So this is how normal people feel about food?!

[thatsginthough]

Two days into my second week on Mounjaro 2.5.
Not once, since the day after my first jab have I actively thought about food. Mealtimes can come and go without it even triggering a thought in my head. I’ve already lost 5kg which is 15% of my target loss.
DH makes dinners so it miraculously appears. I enjoy it but after about a third of what I’d normally eat I’ve had enough. I then don’t think about snacks for the rest of the night.
Compared to before when food consumed my thoughts all day this is an absolute revelation.
I used to wonder how people could pace themselves at a buffet, not eat their entire plate in one go or sit with an open packet of biscuits on their desk. This must be how they feel. It’s amazing.

This isn’t true, everyone I know thinks about food and plans their next meal. They just don’t eat way more than they need to and exercise will power and portion control.

But have you read the other replies.
I think a lot of women think about food most/a lot of the time.
It's actually quite insulting that people think I'm thin with no effort involved

It’s ridiculous to say that other people don’t have ‘food noise’. I wake up thinking about breakfast and what I’ll have, I just don’t eat massive amounts of bacon and crap as I know the consequences and it’s not compulsory to stuff your face.

I hate this talk about "normal people".

It is completely normal, unfortunately, for vast numbers of people of all sorts of weights (especially women) to have a very troubled relationship with food, involving lots of rumination, craving,overeating, guilt. That is what our insane food landscape (super-abundance of highly addictive and unnatural foods) does to us.

Some people seem to have used the arrival of these weight loss jabs to create yet another social divide, between people with some sort of special identity and "the normals" who are assumed to be privileged in some way, lacking in challenges, and sometimes even called intolerant.

This 100%.

I think my "feeling full and satisfied" gauge has always been a bit off. To be slim when I was younger I had to stay a good deal below what I would call full and it was always an immense effort not to just carry on eating as I was enjoying it so much still.

After having two DDs and being insulin resistant with PCOS I could easily overeat by some way and convince myself I was just full. Clearly I had some restraint as I was 13 and a half stone not 20 stone. Taking MJ has made me realise why it was so hard to lose weight, because I can really only get away with eating amounts that leave me still feeling slightly bereft normally, and not that much more for maintenance.

I think it was skewed in childhood by always being required to clear my plate, I was often overfull and this became normal. So I have to go by knowing what is a reasonable portion for me to eat as my appetite is always an unreliable narrator.

I also hate the assumption that overweight people stuff their faces constantly or that you wake up and decide to have a massive bacon butty, a McDonalds for lunch and fish and chips for dinner. There are people at the extreme end, sure, but most people are still exercising restraint while being overweight. I was trying to lose weight for 15 years before I went on Mounjaro and never got near normal BMI. At least my constant effort even before then meant I weighed the same at 49 as I did at 35 and hadn't just carried on piling on weight, and had managed to stay as overweight and not obese.

I think what we are all saying is that most people are somewhere in the middle on a scale of dealing with food noise. In the UK we live in an obesogenic country and are all dealing with that every day.

Food noise isn’t just about thinking about what nice thing to have for dinner. It’s more like thinking about a biscuit in the cupboard as though it was your next fix of crack cocaine. It’s like you can feel its presence in the cupboard calling and calling to you and you know that the only way to stop it calling, the only way to make that noise be quiet, even for a moment, is to go and eat that biscuit. Then once you’ve eaten the biscuit, it’s like you send out a searching beam, radiating out from you, seeking the next “fix” and once you have identified it, then i that new thing calls back to you again, over and over, and again, you know it’s just not going to stop. And the cycle repeats and repeats endlessly.

On Mounjaro, the noise stops completely at a higher dosage. At a lower dosage, I can divert it from biscuit to apple, or nuts, and at worst, I only get two or three call and responses before I know I can’t eat anymore anyway. The noise dies down as I fill up, which didn’t always happen before.

I see it in my two sons. One has a huge huge appetite like me, the other seems to have no interest or need for food and just eats once a day
with us, with no urgency or focus- seems like a chore for him to eat!

im on MJ after 30+ years of dieting to keep at size 12. On turning 50 I put on 2 stone and the normal dieting became soul destroying. MJ has made it easy to lose the last stone (although I wouldn’t say I’m normal, I can’t eat a full meal cos I feel a bit sick). I have a bit of food noise but nowhere near like before, it’s been brilliant and I’m the slimmest I’ve been since age 18! It feels great but I know it’s going to wear off and will be temporary and I’ll go back to huge constant food noise again when I stop, which was making me quite depressed before

another downside is I’m a carer for a family member and really fed up now of having to cook all the time!

It's not normal or natural, no, this is not how healthy people feel.

But this is also normal! If I know it's there, it's in my head and it gets harder and harder to ignore. I have to move or do something else. Or just give in and inhale all the nice things until there are just the crap ones left.

I go through phases where I tell myself I just won't buy stuff like that... but then I'll go to a shop and automatically go to the cake/ chocolate aisle.

I was thinking about this, I have about two stone to lose and I was trying to figure out what was keeping me fat.

I do have sweet stuff lying around and crisps but I don’t feel a compulsion to eat it. I did used to though, my mother was mad and put me on really restrictive diets when I was a child (like you can have one mini pizza for dinner size of the rim of a mug, my psychologist said it was at a level that she would consider abusive) which led to years of binging and then starving, it’s a horrible way to live tbh so I do understand the food noise people are talking about but I think it’s a consequence of a punishing internal dialogue. I think one of the things GLP can help with is just not having that conditioning running in the background all the time.

