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.

That’s true. I don’t remember ever being excited about dinner, eating out was a fairly rare thing and it was either Pizza Hut or Beefeater for (rump, slightly chewy!) steak.

My parents bought enough crisps and Clubs/Penguins for our packed lunches and no more (with 3 kids to feed that probably still felt like a lot!). We’d have the odd chocolate digestive but otherwise pudding was fruit or yogurt (I’d rather go without!)

My kids get an endless array of meals from around the world, snacks galore, homemade cake/brownie/tiramisu whenever they so much as hint that they’d like one! Fortunately none of them are overweight (middle DS has always been on the chunky side but he goes to the gym so loses and gains regularly depending on the season)

I on the other hand am vastly overweight eating as they do. Tempted to try WLI but terrified about bounce back when I stop. I have underactive thyroid and struggle to lose weight even on low carb diets. I had covid a while ago and ate virtually nothing for a week and I put on 5lb! I have chronic pain and fatigue so don’t move as much as I know I should. WLI feels like the only way I’ll ever be able to deal with this but being on it for life sounds scary and expensive!

My bmi is currently 26 but it has been a lot lower and all my life I have thought of food a lot. No way does a bar of chocolate stay unopened. I think lots of none obese people think about food too.

I don’t remember ever being excited about dinner, eating out was a fairly rare thing and it was either Pizza Hut or Beefeater for (rump, slightly chewy!) steak.
My parents bought enough crisps and Clubs/Penguins for our packed lunches and no more (with 3 kids to feed that probably still felt like a lot!). We’d have the odd chocolate digestive but otherwise pudding was fruit or yogurt (I’d rather go without!)

Exactly this! We were never allowed to eat the lunchbox food outside of school lunches and we never ate out apart from on holiday. Takeaways were not a thing and a Friday night "treat" meal was a Findus French Bread Pizza, which size-wise was the equivalent to a single slice of Domino's!

Of course it’s perfectly normal to think about food all the time. We are evolved from hunter gatherers whose whole existence would have been to source food to stay alive. A lot of the yearly ritual celebrations are around farming, harvesting and preserving food to sustain us over winter. It’s in our DNA.

Unfortunately this is where our human bodies come up against easily available, calorie laden, UHP foods and increasingly sedentary lifestyles.

I guess the key is to go back to our natural state of consuming whole foods and in the equivalent quantities of the energy we burn.

I can relate to this. My mum was a terrible cook when it came to dinners (her baking, cakes and so on was excellent and she made the best apple pie in the world but she couldn't cook savoury food) and my 70s/80s childhood consisted of bland, watery stews; grey, rubbery mince; underdone potatoes, overdone vegetable etc. All quite healthy, it just had awful texture didn't taste of anything.

It was a revelation to me in my teens when I started going to friends' houses and sharing a normal dinner (as opposed to party food) to find that an everyday dinner could actually be enjoyable - I remember being served perfectly cooked pasta with green pesto by a friend's mum who could cook and thinking it one of the best things I had ever tasted.

It's probably influenced me in a predilection for unhealthy food as an adult because as a teen, before I learned to cook but when I was old enough to buy food for myself, I turned to junk food instead of the unappetising meals on offer at home, and I still see that junk as comforting now, although I'm perfectly capable of cooking healthy food to a reasonable standard.

I am slim (probably underweight) and I think about food all the time. I don't buy snacks that I like as my willpower isn't great.

I think the term "food noise" is very descriptive, more accurately descriptive than 'intrusive thoughts' and very different from 'cravings'. I don't particularly like or dislike it and find it pretty unoffensive.

There are going to be slim people who have a level of food noise, and have to work to stay slim, and there will be people with food noise, perhaps the same or a different level, who no matter how hard they have tried they will never be able to overcome it.

Whether that is due to physiological or psychological differences (both of which GLP1 treatment helps support) we should be focusing more on the toxic food environment that is the root cause of this obesity epidemic that is requiring medical interventions rather than unhelpfully nitpicking the words people choose to try to express their symptoms or challenges.

I totally agree. Even a gastric sleeve 8 years ago didn’t stop the thinking about food all the time, I simply couldn’t fit much food in. So after putting on a couple of stone last year I did Mounjaro from January and had lost it by the beginning of April. I’m now on a maintenance dose which I plan to stay on and it’s wonderful to think of healthy food only when I am actually hungry.

I’m sort of in between the two. I don’t think about food constantly. But I also don’t find it easy to resist junk food and if there’s a chocolate cake in the cupboard I probably will eat it! I tend to just avoid buying that kind of thing, which helps.

I’ve always been “normal” BMI but sometimes at the higher end, like 23 or 24.

The thing about food noise is that when you diet, especially if it is strict or restrictive, the food noise becomes a food scream and much more intrusive.

That's where the weightloss jabs come in. The silence all that (albeit to varying degrees between individuals), which really helps people to eat healthily and proportionately.

I’ve never been above 60Kg so not super skinny but by no means fat.
I can honestly say it’s not ‘normal’ to constantly think about food… I get cravings, I get hungry, I get full but there’s hours when I don’t give food a second thought every day!

Which isn’t normal..

I don’t know if the injections would help me. I’d be interested to know ethereal anyone like me that it’s worked for. I’m not always hungry but I love the taste of food and I also grab for something when I’m stressed. For me food is a comfort blanket. For these reasons I eat too much.

This. I’ve been a healthy, steady weight (60kg, 5’6) for all of my adult life. No, I don’t think about food all the time and there are days where sometimes nothing really appeals. Likewise, there are days where I do get cravings and sometimes overindulge on rubbish. I generally eat well but of course keep stuff like chocolate, crisps etc in the house. It all balances itself out.

