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.

Tell me you’ve never experienced food noise without saying you’ve never experienced food noise…

If you’ve ever had animals (or children!), you’ll know some of them could eat until puking and some simply don’t seem that bothered. Sometimes, there’s a reason, but often no reason applies. That alone tells me it’s a biological predisposition.

Our whole environmental is engineered towards eating excess calories. Frankly, it’s amazing people aren’t fatter!

And weight isn’t a reflection of moral character. Plenty of people manage anxiety/self esteem issues through food restriction. Lucky them that a negative trait reinforces a positive social concept. Much more acceptable than drugs, booze, cake, gambling or sex with randoms!

however, crack on with the faux concern. I see you.

I have a reasonably good relationship with food, don't overeat particularly, but I completely understand this concept.

We live in a world where plentiful, high-calorie food is constantly available and can be consumed with minimum prep. That's very different from our ancestors and what our bodies have evolved to cope with.

YABU @foodywoody - why is it so hard for some people to accept that hunger, satiety, metabolism, energy production, fat burning, NAD, hormone levels, cortisol production, fatty acid oxidation and everything else that goes with “being a healthy weight” is very complex and NOT just calories in-calories out.

Food noise means obsessive thinking about food - it’s depressing and soul destroying, craving food all the time, even after eating enough. It’s not the same as emotional eating or eating due to boredom. It’s an intense craving to eat, even when your body doesn’t need it.

Ask yourself why this might happen - it’s not “natural” in the sense that nature normally helps us to survive rather than be harmed. So that all points to broken or disregulated pathways somewhere in the body. We are not just “greedy bastards “!!

You might want to listen to Harvard Professor Andrew Huberman’s podcasts about NAD for example, to better understand why some people find it harder to be a “healthy weight” than others. Clue - it’s not willpower!

Food noise and emotional eating are completely different.

It's something I work with; normally it's a subconscious response to stress or feeling helpless or unhappy – to reach for something that's guaranteed to provide instant comfort as it did when you were small. It's real and it's not something you can ordinarily control at a rational level.

Personally, I think it's great that we can acknowledge that many people have actual challenges that in the old world, just saw them being written off as "lazy" or "greedy" or similar.

And its not just food noise.

I am so pleased that my ADHD son is getting the support he needs to thrive vs my ADHD brother who was labelled "naughty" and "difficult".

I love that women with significant problems with their hormones, with reproductive challenges and strugglng with peri menopause no longer are basically told, "Suck it up, it's what being a woman is - everyone else copes, why can't you" (well, sometimes, I know not all women are getting the support they need).

Giving up smoking was one of the hardest things I've ever done. ANd I think the only reason I was able to do it was because I had to do it 100%. Giving up nice food and snacking is a whole different thing because we all NEED food. I have come to realise that my desire to eat certain foods is not dissimilar to the desire I had to smoke, it's just that the habit is hard to break when it's impossible to just stop eating.

I can only address this from my own personal because I’m not a medical professional, but for me the effect mounjaro had on what we’re now calling food noise was literally like the flick of a switch.

Instantly - even on the lowest dose which I was told would not have an effect - food just became completely uninteresting to me.

I cannot express how novel this is. For my whole life I have been someone who is eating one meal thinking about the next. If there is something delicious or sugary in my house it is in my thoughts every second of the day until I have eaten it. I don’t feel satisfied until I’m stuffed, I don’t feel finished until I’ve eaten something sweet. I am thinking of food all the time. I could never pass on an offered biscuit, I couldn’t focus if I was trying to ignore a treat placed in front of me. I had a monkey with cymbals on my shoulder all the time, telling me to look for my next snack, telling me I needed salt and sugar.

Mounjaro just switched this off. I didn’t even notice at first, then on day three I realised I hadn’t eaten any lunch by 4pm and it didn’t matter to me at all. I handed out brownies to my in laws the other day on a visit and felt complete indifference to the idea of having one myself.

If you haven’t lived with the monkey on your shoulder I don’t think you can truly understand the freedom of getting rid of it. I cried with relief when I realized.

My Husband tells me this is how he feels all the time. He likes a brownie now and then but if there is a tin of them in the house he doesn’t think of them at all unless he’s specifically offered one, and even then he only wants it if he’s hungry. Mounjaro has given me the freedom and relief that he had lived with all his life.

i’m losing weight but that benefit is secondary to the pure bliss of not caring about food. If you’ve not experienced what I have you simply can’t understand it - and that’s a privilege.