I think for me, we generally eat healthy, I can turn down sugar, I tend to eat two meals a day during the weekdays and don’t really snack. I just tend not to know when I’m full, I still hoover up food ( it’s like I worry the food will run out or be taken away which given my background is understandable I think).

Also when you think about how many calories you actually need to maintain your weight it’s actually not a lot of difference between being overweight and a healthy weight.

TDEE at 9st 1622
TDEE at 11st 1797

Thats less than a chocolate bar so a lot of people you may think are eating tons more than you probably aren’t actually eating as much as you think they are.

My skinniest friend gets HANGRY, she just stops at the right time and walks a lot. Healthy weight people do absolutely get hungry but there are range of things they do which will make the difference between being overweight and healthy.

I’m now 3 stone less than I was at my heaviest, the difference between then and now is that I don’t have that food noise anymore. Before, even if I was going to have lunch in an hour then anxiety around hunger would lead me to grab some food in the meantime. It was almost a panic response. I wonder how many women have a fucked up relationship with food because of that first diet. Thanks mum.

Food noise is different from normal hunger feelings, having had it and then not had it (I’m not on GLP) the difference is vast. But yeah I don’t think normal weight people are all completely disinterested in food, they would be emaciated if that were the case. The difference is often just a few hundred calories whether consumed or burned and also once you start gaining weight your hormones can start working against you and repeated dieting cycles reduce your muscle mass and insulin sensitivity messing you up even more.

OP - I’ve felt exactly the same - all the temptations have gone! I’m not craving bread, potato, crisps or sweet things!
I’m almost two weeks in and it feels amazing to not feel fussed about food.
Before I would have never fancied a salad - now they’re a daily meal. My whole diet has changed.

I'm slightly different to others.
I have been overweight/ obese all my life. Last summer I went on a fairly strict diet for 8 weeks before an event and managed to lose a stone (a huge achievement for a menopausal 58 year old). But when the event was over I found that my appetite was changed. I couldn't be bothered eating much and only really ate because I enjoyed eating with DH.
DH died suddenly in January and my appetite has completely gone. I have literally no inclination to eat. I can eat and do make myself eat but it's a chore.
I feel awful. I try and make healthy food choices but I don't feel healthy. To be honest if I didn't have my dog to walk (I need to eat to be strong enough and not get dizzy) and the constant nagging of my family I could see myself going days without eating.
It's not a good feeling. Everything has slowed down (even my resting heart rate). This can't be the norm for every slim person.

I recognise what you are saying exactly. And a friend of mine who just started on jabs was actually crying when she described the silence in her head, how she does not need to fight the noise every second of every day.

It's not 'but everybody gets hungry' or 'but everybody thinks about food'. I have that now (been on jabs for 1.5 years). Sure I still plan dinner. I enjoy food, I snack - but it's nothing like before.

I have quizzed many of my slim friends (and DH, and DS) about this. The ones who are effortlessly slim and have never dieted, all gave me the same answer as meadowfinch above. They get hungry, they have breakfast. Then they go about their day, then get hungry again before lunch. They will of course think what and where to have, but they don't obsess about food every minute between meals. It's not the same.

No! Im a healthy weight but i think about food all the time and have to constantly deny myself. I would eat all day if I could. I love food and I love eating!

Completely agree with this. And they want to be treated as special cases, because they have no control over what they eat. I’m not talking about all overweight people - I am/was one myself but after menopause hit everything went wrong and try as I might (and I did try), the weight wouldn’t shift.

Will probably get shot down for this, but there does appear to be a certain group of people who think that because they have food noise it gives them a green card to eat…and eat…and eat. And to take no responsibility for it.

“Will probably get shot down for this, but there does appear to be a certain group of people who think that because they have food noise it gives them a green card to eat…and eat…and eat. And to take no responsibility for it.”

And anyone else who has restraint is in some way ‘privileged’ and apparently has no understanding of what it’s like to crave food.
It’s nonsense.

That sounds like how someone who takes loads of speed would feel!

I really like thinking about food. Imagining what I fancy, thinking about different versions of that meal, shall I cook it myself, get takeaway, go to a cafe? Which one? I find all that quite exciting. And then the lovely satisfying feeling of eating the thing you've been craving when you're really hungry.

If healthy-weight people never thought about food there would be little interest in cookery shows/books/classes. “Food noise” is normal.

thinking about food, being intersted in food or being hungry, having cravings for something - that all is normal. But not the same as obsessing over food every minute of every day. I've felt the difference. Oh and yes, I was normal weight most of my life while struggling with the latter, so understand restraint quite well.
Yes I believe there are plenty of other people like me. But there are also plenty of 'normal' people who actually live their lives not being food obsessed.

It's the carbs. Humans are not meant to have them in such great quantities. Reducing them naturally reduces over the top uncontrollable cravings.

So you're normal just like everyone else but eating wrong (just like most people).

I’m on Wegovy pills atm, and I’m not thinking about food the way I used to! I have to remind myself to eat ( which is normal on weight loss treatment) I’m glad to be fair, as I was always snacking or planning what to eat next!

It’s normal for about half the people in the world and not for the other half, I think. My husband can definitely go all day and not even think about food. No-one is saying that only fat people get food noise. I do think that the combination of food noise and something like pcos (or whatever they call it now) or even just menopause, really stacks the deck against someone’s ability to moderate their weight.

Agree. It's a revelation!...and makes me less ashamed that I struggled all those years. It was never about a lack of willpower. Natually slim people just don't think about food all day or feel as hungry. Who knew?!