Hold on... is this how "normal" people feel all the time?

[Wildewheat]

I no longer think about food every minute of the day.

I eat a tiny cake then don't want any more.

I leave chocolate in the cupboard untouched for days or weeks - I don't want it.

I eat, notice I'm full then want to stop eating.

I only think about food when I'm hungry.

When I am hungry, I don't want junk food - I actually want "proper" food.

My mind is so quiet.

I've struggled with my weight since puberty. Feeling like this, I can totally see why so many people had no idea why it was so hard and why they'd say things like "just eat less and move more". They must have thought I was mad, just doing something that ruins my health for years when it's so easy not to.

This has also really annoyed me and I really wish I'd been able to experience this years ago. It also makes me wish I could explain how hard it is to people who've only felt this their whole lives.

I'm a healthy weight and I have all the 'food noise' problems. The only thing that quietens it for me is when I succeed in keeping on a low-carb diet for a couple of weeks. Only then do I experience something of the good, peaceful relationship with food described in the OP.
So I think that (for me at any rate) the food noise problem is to do with the bad effects of carbs on blood sugar levels. My best guess is that, for whatever reason, some people are more prone to those carb-related blood-sugar problems than others (regardless of whether they are a healthy weight or not), and these are the people who experience constant cravings.

For me there is also the psychological fallout from years and years of worrying about weight, trying to diet, alternating between excessive restriction and overeating. All those bad habits reinforce the din of 'food noise'.

I've never been overweight and come from a family of eaters who have been blessed with genetics that stop us getting really fat. I have however hit peri now and am am putting on weight around my stomach and heading towards being overweight.

Food noise was never a problem for me before, I love food and could eat it with no consequence. Now that I need to control what I eat more I've been experimenting and the things that silence the noise for me are low carb eating and/or eating non processed foods. I now think the food noise problem we have is related sugar and processed food. I'd love to know if there is anyone that eats an unprocessed and mostly low sugar diet who gets food noise.

I’m not overweight and have a healthy BMI and think about food all of the time and eat what I want. I think the difference perhaps is I don’t like the sensation of feeling overly full. I have a natural cut off that happens before I hit that point and I just don’t feel hungry anymore. My DH has always struggled with his weight and always eats until he gets that over-expanded full feeling because that is when he feels fed.

Happy to join you all. I took Ozempic in 2024, lost 50lb then stuff happened and I stopped taking it. Was in a pretty bad place mentally after both parents passed away.regained the 50 and another 10. Started Wegovy about 3 months ago and have lost 17lb. Starting weight 245, CW 228 , GW 140. When I lost 50lb before I only needed 0.5mg but I go not effect until I took 1mg this time. Hoping to keep going for the long haul now! Hit 50 and my goal weight next year

No. I constantly think about food. Can never turn down a Chinese takeaway, love a drink and a snack. Terrible relationship with the stuff. Was extremely sporty until my 30s, so it never mattered. As soon as I stopped sport, and filled more of that time with eating, I put weight on.

Now I have a happy balance.

I know, from past experience, that if I don't keep it in check (eat less) and exercise (move more) then I'll get fat.

If I have a naughty weekend, I make myself pay the price with my diet/gym the week after.

No issue with anyone using the jabs, why not? But you're not losing weight on them, something is losing weight for you. When you have to stop, for whatever reason, the weight will come back and you'll feel twice as bad.

Unless you are profoundly disabled, there isn't a human being on earth who won't lose weight from eating less and moving more.

A lot of people like me (T2 diabetic) will likely be on them or one of their successors for life.

But that is fine, I have reached the tablet taking age anyway. My immune system hates me and keeps trying to find new and exotic ways to kill me.

The semaglutide and tirzepatide medications are a way of managing conditions not curing them.

There are lots of factors at play in why some people become obese and some don't. The new medications are helping some people.

Lots of people experience 'food noise' but it's like colours, we don't see/hear what others do.

