What is Food Noise?

Where the heck does it come from and how do I calm it?

Food Noise is the term often used to describe the incredibly persistent, distracting, and sometimes even unbearable thoughts about food, eating, or body image.

Thoughts about what you just ate.

Planning what you're going to eat later.

Thoughts telling you "this is healthy" or "this is bad".

Fears about sugar and carbs and how the thing you might eat later might impact the way your body looks or how others think you look.

Mentally budgeting in calories and negotiating with exercise for a meal later today or that party this weekend.

And on and on and on it goes. It's a vicious and exhausting playlist blasting on repeat in our minds, drowning out all other joys and interactions in our days.

Food Noise doesn't just spawn out of no where. If we want to turn it down or eventually turn it off we need to be curious with ourself, learning where it started in the first place. Maybe this playlist feels unbearably loud now, but I guarantee it's been at least at a subtle volume for a while now.

Let's look at a couple common places food noise starts:

Chronic Dieting & Restriction

When we limit what or how much we're allowed to eat, food thoughts can begin to take up more real estate in our minds. Labeling foods as off-limits, only for special occasions, or morally wrong can actually make those foods feel more significant and desirable. We can fall into a pattern of restriction which will always lead to an increase in cravings (aka food noise) and eventually into "binging". This only reinforces the false idea that we can't be trusted with certain foods. Then we start the cycle of restriction all over again creating a pattern of chronic dieting and distrust with food and our bodies.

Diet Culture Messaging

Where did all these messages come from about what we're allowed to eat anyways? Ah yes, that would be diet culture. This messaging influences our ideas about good vs. bad foods, body size, body shape and what's deemed acceptable in the name of "health". We are constantly receiving diet culture messaging about what our bodies should look like, what we should eat, and how to achieve the "right" body to be healthy, desirable, and worthy of love. These messages turn into core beliefs and influence our body image, our eating patterns, and our internal dialogue.

So what actually helps to quiet the playlist?

• Eating enough and eating consistently

  
  

• Leaning in to core beliefs with curiosity instead of judgement

  
  

• Challenging food rules and diet messaging

  
  

• Distinguishing identity and self-worth from food choices

  
  

• Making peace with foods that have been off limits

  
  

• Seeking community and support from body neutral and anti-diet spaces

If you're recognizing that maybe the food noise has been playing in the background for a long time, remember you're absolutely not alone in this. You're not broken and you don't lack willpower or discipline because thoughts about food and body take up so much mental space.

If you're unsure where to even begin in quieting the food noise, maybe ask yourself this:

What could your life look like if food could just be food and you could just be you, rather than 2 things to constantly manage, control, or fear?