By Dina Aldabbagh

Harsh, I know. Stick with me though. I’m going to tell you what all people who have a normal relationship with food subconsciously know, but what they can never communicate to the majority of people who struggle with their weight. Someone who’s been lean all their life is ignorant to this, they just do it. If you can be open to honesty, if you can hold back the defense mechanisms and the shame triggers for just a moment, what I have to say here will genuinely help you gain understanding you don’t have. 

If you’ve ever gained weight, you know a little something about food noise. Food noise is a term I recently heard that I felt was an amazing way to describe a certain mental phenomenon that one experiences in the process of weight gain. This mental process is that of one constantly thinking about food. Even when they’re not hungry, even after having just eaten, and even during the middle of a meal — a person’s attention is on food. You wake up, ‘What am I going to eat today?’ You lay in bed, ‘Let me plan everything I’m going to eat tomorrow.’ Instead of a bit of light planning and allowing your body to guide the rest, you end up thinking of food for most of your day. ‘Just one more hour until I can eat.’ As someone who has experienced both sides of the healthy/unhealthy-weight coin, I can attest to the fact that it’s not all about food noise, but that’s the main culprit. While there are other factors that would cause a person to gain a good deal of weight, weight gain is ultimately caused by eating too much food. It’s the constant attention to food that is the real problem.

You’ve been out to eat before with a friend, witnessing them take their time, take long breaks in the act of eating to speak to you, and thought, “Did they just forget about their food?” And you are shocked since it’s all you’re thinking about. You want to be present, but until that plate is cleared, you cannot possibly give them your focus. You also don’t want to go too fast. You’re overthinking the whole situation because you are just so aware of the food in front of you and how it’s affecting this experience, while your friend cares more about conversing with you than eating their food. They do actually forget about the food in front of them, while you feel this pressure, this objective, to finish your food. That’s what you’re there for right? This is an extremely vulnerable experience, because you do feel some shame. Why is this person so in control, so present, and why am I not? Why is food controlling me this much? But it is possible to be like the person on the other side of the table. It is possible to be at a dinner as a means of connecting with someone else as opposed to primarily for the food. 

Now being on the other side, I can speak to the genuine truth. There are so many days that I’m sitting and doing long hours of work, or that I’m outside on a walk, or hanging out with interesting people, that I don’t even think about food. Matter of fact, many times I’ll be hungry — starving even — but at that point, the act of eating is more of a nuisance as it would interrupt what work I’ve got my hands on. When I’m really in whatever I’m doing, I will work as long as I can until I can no longer ignore the hunger cues. Let me be clear, I’m not advising you to ignore your body’s cues. Listen to your body. However, there’s an interesting phenomenon that occurs when you have other things in your life that you simply care more about than food: food is no longer a priority, it is just a means of fueling your body to keep going and keep doing the things you love. 

Let me put it like this: you know when you’re watching a good movie — you’re under your warm, comfortable blanket, the pillow feels perfect — and you have to use the bathroom? Most people will push off going to the bathroom because they much prefer continuing whatever they’re watching or staying in their comfortable position. They’ll go when they must, not at the first ping of the cue in their body. They’re not purposely ignoring any bodily functions they need to attend to, but what takes priority is the task they’d rather do at that moment. That’s what it’s like to not have food noise. Food becomes a part of staying alive vs. a part of what you live for. So you don’t purposely ignore the hunger cues, but the hunger cues get delayed attention as a natural byproduct of your attention being on something you deem more important. 

Ask yourself this, was there EVER a time in your life, even for just a day, that you realized you didn’t think that much about food? You went through an activity and then thought about eating. What was going on during that time? Many answers would look like: I started seeing someone new, I was hanging out with my friends a lot, I had a busy week at work, I got really into my hobby, I was on a trip. You realize, ‘There was something else at the forefront of my mind.’ You were busy. It is that simple.

We are dopamine driven creatures. Most of us in the States are lucky enough to not have to worry about basic human needs on a moment to moment basis, which allows us to chase a dopamine high. We need, and I do mean need, something to feel excited about in life. That’s where purpose comes in. If you have something you’re excited to do the next day, you have a purpose in getting up. That purpose then has ownership over the real estate in your mind. That be a job, school, a romantic interest, a goal — but if you don’t have some purpose that genuinely excites you, you are vulnerable to picking up whatever the easiest, most accessible thing is to deliver you that dopamine hit. For some people, that’s social media, drugs, sex, and for you it may be food. It’s not so much that food is controlling you, as it is that you are choosing to give food that importance in your life. We always do what we believe is in our best interest. If you believe that food is your most efficient daily dose of dopamine, you’re going to act in a human way; you’re going to act in your best interest and secure your dopamine hit.

If you still have your doubts on my insight, I challenge you to set a month long goal for yourself that is demanding of you, but achievable. Something that you actually care about. It can’t be so easy that you know you’ll be able to do it in your sleep. It has to be something that requires daily commitment in order to achieve. If by the end of that month, you still find your food noise is in as bad of a place as it was before, maybe it’s time to rethink how you feel about your life in general, and what you can do to feel better about it another month from then. Little steps. Poco a poco. Nothing great was ever done suddenly. 

If you get one thing from this article, let it be this: 

Choose your purpose so that your purpose doesn’t become eating. Find your joy so that your main source of joy isn’t eating.

Now let me sum up the mental reframe you should take away from this. Here’s the mentality a healthy person has around food:

“Food is not everything. Food is the fuel that allows my body to continue functioning. Therefore it’s more beneficial to eat whole, healthy foods that will allow my body to function at its highest, than highly processed, unhealthy foods.”

(But here’s the caveat — they still eat everything, all the unhealthy foods too, just in moderation, because…) 

“I prefer to maneuver a body that is not sluggish from eating too much food. I prioritize how I feel after eating. If food makes me feel bad, I don’t want to consume it. I care about how I feel in my body. I may enjoy food, but it is just amongst the list of things I enjoy and it is not the most important.”

You can do this, you’re just focusing on the wrong thing.