My BMI is 19. I don't think that's normal and I'm pretty sure I'm not normal (generally) 🤣 but I don't think about food much and if I put on a few pounds I cut back for a few days until I'm back to my preferred weight

I think food addiction is an addiction the same as any other. It’s a complex issue.

I also think some people have slower or faster gastric emptying and that affects their hunger.

I know what you mean OP and I experienced this through Keto: exactly the same effect. Food
noise - gone!

Have you got ADHD? I have and I have read that it’s a form of sensation seeking; it’s not even a comfort thing.

I'm slim and I hardly ever think about food beyond occasional cravings for chocolate, so yes this is what it feels like for me.

When I was pregnant and breastfeeding I remember being amazed at how hungry I was and thinking I'd never been that hungry before but I still didn't get the food noise.

My MIL has always struggled with her weight and says that I have great willpower around food, but the truth is I just don't have a big appetite and get full quickly, there's nothing virtuous about it for me.

I have known people in my life who have seemed genuinely ambivalent to food. I’m not one of them but I’ve also never been overweight. I think (like most things in life!) there is a spectrum of how much people want to eat and how good they are at resisting. I wouldn’t say that I think about food all the time but I do think about it a lot. It’s not really a negative thing for me now (it was when I was Lyon her), these days I am able to treat food less emotionally. I do want to overeat frequently (and sometimes I do) but on the whole I eat ok and do an ok job of keeping everything in check.

it sounds like you are really benefiting from the jabs which is great news 😊

My mum has been a healthy weight all her life and seems to think about food a lot. If we go on holiday or for a day out, the first thing she plans is where, when, and what we will eat. We're going on a train later, for an hour, she's packing sandwiches because she will be bored, so she might as well eat for something to do.

Honestly, from what I've read, GLP1 meds seem to emulate my attitude towards food, rather than a healthy attitude. I was diagnosed with an ED as a young teen and have struggled ever since. I'm scared for our teens and young people if obsessing about protein and calories, and struggling to eat 3 small meals a day, and never wanting cake, is what we are teaching them is normal. It's not. It is, however, the way every single person I have ever been in therapy groups with acts towards food.

Healthy people, from what I understand, eat. They enjoy food, they look forward to their favourite treats. The difference between them and ED people (I include binge eaters and obese people in that) is that they make healthier choices the majority of the time and think of cake and snacks as occasional treats.

Do you think sport helped you be more ‘logical’ about food? I had a terrible relationship with food when I was younger but I started doing a lot of endurance exercise in my 30’s so food became much more about fuel in my body. I don’t do nearly as much now (2 small kids) but I still have a pretty good relationship with food and am able to control my weight without it being a massive deal.

I’m slim and always have been. I don’t think about food that much and some of the descriptions of ‘food noise’ on here are totally fascinating to me.

But thinking of it as normal and not normal is wrong. It’s just different.

No I’m not over weight and I think about food a lot. I have to control myself around sweets or control the sweet stuff by not having it in the house.

I really like vegetables though, and I hate the feeling of having overeaten. I also gain weight in a weird way where it all goes on the tops of my thighs first and feels really uncomfortable.

I try to stay in a certain weight range and if I go a few pounds over I will do intermittent fasting to go back into the range that’s normal for me.

@Wildewheat I could have written exactly the same. It has changed my life and in a way I am angry that this treatment wasn’t available 30 years ago because my life would have been so different.
Being severely overweight limits so much due to societal prejudice and the consequent effect of self esteem.

I think those who say they too think about food constantly but have never been severely and chronically overweight are experiencing a different level of problem because those of us who have suffered extreme fatness all their lives pre mounjaro are in another category altogether.

Non chronically and severely overweight people continually think that we are somehow weaker / more selfish / lazier than them and that if they can control their eating so can we.

I always find it bizarre when this same thinking is not applied to anorexia.
Nobody would be saying - well I worry about getting fat but I manage to eat enough.

