What is Food Noise?

Food noise refers to negative and intrusive thoughts around eating. This can include feelings of guilt, shame, worry, and self-doubt. When food noise gets loud and persistent enough, it can cause serious damage to your relationship with food and ability to trust your body to determine when, what and how much to eat.

What causes food noise?

Food noise is often a product of extreme and excessive dieting, poor body image, mental health issues, or other related factors. If you’re struggling to manage your weight and are really unhappy with how you look in the mirror, believing that losing weight will make you feel better, then it’s understandable to resort to rigid dieting. However, the issue is that these diets often make you question how much you’re eating and make you feel guilty, or even like a failure, if you step out of bounds at any time and for any reason - which is very unnatural and unhealthy.

Why is food noise harmful?

Food noise can contribute to an dysfunctional relationship with food and is often the leading contributor of over-eating and eating past comfortable fullness. It becomes almost impossible to feel calm, relax and free around food.

What can you do to overcome food noise?

Start by ditching extreme diets and working on a healthier body image.

Stop labeling foods as “good” vs “bad” and practice incorporating a variety of foods.

Learn to listen and respond to hunger and fullness cues when you feel them coming on.

Work 1:1 with a dietitian, and potentially a therapist as well. Both types of providers can help you develop a healthier relationship with food and your body to get to a point where you feel better in your body and around meals.