How to Stop Food Noise Without Weight Loss Drugs
The term “food noise” has gained traction the last few years with the rise of semaglutide or GLP-1 agonist weight loss medications. This is because some people have described a quieting or silencing of food thoughts, aka “food noise,” when taking these weight loss drugs.
However, I am guessing this concept is probably not new to anyone who has struggled in their relationship with food and body. I know the first time I heard the phrase “food noise,” I knew exactly what it meant. I had heard that chatter in my own head for years. Many times, it made me feel out of control or guilty.
I could argue that my career in food and food related fields – chef, food product developer, recipe developer, and even nutritionist – were directly related to my food noise. I reasoned, if I am thinking about food all the time anyway, why not capitalize on it? And although I love the work that I do and have done related to food, I think, for many years, it only turned up the volume on my food noise.
I have since worked to quiet my food noise, and in many ways, embrace it. I didn’t stop my food noise with a medication, though I support your right to make a different decision about your own body. I calmed the mental chatter related to food by changing my relationship with food.
What is Food Noise?
There is not one official definition of food noise but, in general, it is the nearly non-stop thoughts about food, eating, hunger, and fullness that flit through the brain. This could include feeling preoccupied with food or constantly thinking about food, increased cravings for food, or a desire to continue eating even when physically full, to name but a few. Food noise can and often does play a role in binge eating or emotional eating.
Food Cue Reactivity
Since food noise is nothing new and we live in a culture obsessed with the size of people’s bodies, it is probably not surprising that the concept of food noise and adjacent ideas have been studied.
In scientific literature it is often referred to as food cue reactivity. This is in the same vein as habit formation, the idea that there is some kind of cue followed by a response, and a reward. In this case the food (sight, smell, or thought of it) is the cue, the response is usually eating or obsessive thinking about food, and the reward is often very short-lived, quickly drowned out in a sea of guilt and shame.
The purpose of most of the research is to understand why some people react so strongly to food cues, usually by eating, often in an emotional charged way that can include binge eating behaviors or “overeating,” more than other people. Research like this is done as a means of getting closer to a treatment to reduce the reactivity. Generally, that means creating a drug.
What Causes Food Noise?
Food noise can come from several sources like internal cues of hunger, external cues like seeing or smelling appealing foods, emotional triggers like stress, boredom, or anger, and even from dietary restrictions.
I think food noise is natural, and most humans experience it to some extent.
I also think diet culture has made food noise louder and more insidious.
Food noise, like most things related to food and bodies, is nuanced and varies from person to person.
The Root of Food Noise is Often Hunger
The reason our bodies are designed to cue hunger is because eating is required to support life. Eating food is how the body gets all the bits and bobs (aka nutrients) it needs to function – you know things like, pump your heart, breathe, move, reproduce, and fight off infections.
When food noise is looked at through this lens of survival, your food noise could be due to undereating during some or all of the day. This type of food noise can be stopped by eating.
It may be surprising with all the headlines about how Americans eat too much, but many of my clients don’t consistently eat enough throughout the day. Simply addressing eating patterns can stop food noise.
Sounds easy, right? I think it would be more accurate to say it is simple, but not easy.
Even though your body is designed to tell you when, what, and even how much to eat, most of us have been taught that we can’t trust those cues.
Diet Culture’s Role in Food Noise
We can’t escape diet culture. It is everywhere – in doctor’s offices, media, families, and food marketing and products. As children we start to internalize messages about food and bodies which shapes our body image and relationship with food for years to come. These messages often comes from well-meaning caregivers, including parents, teachers, and healthcare professionals, but as a result kids as young as 5 or 6 know about and may have even tried dieting to change their bodies.
Diet culture rules - what is healthy and what isn’t, how much we should or shouldn’t eat, or when we should or shouldn’t eat - start to replace natural internal hunger cues. These rules turn into the food police – the voice in your head that tells you if you are “good” or “bad” based on how well you follow diet rules.
The Diet Cycle Can Increase Food Noise
If you have ever dieted, you probably recognize this well-worn path.
It starts with some kind of body dissatisfaction or desire for control, which you decide to “fix” by following a diet plan. The diet plan includes deprivation be it limited calories, carbs, foods, or limited eating windows of time that at some point you just can’t take anymore.
You break the diet rules, feel like a failure, and use “failing” as proof that you need rules, that you can’t be trusted on your own. You come out of it with false hope for the future, that the next diet will be different, you will try harder, you will find the right rules for you.
And the cycle repeats again and again.
I consider failing at a diet a great success! It means your body is losing its tolerance for bullshit rules.
The natural human response to restriction or deprivation is craving, desire, and obsession. Diets set you up to fail.
