to think “food noise” is becoming one of those phrases people hide behind rather than actually dealing with their eating habits?

[foodywoody]

I keep hearing people say they have “food noise” and that’s why they’re constantly thinking about food or snacking, but isn’t that just hunger, boredom, habit, or emotional eating dressed up in a nicer label? I’m not saying it’s not real for some people, especially where there are medical issues involved, but the way it’s thrown around now makes it sound like no one has any control over it at all.

It just feels like another way to remove any personal responsibility. Not everything needs a label. Sometimes it’s just about eating properly and getting enough protein and actually addressing emotional eating.

Oh right, gosh if only us greedy, lazy, fat people were like you.

I'll take my fat over your attitude.

I just can't even be bothered to explain how wrong you are again, feel free to read the thread.

EDIT: to add, as you haven't actually read the thread I thought I should point out that I'm NOT lazy or greedy (but I am fat). I eat a low carb vegetarian diet, I don't eat a lot & I do exercise. But I'm still fat. I have to ignore the brass band food noise otherwise I'd be the size of a double decker bus instead of 'just' fat. I'm not in WLI (I could be as I'm diabetic & over the BMI threshold to qualify) I haven't wanted to use them, but to shut this fucking brass band up I'm tempted (even if I didn't lose weigh, which I'm not sure I would)

Yes, my dad is the same. He LOVES food and loves fancy restaurants with multi-course menus, but he's also hugely focused on his health and won't allow himself to indulge in things even though I know he would love to.

I think seeing his own dad in poor health in his sixties scared him a little, in all honesty.

I’m not even overweight (any more, recently lost just over a stone) I have constant food noise.

You obviously don’t have it. Which is great so probably hard to understand it.

I do think people of older generations grew up with more emphasis on balance and restraint as a general principle. Or perhaps in your father’s case he saw someone who over-indulged and what the consequences were.

I think it was definitely the latter as he was definitely a lot more relaxed about what he ate/drank when he was younger.

His dad lived to his 90's but sadly had a lot of health issues including obesity and two types of cancer - I honestly think he just saw his 50's looming and didn't want to have the same retirement his dad did.

I couldn’t agree less with your OP. I have struggled with intrusive obsessional thoughts about food all my life. You could liken it to OCD. Once I get a craving, my inner voice will not stop tormenting me until I give in. Obviously I have tried everything under the sun to ignore it. Even hypnosis. And then I found Mounjaro and all at once, all that ‘noise’ was switched off. I could eat three meals a day and not think about food in between, like a normal person! I don’t see how you can therefore say it doesn’t exist, because it was there and then medicine cured it, so it is clearly an illness!

Never heard of “food noise”. Jeez! Another thing for neurotics and whatever label people try and give themselves to harp on about. Can society not get a grip and realise there is some self-accountability to be had, and it’s not a thing that just happens through no fault of your own. There is enough food education out there for everyone.

Ah you’ve let yourself down so much with this post.
You just totally dismissed something you’ve never heard of and so presumably know nothing about yet confidently pronounce it to be just a label used to dodge accountability.
Extraordinarily arrogant.

She doesn’t say it doesn’t exist, if you read the OP.

To me obsessive thoughts and cravings about food - is ED and addiction territory, even if this was never diagnosed.

Ignoring addictions never works, you actually have to treat them.

Eating disorders and especially anorexia is the deadliest mental illness. Hope that answers your question!

Just because we don't understand something doesn't make it so.
I have Dyspraxia and I'm sure you can't understand how it feels to have limited depth and distance perception, balance and motor skills issues and zero internal map while seemingly looking like a perfectly normal adult, but it doesn't mean it's not the case for me.

@Doingtheboxerbeat being overweight won’t come for them anymore though now WLIs are on the scene!

emotional eating or food noise. Same
thing

how do yoy suggest i deal with this?

Stand down @Aluna 'treacherous body' was a silly dramatic phrase for light-hearted effect 😂

I'm relaying MY experience of food compulsion as someone who has tried really fucking hard, controlled and said no A LOT and maintained an okay weight for a prolonged period. The only difference between you & I is that I can try WLI and you can't (legally) so I thought maybe my perspective bridged the gap a bit on this thread.

If it's important to your self esteem to tell me you think have superior self control go for it. I have no desire to make you feel bad.

Surely the main difference is that I don’t need WLIs.

It’s not really about willpower it’s more about a decision about how you want to live.

@Vroomfondleswaistcoat. I think you have just proved the point, you control what you eat. The expression didn’t exist until drugs companies wanted to sell a solution. It’s marketing speak.

self control is something we all need across our lives and seems lacking today. I’m overweight, it’s because i eat too much and know it, not lack of self control just not wanting to diet

It's looking that way isn't it, sadly.

I never understood what was meant by 'food noise' until I really struggled to lose weight. I thought it was just me being greedy. I started on mounjaro, whilst on the lowest dose it suppressed my appetite so I genuinely never felt hungry. After 2 months I started hearing the food noise, a constant thought of food, confusing food noise for hunger. This helped to clarify in my mind what was food noise and what was genuine hunger. I think its definitely psychological. Whilst on mounjaro i've tried to re-educate myself and break sugar 'addiction', healthier eating, drinking more water etc in prep for stopping mounjaro.

How exactly does putting a name to something eradicate personal responsibility 🤔
I'm gluten intolerant, if I eat gluten it gives me terrible stomach pain. Now that I've named the condition, am I no longer responsible for the pain when I eat gluten?

Literally wtf are you even talking about 🤣

It’s more than that. It’s an incessant nagging voice saying there’s a bar of chocolate in the fridge for hours on end, whether you’re near the fridge or not. It doesn’t stop until you eat the chocolate. And not just one square of it. The whole lot. And so on. Day in, day out.

This is like saying saying autism didn't exist until the word autism was invented.

Amazing post. Absolutely spot on.

ODFOD

To be fair, I think what some people describe is genuinely unbearable food noise - and then there’s ones who use it as an excuse when they’re quite capable of using will power if they wanted. And before anyone comes for me, people CAN and have lost weight and kept it off - it’s not a new concept. There will always be people who take the easy ways out and use any excuse they can in all areas of life, and I think the OP is right that those people do just use it as an excuse not to eat better and exercise when they’re perfectly capable of doing so. People do eat out of boredom and bad habits, not everything is a diagnosable issue - again, for those where it isn’t actually a problem

Why not just not buy the chocolate so it’s not in your fridge? I wouldn’t say I experienced “food noise” in the way some people on here seem to be describing it. I really think it’s something almost everyone gets. If I had a twix in the fridge it wouldn’t last long in there cos I’d keep thinking “I have a twix in the fridge that I really want to eat!” But if I had a whole bar of dairy milk I could handle having maybe 8 squares then leaving it. But the difference is I wouldn’t buy chocolate to have in the house anyway cos I know I’m like this with it! So, for people who know they can’t help themselves, yet still buy it and are obese and don’t want to be that must be something more than food noise, like an addiction to food that you have no control over. The difference with food noise is that with enough willpower you can control it. Maybe with food addiction you can’t