Food Noise: Something You Hear Every Day and Didn’t Even Know?

Does this sound familiar? While eating breakfast, you think about what is for lunch. After your lunch, you think about how you wanted more of what you had. It takes a while to move on and let it go.

While having your afternoon coffee, you cannot stop opening the food delivery service app on your phone to browse for something sweet to order. You go back and forth between searching the app and closing your phone for a good 20 minutes. Eventually you put your phone down and get back to your work, feeling unsatisfied.

When you are at dinner, you pause eating when you are full. But the food at the table looks good and continues to occupy your mind to the point of distraction. It’s hard to focus on the conversation at the table because you are holding yourself back from the food.

You're strategizing about what you could take and how many calories it has. Would that be a big deal to have later? Maybe you can just have it for lunch tomorrow?

What is food noise?

This incessant thinking about what, when, and how much to eat has been named "food noise." Oprah talked about it in a recent special on weight loss and obesity. She and many other media outlets have actually been highlighting what life feels like without it.

They discuss the freedom of a sudden silence of food noise and what a relief it is when they started taking the new generation of weight loss drugs referred to broadly as GLP-1 agonists.

Sometimes it can be hard to recognize that something was a problem until it is gone. We are adaptable creatures, and a state of constant coping can feel quite normal even though it is actually unpleasant. When many people take GLP-1 agonists, they have this experience of relief from a problem they didn’t even realize they had.¹

It may be affecting your well-being

Although food noise may seem normal to some, it may be affecting your well-being more than you realize. When you cannot control the thoughts you are having and when those thoughts are contrary to what you have decided is a healthy behavior or goal, that can become intrusive and unwelcome. Food noise can become something you must constantly manage, whether you want to or not.

And you may be surprised to know that not everyone experiences food noise. In an informal survey by Weight Watchers, 57 percent of people with overweight or obesity said they had experienced it. But there are plenty of people, including those with overweight and obesity, who do not have this experience. So a high degree of food noise is not universal or "normal."²

Food noise and weight loss

This is a new and evolving term, and we still have a lot to learn about food noise. But now that you know about it, it can help put a name to something you may experience every day. Recognizing that there may be a legitimate issue is the first step to addressing it. Many people have blamed themselves or others for not losing weight in the past. But what if food noise is to blame?