Rethinking Food Noise: Should We Stop Treating Every Thought About Food as a Problem?

Can food noise actually be helpful information?

I think the thoughts, feelings, emotions, and physical cues we experience around food can tell us quite a bit.

Sometimes that information is practical. Are you hungry? Are you full? What are you hungry for? Are you enjoying what you're eating? Those signals can help you figure out when, what, and how you want to eat.

There are also positive thoughts and emotions around food. Food can be enjoyable. It can create anticipation. It can be connected to experiences, memories, and moments that simply make life better.

That is why I think it may be helpful to remove the label of food noise for a moment and look at what is underneath it.

Instead of immediately deciding that a thought about food is bad, what happens if you look at it as information?

That can get complicated.

Your history with food, weight, body image, fitness, dieting, and everything you've been told about how you should eat can influence how you interpret those thoughts and feelings.

For someone who has spent years starting, stopping, losing weight, regaining weight, or struggling with what they see in the mirror, taking away the simple label of food noise can actually feel scary.

Now you're left figuring out what those thoughts and emotions mean to you.

I also talk about why I believe guilt, shame, and anxiousness have no place around food choices, and how many of those emotions have been reinforced by years of fitness and weight loss messaging.

The answer probably isn't found at either extreme.

It's somewhere in between, and that middle is going to look different for each of us.

Take your time figuring out what your thoughts and feelings around food are telling you. Be patient with yourself. Trust yourself enough to explore them rather than automatically assuming they need to disappear.

And if sorting through your relationship with food, weight, or body image feels overwhelming, having a productive working relationship with a therapist can be an incredibly valuable part of the process.

Join the Your Level Fitness live streams to continue the conversation around food noise.

https://yourlevelfitness.com/stream