If I’m hungry then only ‘proper’ food (ideally low UPF, home cooked) will satisfy me. Endless junk just leaves you hungrier and wanting more

No. I constantly think about food. When people started talking about food noise, it really resonated with me. My parents often used to say - ‘do you not think about anything other than food!?’

I am able to (largely) be disciplined more often than I’m not. I don’t know why that is. My BMI is considered healthy, and I can generally gain or lose weight in accordance with my fitness goals. Again, it’s not a lack of food noise but a lot of willpower.

But I don’t believe the jabs simply reduce food noise (and therefore also don’t believe those on them simply lack willpower). I think it’s an oversimplification. If that alone were the reason people struggled to maintain a healthy weight, then talking therapies would be more successful.
I think actual appetite comes into it and lots of other complicated stuff as well as health conditions.

And I’d like to be super clear, I fully support the weightloss jabs & those who use them, even though they’re not suitable for me. But to your original point, no, I’ve no idea what you’re talking about when you say ‘not constantly thinking about food’ 🤣🤣

I'm sorry OP but I think you're wrong. I'm a normal healthy weight because I constantly watch what I eat and am very careful. I would love to eat carbs and whatever I want, but the simple reality is that if I did, I would be overweight, so I don't. I still get cravings and food noise, just like you but I don't give in to them.

Yes my daughter is like this. Size 4. Only eats when hungry. Doesn’t obsess over food can take it or leave it.

I think about food all the time. When I was younger, I was very overweight, and I have spent the decades since I lost the weight struggling to keep it off. I would love to be able to turn off the food noise!

Depends what you mean by normal.

If you mean people of a healthy BMI, then no. Maybe some, but definitely not all.

I have struggled with food noise and a temptation to eat and overeat all my life. My whole life has been dominated by a desire to eat and constant calories counting and excessive exercise and food noise. I've never been more than a size 14 and generally been a 12.

My husband is slim and never thinks about food. Can leave chocolate in the cupboard for months.

My oldest son is (a little bit) overweight. He eats incredibly healthily, never thinks about food, happily leaves sweets and chocolate in the cupboard. Still has all his Halloween chocolates and candy from october.

My youngest is slim. He eats everything and anything. Has a v sweet tooth and is just like me in that he cannot leave chocolate or cake and loves it all. He's v skinny and eats twice as much as his older brother.

I don't think you can look at someone and make assumptions about what their inner world is like or if they are not suffering as you are.

I am now on mj and have lost loads of weight. But best of all, I no longer experience food noise and can leave chocolate on the side. I now know what it's like for my husband and oldest son now to just leave stuff and not fancy stuff.

It doesn't matter how big or small we are. Some people just seem more plagued with all this food noise and compulsion to eat and others don't so much.

I’m glad you’re feeling more in control OP. I must admit to giving these jabs some thought myself as I really struggle food noise and emotional eating. I don’t get why people are taking exception to the term food noise. To me it’s not the same as cravings because I think cravings are a physical thing. I don’t always have to physically crave food to want to eat it. In fact, I can feel positively full and still want it but that’s my mind talking not my body! And I can see why someone with OCD like yourself might want to distinguish it from intrusive thoughts.
I’ll probably get roasted for this but all the people saying they think about food all the time but are still a healthy weight- well congratulatIons to you! By saying that OP they are feeling very sanctimonious about what marvellous self control they have despite the fact they apparently think of food all the time. They obviously don’t. At least not in the way that people who struggle with their weight do.

Yes i am literally the same, if it wasn't for the fact that i don't want to be over 57 kg i would eat all the time . I go to sleep and already think whats for breakfast, i have food noise always except for when i am asleep, its very tiring.

My BMI is currently 19, but I’ve been both very underweight and slightly overweight. My food noise was at its worst when I was very underweight. I think willpower has become a dirty word when talking about food and weight, but if you take the ‘virtue’ from the word, it makes sense that different people have different capacities to control their eating, regardless of the background food noise. When I was suffering from an eating disorder in my late teens, I was right into all the ‘pro Ana’ websites etc and had some really toxic friendships revolving around unhealthy weight loss. Ultimately though, I actually didn’t have the ‘willpower’ to get to the extremes, even though I desperately wanted it at the time. Food consumed my thoughts, and at some point I reached the end of my ability to ignore the food noise and restrict my eating. There are probably two separate continuous variables in individuals - the amount of food noise and then the ability to control intake.

i also think a history of dieting and restriction can impact food noise. I’ve recently had to gain weight, as my weight dropped on ADHD medication. I was needing to eat around 2750-3000 calories a day, and interestingly found my food noise completely disappeared. It was like knowing I had to eat 6 times a day (7 if you count desert separate to dinner) meant I never actually needed to think about food!

I haven't always been like this - what you describe as normal is how I was before I got fat and had problems with food. So I would say yes, that it more typical of a healthy lifestyle.

I'm not overweight, BMI 21 just now. But the food noise is constant. The only way I can keep my weight anything like at a sensible level is to ignore ignore ignore, but it's hell. I'm constantly thinking what I'm going to eat tonight, planning meals, looking forward to meals. If I 'let go' I can gain a stone in a couple of weeks - I never seem to feel full and quite often feel so hungry that I am lightheaded. If I start eating I find it hard to stop.

I would LOVE to have the food chatter turned off. I have ADHD, so my brain is a noisy place at the best of times, but the food noise is the worst and I envy those on weight loss jabs who are finding it helps.

I'm normal according to your description BMI 21.5 I do intuitive eating and always have and always stop when I'm full. I have a small appetite naturally and only eat once daily but this does include daily chocolate( 1 180g bar lasts me 3 days)