Do you have “Food Noise?”
Why it can be normal & how to approach it when it feels overwhelming
“Food noise,” a phrase I used to only hear in the confines of my sessions with clients, is everywhere these days. Open any social media app and you’ll likely come across an influencer talking about their experience with food noise and, usually, what they did to get rid of it.
But what if I told you that food noise can be a normal human experience?
If pushed to define “food noise,” I might say that it is quite literally the act of thinking of food in between meals and snacks. However, if we dive a little deeper, we could say “food noise” exists on a spectrum. On one end of the spectrum, we have what I might deem “normal” food noise - which is to say the thinking we have to do in order to get our bodies to plan to eat & eat throughout the day. On the other end, we have the kind of “food noise” that is distracting you from your day to day tasks to an excessive degree and is, seemingly, neverending.
Why is this differentiation important? Well, while we need some food noise in order to properly nourish our bodies, too much can be an indicator of something else going on, including (but not limited to) the following:
Physical restriction - If you find yourself consistently missing a meal or two, for example, your brain is hardwired to amp up your thoughts about food in order to, you guessed it, get you to eat food.
Psychological restriction - Do “shoulds” occupy your thoughts surrounding food? (ex: I shouldn’t eat x/y/z because ____; I should be eating _______) This is an example of psychological restriction and, annoyingly, it stimulates the same response from the brain as physical restriction in that it increases your thoughts about food because it perceives scarcity. There are few things our brains hate more than feeling like key resources such as food are scarce. Even the threat of scarcity makes our brains think more about food because they want us to be back in a place of abundance.
Okay, but what do you do if your food noise is overwhelming? First, even though there are medications that can help decrease food noise, I would highly recommend speaking with a professional about it. Not because medications such as GLP-1s are bad, but because taking them can create a whole other issue - it can completely take away food noise, including the helpful kind, and make eating really difficult. And, make no mistake, we all still need to eat. It’s a biological necessity!
Discussing your food noise with a therapist or dietitian can help you understand more of the root causes and how to approach decreasing it, be it via the assistance of medication or finding ways to create a sense of abundance, or both!