me. I've eaten entire packs of Jaffa cakes or ice cream tubs if something emotional is going on. However there are things that have helped me to maintain my weight. The first is limiting how much I buy which has processed sugar in. Sweets, chocolates, cakes, puddings etc. Also stuff like crisps are an occasional rather than a daily thing. I'll buy a limited amount because I know it will get eaten quickly. And I don't rush back to buy it weekly either. I'll vary snacks and might buy one pack of biscuits one week plus a lot of healthier snacks and crisps the next plus a lot of healthier snacks based on whole foods. So instead of ice cream I'll have yoghurt with a drizzle of honey and some nuts or fruit. I'll snacks on nuts and raisins or pistachios. I eat a lot of fruit too and a banana is a great mid morning snack. Basically, moving away from ultra processed foods designed to make you crave them and more towards foods that are good for you and less craving inducing. I don't limit myself necessarily so if sweets and chocolate are there I'll eat them and I'll have puddings on nights out of others are too but sometimes I might suggest to DH to share a pudding. So, no food is good or bad but there are some things it makes sense to moderate not necessarily from a weight perspective but from a eating foods that will make me and my body feel good perspective.

I’m slim rather than thin, BMI 21, sometimes 20. I don’t deprive myself of anything but don’t eat when I’m not hungry. I think about food quite a lot as we’re quite a foodie family but that doesn’t translate to lots of snacking, unless I’m hungry. I can get full quite quickly as I’m a bit old so I leave food on my plate sometimes. I have to give myself permission to do that though as I was brought up in the ‘finish your plate’ era. I suppose overall I listen to my body, eat the sorts of things I fancy and stop eating when full.

I just don’t have treats in the house anymore. It removes the temptation entirely. It’s better to do that ultimately because I know I won’t just eat 1-2 biscuits, I’ll eat the whole packet.

I think in a way this is the wrong question. Whenever anyone on MN brings up the question of "food noise" and the like, we get some normal-weight people saying they do have it and it's a constant battle to resist, but also quite a lot more seeming a bit nonplussed by the question and saying it's not a struggle for them to avoid overeating, they don't have food noise, sometimes just "don't feel like" eating the wrong stuff etc. It never used to occur to me that this could be the case - genuinely thought that slim people must be fighting this battle every minute of every day. But now I'm on Mounjaro I get it. I'm still about a stone away from the "healthy weight" bracket but I'm thinner than I was - and I have a thin person's brain. Food noise gone; I still like food but it just doesn't preoccupy me like it did. I don't need a motto or mantra to get me to resist things - there's no resistance needed. As many other users of WLI have said, you just go, "Bloody hell, is this what life is like for thin people ALL THE TIME?!".

I really used to buy the narrative you get from some snotty superior thin people about how they're all just better humans with more willpower. What a crock.

I’m slim when I exercise, rounder when I don’t because I don’t change what I eat. I started needing less and less food as I went through the menopause.

The voice in my head never shuts up. It’s exhausting. If I’m having a quiet, low stress day when I don’t have much to do, I’ll think about food very few minutes: should I eat? What should I eat? Will that spoil dinner? What shall I cook tonight? What needs to be finished before it goes off? How many times have we had chicken/meat already today? Those trousers felt quite snug this morning, should lay off the tortilla chips for a bit. Oooh, she looks lovely and slim, wish I could look like that - but she’s probably 30 years younger than me, hardly realistic. She looks more like my age, ugh but she’s way slimmer than me - I wish I could deny myself carbs like I just know women like her do. Should I start WLI drugs? Don’t be ridiculous, just get yourself back to the gym. Oooh, haven’t seen what the patisserie has this week, I’ll just pop in and get something for the DC and DH…life would be so miserable if just watched them eat the nice stuff so I’ll get something for myself and eat less dinner.

And on and on and on. It’s relentless. I wish I didn’t care so much but I want to live a healthy life and look good and eat well and enjoy food. Theo my solution, for me, is lots of exercise. So I do it.

In a restaurant I eat what i want. It is expensive to go out for meals so it is an every so often treat.

My favourite biscuits are Pistachio & clotted cream from Fortnum & Mason. At £15 a time I tell myself that I can only afford to buy a them 3-4 times a year. Therefore I restrict the number that I eat. The same with chocolate. My favourite is Venchi at £8 per bar. SO I make a bar last about a month. If someone offers me Cadbury's it really doesn't appeal.

At home I consciously think about my meals so that I add things like veg and lean meat rather than fried.

I have to say, I really think food noise doesn't exist when you eat healthily in the first place...

Eat a plate of scrambled eggs for breakfast and you will feel full for hours and not be thinking about food. Another key factor is to get out, get busy. If you're in back to back meetings, for example, you can't be eating.

Eat a bowl of sugary cereal and a pint of Starbucks frappe moka latte whatever.....and the sugar crash will be epic and you will desperately need food so it will take up your brain space. Ditto sitting on your bum, scrolling - plenty of time to stuff your face!

Very true whichhandbag. I recently switched my breakfast to scrambled egg and honestly I don't think about food until lunchtime.

I tend to get the munchies mid afternoon at work when it is quiet. when I am busy I don't think about it.

That sounds really stressful :( I have ADHD and feel this way about procrastination/doomscrolling but don't have the issue with food. But I know how it feels to have people make assumptions/judgements about something which they are probably having a totally different experience of.

I don't get food noise even if I eat utter crap and spend the entire day scrolling.

I tend to know if I have eaten too much junk and need to say no.

I have always been slim but the menopause has made it so so much harder. I have to restrict what I eat in the week and then eat what I want at weekends. I think about food a lot in the week but don’t eat much. I suspect the modern phase is ‘food noise’. I do actually tell myself the Kate Moss quote, as I love clothes and fashion, it sometimes helps me eat less. It’s not easy though.

I don't get food noise either but my point was - rather obviously I thought -, for those who do, there might be obvious reasons for it and they might be able to stop it!

“Do I like those biscuits?”

“What looks tastiest on the menu?”

I will sometimes order a side salad or some bread if the description of a dish sounds like it’s missing enough veg or carbs. That’s about as deep as my thoughts go at a restaurant.

Same, this just isn't a thing for me.

Have the takeaway, but dont let the diet go out of the window afterwards. That was the key for me. Otherwise it can be very bleak. Dont turn the diet into a punishment.