Ditto nobody says to anorexic people - it’s simple, just eat more and exercise less.

Mumsnet is a place where I read a lot of women talking about how they spend their entire lives in a battle to keep their calorie intake low - often quite frighteningly low. Reading threads on here definitely gives me the impression that many women routinely skip meals and eat very little and are constantly, continuously hungry but refuse to give into it. I often see phrases here expressing that particularly post-menopause, women only 'need' a small amount of food, often 1000 calories or below.

I think that if people are having to restrict so intensely that they are always hungry in order to be a 'healthy weight' then something is wrong - either physiologically, or with what we consider a healthy weight in the first place. BMI categories are fairly arbitrary, women in the overweight category have a protective effect going into old age and live longer and anyone eating a VLCD is denying their body of proper nourishment and putting themselves in danger of osteoporosis and nutritional deficiencies.

So I think, OP, you will get a lot of answers from healthy weight people who really do struggle with hunger on a daily basis. I don't know how anyone would identify how 'normal' people feel about food. For those of us who grew up in the 90s and early 00s, we experienced an extremely toxic diet culture that has truly damaged a lot of us. I grew up convinced I was fat and that being fat equated to utter worthlessness. In retrospect, I can see what terrible messages I was absorbing and how tightly it wove into my psyche and my attitude towards food and eating.

Whether I was fat or not then, a lifetime of reckless and irresponsible diets (the Special K diet, anyone? Slim fast? Limiting to 600 calories a day because 'nothing tastes as good as skinny feels?) certainly made me fat - because diets don't work, because they make almost everyone gain weight long term.

Like you, OP, I have OCD and eating became a self-soothing activity for sure. The respite that Mounjaro has given me from that is a peace I can't remember ever knowing. I went on my first diet aged nine. I wonder now whether the 'food noise' (I also hate that term!) would never have grown so deafening had I not learned to deny and suppress and fight against my appetite from such a young age. To eat according to appetite now on MJ - to eat intuitively and to find that works because I want to eat three meals a day of fresh, balanced, nutritious food that replenishes and satisfies my body - that's a revelation to me. For me, MJ divests me of shame and fear and hopelessness when it comes to eating. I often think this is because I now eat 'normally' but I don't know if it really is normal to eat three nourishing meals a day. It certainly feels good for my mental and physical health! And I've lost nearly five stone doing it.

So your post really resonated with me, OP, and i recognise what you're saying about how you feel - but I think we live in a world that has warped the concept of 'normal' when it comes to food, weight and health. It's tempting to think the norm should be eating intuitively according to appetite, stopping when full and being satisfied by a balanced diet without being obsessive or restrictive or anxious or guilty or full of shame. But I don't know how many people experience that! I know I have only experienced it on MJ in my 40s and never in my life beforehand.

I think we all have different ideas of what “constantly” means. For example, before I started the jabs I would wake up ravenous every morning (and often in the middle of the night as well). I’d feel extremely unwell unless I gave myself a large, filling breakfast and then would go back to feeling starving again an hour or two later. I fought really hard to make sure that what I did eat was healthy but the fact remains that I could eat a lot. And every time I ate a healthy choice it felt like a huge hardship and the minute I let my defences down with a takeaway or whatever I would eat a ridiculous amount.
I’ve not been on the jabs for long but already I wake up not needing breakfast immediately. I can feel full before my plate is clear. I can go between meals without feeling desperately hungry. It is so eye-opening, I had no idea this was possible.
For the PP who asked what happens after the jabs, you’re right. I can only imagine this is a long term commitment which is scary but the alternative (becoming even more obese) is even worse.

That's how I am most of the time BUT if I'm stressed, sleep deprived or it's a specifix time in my cycle, then foooooooood is all I want and think about. I'm not particularly slim, and I used to have terrible body image as a late teen/young adult, did loads of really shitty, drastic diet, only to put weight back on etc. Age 30 I promised myself I would never diet ever ever ever again - I'm now almost 40 and so much happier for it.

