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 completely agree! I suffer from generalised anxiety and intrusive thoughts flood my brain constantly and have nothing to do with food. They're also not just thoughts you don't want to think about, they are actuall horrible, frightening, flight or fight mode triggering thoughts. They can be crippling, prevent me from doing normal tasks (going to the supermarket for example) and at my worst, push me to OCD behaviours.

I think it's great when we use new vocabulary for things that used to be denigrated or not recognised. It can make people feel seem and give them the words to confidently explain what they experience. I think food noise is one of them.

I think about food a lot and struggle to leave chocolate in the cupboard etc, but am slim. I reduce food noise by (a) avoiding UPF as much as possible - I definitely feel full after porridge, non-UPF bread etc in a way that I don't with other foods, (b) exercising almost every day (20-30min workout on YouTube in the morning, mostly strength training with dumbbells) and (c) drinking several cups of coffee each day and plenty of water.

I think that different people have different food noise levels but also different people have different metabolisms. So obesity results from high food noise levels and a metabolism where you gain weight easily. So I have every sympathy with obese/overweight people, think the injections are a very good thing and hope also that safety etc continues to improve 😊

I think it depends how much hardcore dieting people have done, especially from a young age. It wrecks your relationship with food, and your body reflects that. IME.

(I meant to add that although I have a certain level of food noise that I have to try to resist a lot of the time, I do believe that other people have higher levels than me so I can see how that would be harder to ignore. But I just wanted to explain that it isn't as simple as everyone who isn't overweight not having any food noise).

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.

This is interesting to me @sHREDDIES19 as if a person is capable, then why is it that you think they don't do it? People don't like being fat. I was intensely miserable about my weight and I didn't feel good physically or mentally. I had a lot of motivation to 'rewire my brain' but I couldn't achieve it.

I have, throughout the course of my life, lost weight many times. I have done every diet and healthy eating plan and 'way of eating' and 'lifestyle change' and exercise regimes that you can think of. My brain never rewired. I could manage months of discipline, of fasting or following meal plans, getting up at 6am to go running or to the gym, following every rule of whatever plan I was doing. I would lose weight - when you add it all up, across my life I must have lost ten or more stones before Mounjaro (not all in one go). I would always, inevitably, put it all back on and more. I believe the statistic is something like 95% of dieters gain the weight back within three years plus extra. So I am not an outlier. Why couldn't I rewire my brain? Why did none of those changes stick? I get why the extreme diets were unsustainable, but none of the moderate ones that call themselves 'changing habits' or 'learning healthy strategies' did either.

Mounjaro really truly has rewired me; the difference is physiological and powerful. I don't believe this was achievable any other way, based on decades of personal experience.

I think the difference is akin to those (like me) who manage mild depression with going for walks in nature, for example. I have sought help and been diagnosed with depression in the past and didn't need antidepressants. Mindfulness and exercise really worked for me and are strategies I can still use when it rears up again.

Other people do need antidepressants. Antidepressants can make them capable of doing mindfulness or walking etc, they correct an imbalance in the brain and give people the help they need to manage the condition.

I feel there is a parallel with Mounjaro. It makes something that is impossible for some and manageable for others achievable for those who could not do it.

I think telling people who are very unhappy about their weight and stuck in a hopeless situation that they have tried and failed to improve many times that they should just eat less and move more is akin to telling a depressed person to just go for a walk and try journalling. Some of us need the medication to be successful and it's not a moral failing or 'an excuse'.

It’s a fallacy that ‘normal people’ have no food noise. I do think very overweight people probably have more but your average person certainly has hood noise and just tries really really hard to limit what they eat.

I've always struggled with my weight (not excessively, just a stone or 2 up and down, vary between 12/14) and I'm short so it shows.

I've spent my life thinking about food, all day everyday, trying to diet, waking up regretting what I ate yesterday etc. Its been constant inner turmoil. I was anorexic as a teen and it's taken me 30 years to get to this place. I think of myself as a recovering anorexic now - it will always be with me but i am conquering it.

Lately, something has shifted and I'm much more settled. Possibly my age and stage in life but I'm finding it so much easier to listen to my body and eat what i want, when I want it - and make healthier choices. I've haven't lost much weight but I don't care, I feel happy, content and life is easier all round because of it.

I don’t think depression and food cravings are comparable.

Things like meditation take practice, exercise also requires hard work and effort. To learn to be able to distract your mind, again, it can take significant effort and time. Some people persist and others give up. The consequences of being overweight, unfit and unhealthy were too big for me to give up and the time and effort I give are worth it. Some people give up easier than others for various reasons.

I find the more you restrict food, the louder the noise gets.

I think a lot of how you manage food comes down to what types of food you eat and what type of food you were raised on. As PP has pointed out, sugar and fat are physically addictive.

If you're eating a lot of processed food, you are going to have intense cravings, they were literally designed in a lab by scientists to make us crave them. I find that when I eat white bread, I get a lot hungrier than when I eat salad and veg or seeded bread.

My exact experience too.

Also means I can cook nutritious meals as not greedy for a quick fix so we are benefitting from rainbow of vegetables rather than beige.

Has meant i have to make a menu plan and shopping list as nothing on the supermarket shelves jumps onto the trolley like it used to!!!

Well, I do know that Things like meditation take practice, exercise also requires hard work and effort. To learn to be able to distract your mind, again, it can take significant effort and time. because, as I mentioned, I did those things to manage my mild depression. They worked for that but didn't work in helping me to lose weight and manage my relationship to food.