Doesn’t really matter if it’s “hunger, boredom, habit, or emotional eating” - the outcome is the same. The amount of headspace thinking about food used to take up was insane. 4 months on WLI and it has taken away that constant thinking about food. It’s not even just about wanting food either - it’s also the beating yourself up for what you just ate, it’s the tracking and thinking about what you might “be allowed” to eat later even when not hungry, it’s just constant and tiring. Now I have room to think about other things - I’ve read more fiction since starting WLI than I have in about a decade, almost like it’s allowed me to find pleasure/satisfaction in other things. Can’t really explain it or how it all works.

What a delightfully goady thread 🙄always about food isn’t it

What a goady post.

I have never struggled with food issues, myself. But that’s just luck.

Who cares what you think. Food noise is a thing.

I eliminated "food noise" with a GLP1.

Since then I have been able to eat whatever I want to really and I have lost 52 kilos calmly & sanely, reduced my BMI from 41 to 24.

Before GLP1 I hadn't heard the term "food noise" but I quickly knew what it was when, for the first time in my life, my brain wasn't completely dominated by it. Its been ridiculously liberating.

"Food noise" for me is very different to/seperate from "emotional eating".

Getting rid of food noise meant I could make healthy decisions, meal after meal after meal, consistantly for 18 months, without stress, panic, deprivation etc. This is what is needed for long term weight loss.

I would say I have had "food noise" domininating my brain since at least late teens - I am now 58.

But sure OP - its just a made up marketing/social media scam I'm using as a crutch to not take responsibility for being a lifelong lardy fatty bum bum.

Well that’s more unbelievable than the original post 🫠

Yep!

There's no card. There's no jail. You're not a moral authority and no-one owes you slimness.

This is exactly my experience too. I remember the first biscuit I ate when I started taking the jabs. Previously my thought process was eat the biscuit, don't eat the biscuit, eat the biscuit, don't eat the biscuit. Then I'd eat the biscuit. I'd think omg that's delicious, must have another. Why stop there, they're delicious afteral so have another and another...till the pack was gone. But once I started the jabs, I had a biscuit, thought well that was ok, nice enough I suppose. But didn't have another. Like your DH, mine also just feels like this naturally. It's so interesting to me how people can be so different in terms of this issue. I wonder what it is.

That’s a really good explanation.

TBH the original post just sounds like “I don’t experience this thing so therefore it doesn’t exist”. Which presumably, they wouldn’t say about type 1 diabetes or schizophrenia.

I disagree personally because my hunger levels pre-kids and my hunger levels now are totally different even though I am no longer pregnant or BF. It used to be so easy not to eat, it's much harder now.

Bollocks.

Isn't it just a catch all term for everything you mention? Nothing in the term suggests it universally can or can't be controlled or managed, just that it's a psychological phenomenon that affects some people, and the causes, nature and responses will vary from person to person.

I expect so.

things people have no knowledge or experience of often just don't exist!

🙄🙄🙄

Also, because let's be honest, this is a thinly veiled attack on GLPs, what I think is completely not understood by people who don't struggle with this, is that the way many of us process food is so differenmt.

GLPs have made a huge difference to the amount I eat, how I think about food etc. Which is so so helpful and I'm so grateful. And I AM losing weight. But I'm not losing as much weight as I expected considering I'm definitely eating a lot less. And that's because I'm a peri menopausal woman who also has PCOS and insulin resistance and the reality is that the quantity of food I have to eat to lose weight is actually very very low. So on the injections, I manage that sometimes, but actually, even on them, sometimes I don't (and I probablu need to go up a dose again to try help with this).

Whereas DH has gained a few pounds recently. So he's cutting back on a few things like peanut butter and cheese but still eating insanely large portions of regular food etc, and within 6 weeks, it will all be gone.

I never knew I had food noise until I didn't! I just thought I was greedy and obsessed with food. Took WLI and there was a deathly silence where the incessant food noise had been. I've used WLI as an opportunity to try and understand where the incessant chatter comes from, what drives it. Is it psychological, is it physical (i.e. hormonal or some other brain/body chemistry thing)? Still don't know the answer, but I take a small dose of WLI, not to keep the weight off, but to stop the incessant food noise.

It is definitely a thing.

I have a question for this who are taking WLI.
I promise I’m not being judgmental or goady. I’m genuinely interested because I have food noise and find it really hard to deal with.
When you get to whatever weight it is you’re aiming for, are you intending to take a maintenance dose forever or, if not, are
you not absolutely terrified of the food noise returning?
I ask because I’ve given serious thought to WLI myself but this is the main thing that’s stopping me.
And to all of you (us) battling with food noise, I get how exhausting it is. It sucks.