My BMI as always been in the healthy range, around 21-22 but I do eat a lot of junk like cake and chocolate, what I don't really eat are large meals like fish and chips, large pasta dishes or piles of savoury titbits as I don't really like them, I have a sweet tooth and eat a lot of chocolate but my meals are small and what you would probably call healthy. I prefer going for cake and coffee than having a meal out. I am probably not as healthy as I look

Ditto nobody says to anorexic people - it’s simple, just eat more and exercise less

I agree with this, to a point, although I would argue that while it is less socially acceptable to tell someone with anorexia to just eat than it is to tell an obese person to just stop eating, it does happen. I've had times in my life where patrons of the bar I worked in brought sandwiches into work for me because they thought they could and should force me to eat.

I do believe that most people who struggle with obesity have an ED and that it should be treated as such, which would be via a mix of dietary advice and therapy (and forced inpatient care for those suffering to the extreme). Severe obesity is a mental illness, not a weight issue.

I live food but particularly as I’ve gotten older I seek out healthy, nutritious but delicious food. OK a bar of chocolate is lovely but my body doesn’t ask for it. I think the mind is both a wonderful yet powerful thing and urges to eat are real for so many. It’s how you deal with those urges. I personally don’t believe that every overweight person simply can’t fight those urges? It becomes a process of retraining the brain. I think these weight loss drugs tap into this ability to rewire the brain but I also think a person is capable of doing this off their own steam.

Hmmm, I stop eating when I’m full and wouldn’t eat more than one bit of cake at a time, but if there is chocolate in the house it will be gone pretty quick! I do think about food a lot and will be irritable is a meal time is delayed, but I wouldn’t say I obsess.

My partner is on Mounjaro and at the moment I am out eating him quite substantially.

I am a low (but healthy range) weight/BMI. I can honestly say that I don't spend all my time thinking about food and that it's easy to eat in moderation (including some of whatever I fancy).

But...

What's interesting is that, at my highest (non healthy range) weight I was eating very unhealthily, was utterly addicted to chocolate and takeaways and I was often eating past the point of feeling full. Food definitely took over my thoughts.
The combination of fat and sugar, in particular, has been scientifically proven to be highly addictive. It took a long time to "wean off" the chocolate in particular and I ended up going cold turkey in the end. Until that point, I'd often be thinking about the next dinner or when I could buy more chocolate.

Nowadays, I eat whatever I fancy, in moderation, however I don't feel particularly disciplined about it as such... it's just habit. Once I'd had a clean break from foods that I found highly addictive and was more used to eating only until I was full, it became easier to just eat a little of what I fancy (or a lot, as a one off!) as there's a natural cut off (feeling full) and I don't feel addicted. Because I eat less in general, I feel full earlier.

The other interesting thing is that as I ate more healthily, I stopped craving unhealthy foods so often, and started to notice how they made me feel slightly unwell (sluggish, or spiking blood sugar, etc) if I did eat them, so that informs choices too.

The old line "eat less, move more" over-simplifies things. It forgets that food is often an addiction and that you actually need to re-train yourself to not only eat less, but eat the right (non addictive) things.

Since all the talk of food noise, I’ve chatted about it with friends and family. It seems many people think about food a lot but lots of them still don’t overeat and aren’t overweight.

Some people give into it and claim it’s too hard not to but I don’t believe that. Distraction, meditation, exercise etc are all good ways to help any sorts of intrusive thoughts. I use these methods as I didn’t want to be fat, unfit and unhealthy. The thought of increasing my chances of getting certain illnesses also made me committed to wanting to deal with the intrusive thoughts

So no, I don’t think it’s a case of other people just not thinking about food, although I do think some people would like that to be the case, as they can then use it as an excuse for them not sorting out their diet and health and say it’s not their fault, they couldn’t help it etc. I think the truth is that lots of people deal with ‘food noise’, they just find a way of managing it because they don’t want to be overweight and unhealthy.