My point is, it worked for you. You put the effort in and got results - being able to maintain a healthy weight through that hard work. But some of us also put in that effort and hard work but weren't successful. Your assumption is that anyone who fails at what worked for you hasn't tried as hard as you tried. If they had, they would have succeeded too, right?

Well, no. There are many things in life where hard work and effort leads to success for one person but not another. Have you ever tried very hard at something and still failed? I know I have. And the things I've worked hard at doing and succeeded in, I see other people try just like I did and not achieve the same result. I used to be a teacher; I know the value of effort and hard work but I have also seen that as hard as some people try, there are things they cannot accomplish. It happens to all of us at some point in our lives.

Telling fat people to try harder on the assumption that they just haven't bothered so far is very narrow-minded. You will find that a lot of fat people are very aware of the negative health impacts and are very unhappy with their weight - i know this was true for me. But with all the knowledge, understanding and desire to change, some of us still kept failing (or succeeding only temporarily) until we started Mounjaro.

So many people who aren’t on WLI who just think people need to be more disciplined. Honestly I question why you feel the need to say this and why people who aren’t on WLI and don’t intend to, frequent this board so much. The advice isn’t helpful, you’re not superior.

I dont get food noise either. Neither does my mum and we’re both very slim.

I love food too and bake because shop bought cakes just taste of bicarb to me. Foods not just fuel for me. But yeah I stop when I’m full.

I think those blaming "food noise" for their weight issue are overlooking one thing: the obesity epidemic struck quickly and globally across the Western world.

If food noise was the cause, and it is something people are born with and cannot control, obesity would have been an issue since the dawn of humanity.

It's more likely that the intense cravings for fat, sugar, and salt are an addiction/reaction to ultra-processing, rather than something we're born with.

Haven’t found it even stops on the injections for me but I don’t think I’m reacting well or as other people do to them. I still think about food a lot….now it’s more like hmm am i hungry do i feel hungry? What can I eat that isn’t too much, I don’t think I have eaten enough today etc. my head chatter is exactly the same just different things. Def hasn’t stopped me wanting chocolate or sweet things etc

I didn’t notice which board it was on. It was in active. But OP asked if this is how ‘normal’ people feel so you’re going to get people who aren’t on weight loss injections commenting.

This article in today's Guardian says similar - I was particularly interested in what she says about the difference between Britain and Japan. It does go beyond a question of individual willpower.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jun/07/live-to-100-diet-exercise-long-life

I've been normal range most of my life and on the last 5 years crept up to a bit overweight. Yep, I get hungry and I want to eat. And I crave the lovely foods like I'd demolish a croissant right now if I had one. So I don't have any in the house. I force myself to eat healthier and try to ignore the cravings.
The battle is real and doesnt stop when you are under 27 BMI

I also think @Frequency that toxic diet culture plays a really significant role in the increase in obesity. I agree with you that the nature of food is a big factor, but also the warping of our relationships with appetite and our bodies fuelled by the weight-loss industry from the 80s onwards and the awful cultural messaging throughout the 90s and beyond about female bodies and weight. Going on diets makes people fatter, and in the Western world we have had a pathological and intense pressure to diet over the past four decades or so.

Agreed. I blame diet culture for my ED. There are so many mixed messages and outright lies printed in the media around food, health, and dieting, it's hard, if not impossible, to truly understand what a healthy diet/body is. Even when we had the trend of "strong not skinny" a few years ago, it was taken to the extreme by the diet industry.

Dieting made me obsessed with food, and I often felt out of control around it.

I ditched the diets and started eating intuitively and this has been incredible for me. I only think about food when I’m hungry, have zero cravings and stop eating when I’m full. I’ve lost weight without even trying and have maintained it for years.

Definitely recommend giving it a try if injections aren’t for you.

I wonder what causes some people to experience 'food noise' so intensely and some not.

Food and eating wasn't my specialist area, but I studied psychology and psychotherapy. There are theories that "food noise" could be linked to certain genes, but there are also some childhood experiences that can contribute. Examples might be having food scarcity in the home due to poverty (that definitely affected my maternal grandmother, who grew up in a former Soviet country, where they often had poor quality food, shortages and poor nutrition, she became obese after moving to the UK). A parent that is obsessed with dieting or overly restricts a child's food intake due to fears about weight gain or strictness over "healthy eating". Growing up in an abusive or chaotic home can lead some to use food as comfort, because the humans aren't comforting.

ADHD also seems to be correlated with more food noise and a higher incidence of EDs, particularly binge eating disorder. ADHDers are more likely to eat when bored for stimulation.

Physically, some nutritional deficiencies can lead to cravings and increased appetite because the body tries to get what it needs by eating more, and it still doesn't get what it needs so doesn't switch the appetite off. I think this is probably the case for a lot of people who have diets that are heavily based on processed food. It interferes with hunger and fullness signals because it's hyper palatable and doesn't take a lot of effort to eat, so you don't feel full after eating it. It's also nutritionally poor, so your body isn’t getting what it needs. It's high in salt and sugar so then you no longer want normal, unprocessed foods like fruit and veg. Especially if you already have challenges with food textures and tastes.

I don't remember ever having 'food noise' in my twenties or thirties. But I smoked. In those days everyone smoked and it was a real appetite suppressant. After giving up smoking that craving for unneeded snacks crept in.