You are not the problem; the diet (and diet culture) is the problem.
Intuitive Eating: A Roadmap to Food Peace
Breaking up with dieting is a little different for everyone. The messages you learned along the way likely share similarities with others – ubiquitous and wrong messages like body size equating to health and “it’s just calories in calories out” – but they are also unique to your lived experience including your family dynamics, where and when you grew up, socioeconomic status, and more.
I appreciate the intuitive eating offers a framework that has enough structure to guide people to a better relationship with food but the flexibility to adjust to each person’s individual circumstances. As I have said before, intuitive eating is a map but it is not turn-by-turn GPS directions.
Without explicitly calling it out, I have already mentioned a few principles and how they relate to food noise: honor your hunger and reject the diet mentality.
Honestly, all 10 principles can have a role in food noise but I want to highlight three more in particular.
Dismantling the Food Police
Diet culture essentially plants a bully in our head that judges our choices and leads to feelings of guilt or shame for breaking a rule. We are taught to so faithfully believe in the messages of diet culture; we hardly ever stop to question where they came from. This bully, or food police, might very well be your food noise.
With time and attention, it is possible to replace the voice of the food police with a compassionate ally.
Challenging the food police starts with observing and reflecting on actions without judgment – be curious as to why you can’t stop eating potato chips right before dinner starts instead of telling yourself you will never eat chips again or that you can’t be trusted around them. Did you skip lunch? Did you have a stressful day at work? Has it been many hours since your last meal or snack? How much sleep did you get last night?
Once you gather this “just the facts” information, you can experiment with trying different things. In this binging potato chips before dinner example, you might try planning a snack for the mid-afternoon or eating more at lunch (or breakfast, or both!) so you don’t arrive home with out-of-control hunger. Maybe you could try making a meal plan for the week so you know what you are making for dinner before you get home, alleviating some of that end of the decision fatigue that can make cooking feel too overwhelming, and a bag of potato chips the easy alternative.
The cool thing about doing this kind of reflection and experimentation is it arms you with information to talk back to the food police. “Of course I can’t stop eating potato chips right now, it has been 6 hours since I ate lunch. My body is sending SOS hunger signals. Next time I will make sure to plan a snack for the mid-afternoon. It might even include potato chips!”
Seeking Satisfaction to Stop Food Noise
Do you like the food you eat? Are your favorite foods on regular rotation in your meals and snacks or does the food police tell you to leave those things at the store?
I remember so many times where I tried to make a “healthy” alternative to a favorite food and it just fell flat. Sure, I might have been physically full but the desire to continue eating was so strong because I was not satisfied by the food I had eaten.
Breaking through the diet culture rules to allow yourself to eat the foods you really like and want to eat is another way to stop food noise. Again, this is a simple thing, but it is not always easy to do.
No Longer Hungry is Not the Same as Full
Another thing diet culture teaches us is to eat “just enough” and “not too much.” Eat just enough until you don’t feel hungry rather than eating enough to actually feel full.
This often results in feeling hungry again shortly after eating but the food police telling you “you ate the right amount so you shouldn’t be hungry.” This type of eating can set the stage for nighttime binge eating or “overeating.”
In reality, your body went from gently prodding you to eat more food to screaming at the top of its lungs. Speaking of lungs, think about how you gulp in air after holding your breath for a while – would you ever call that “over breathing?”
More appropriately this behavior can be thought of as rebound eating or make-up eating.
The idea is that you underfed your body earlier in the day (or sometimes days or weeks before) and now the internal signal to eat is so strong you eat you feel like you can’t stop. It often feels rebellious; a real, “you can’t tell me what to do” energy. Some might describe it as an out-of-body experience, and you don’t resurface until you are past the point of comfortable fullness.
Getting familiar with your body’s hunger and fullness cues, which likely won’t jibe with all those diet culture rules, is another step to quieting the food noise.
Embrace the Noise to Find Peace with Food
Food noise is one way your body can communicate that something needs to be addressed.
This might be straight-up hunger that simply requires a filling and satisfying meal. It might be a signal of a more complicated relationship with food stemming from external expectations set by diet culture rules. Or maybe both.
Whatever the reason for food noise, it is worth listening to with kindness and compassion.
What is your body trying to tell you?
If you are ready to quiet your food noise naturally, check out options for working together one-on-one or join the next session of Intuitive Eating for Skeptics.
The information provided is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not intended to be medical advice or to diagnosis, treat, cure or prevent any disease. This information does not replace a one-on-one relationship with a physician or healthcare professional. Dietary changes and/or the taking of nutritional supplements may have differing effects on individuals.
To learn more about how working with a nutritionist could help you, schedule a free 15-minute call.