Food Noise: What Causes It & How to Quiet It
For as long as I’ve been a dietitian, clients have sat before me and, often tearful and desperate for relief, described intense, persistent, and distressing thoughts about food that consumed far too much of their mental energy.
This phenomenon is not new. But the way we’ve come to describe it is. They were experiencing food noise.
Recently defined by researchers, food noise is persistent thoughts about food that are perceived by the individual as being unwanted and/or dysphoric and may cause harm to the individual, including social, mental, or physical problems. (1)
The phrase has been popularized alongside the exploding use of GLP1 RA medications for weight loss, which claim to eliminate food noise and allow folks to finally experience the mental peace they’ve sought.
Food noise can sound like many things.
It can sound like worry and uncertainty about food choices and preoccupation with thoughts about what, when, and how much to eat.
The mental chatter might include thoughts like:
Does that have enough protein?
Am I getting enough fiber?
That’s way too much sugar.
I can’t have that many carbs.
Is this going to be filling enough?
What if I get hungry before it’s time to eat again?
If I eat now, I’ll have to wait X hours before I can eat again.
If I eat X now, then I can’t have X at dinner. What if I want X at dinner?
How many miles do I need to walk before I can eat X food?
I can’t go out to eat with my friends tonight because I didn’t plan for that.
Am I going to be judged if I eat that?
And on, and on, and on.
It may include strong desire or cravings for specific foods. Like you can’t stop thinking about dessert after you finish your meal. Or you can’t focus on the task in front of you because you are distracted by your desire for “a treat.” But the absence of specific food cravings doesn’t mean the absence of food noise.
How food noise shows up may look different for different people. But regardless of the specific thoughts you experience, your thoughts about food are distressing and disruptive to living your life.
I suspect this description will resonate with a lot of you reading this. So, first and foremost – if you struggle with food noise, please know you aren’t alone and it’s not your fault.
Experiencing food noise, and not being able to make it stop, can be extremely stressful. And in all the current excitement that surrounds GLP1 medications, I think understanding the complex and multifactorial nature of why food noise likely exists to begin with, gets lost.
This is important for really addressing, and helping folks find relief from, food noise. So, let’s talk about it.
What causes food noise?
Based on the limited literature that exists specifically around food noise, the answer is, we don’t really know yet.
But, based on the collective clinical experience of so many healthcare providers working in this space, the answer is clearly so many things. And so many things interacting with one another.
Your food noise may be related to inadequate energy intake.
When we haven’t eaten enough food to meet our body’s basic energy needs, hormones shift to increase appetite and interest in food. We’ll find ourselves thinking about and desiring food more.
Eating disorder research confirms that significant food preoccupation is a symptom of an undernourished body and brain.
Your food noise may be related to diet culture and dieting.
Diet culture teaches us that we cannot be trusted to make our own decisions about how to feed ourselves. Leaving us constantly second-guessing our ability to make “good” choices and in a perpetual state of food preoccupation and worry.
Dieting, which is our attempt to follow the rules of diet culture, activates our inner rebel (that is, our innate drive for autonomy) which encourages us to rebel against the rules. Whatever the rules tell us to do, our inner rebel screams to do the opposite.
Your food noise may be related to environmental cues.
We live in a food abundant environment. Food, and especially highly palatable food, is literally everywhere. It’s easily accessible and it’s highly marketed to encourage desire and consumption. As humans, we like to experience pleasure. Highly palatable foods are effective at lighting up the reward pathways in our brain. So, the environmental suggestion of highly pleasurable food can trigger desire.
Your food noise may be related to weight stigma.
In our thin-obsessed culture, many folks in larger bodies describe censoring their food choices in an attempt to manage how they will be perceived by people around them. For example, I’ve had clients describe feeling like they need to order something “healthy” to prove that they are “trying” or that they care about their health. I’ve also had clients share that they feel like they can’t order “too healthy” as to not be perceived as performative.
The constant mind chatter in these scenarios can be overwhelming.
Your food noise may be related to a trauma history.
Using food as a coping mechanism is a behavior that can develop early. It’s not uncommon for clients to report they first recall using food to self soothe when they were young children. I’m thinking of my clients who’ve lost parents or grew up with caregivers that were largely absent or otherwise unable to meet their needs. Food became a source of comfort. Food also provided a sense of safety. So, in adulthood, their brain goes to food when they are needing to feel comfort or safety.
Of course, trauma impacting food noise is not limited to early childhood experiences and may be a coping mechanism that develops in response to many traumatic life experiences at any point in the lifespan.
Your food noise may be related to hormonal dysregulation.
I’m thinking specifically of my clients who experience polycystic ovary syndrome, better known as PCOS. Intense food cravings, particularly for high sugar foods, is linked to insulin resistance and the resulting hyperinsulinemia, which is common in folks with PCOS.
This is made worse by unhelpful diet recommendations to eat low carb and lose weight (because: see points 1 & 2 outlining how inadequate intake and dieting behavior fuel food noise).
I am sure there are many more possibilities that I’ve left out.
The point is, if someone is experiencing food noise, there’s probably a reason, or more likely several reasons, why.
Understanding what those reasons could be will hold the keys to learning how to quiet it.
How to quiet food noise
Now, to manage expectations, there is nothing on this list that is particularly revolutionary. And, this is really more of a roadmap for where to begin.
But, in all my years of practice sitting across from folks who experience intense food noise, I’ve also been able to witness that it’s possible for that food noise to be quieted.
When I work with folks on this, this is where we usually start.
Eating enough food, consistently throughout the day.
Because of the culture we exist in, for so many folks, their perception of what “enough” food looks like is skewed, sometimes drastically so, in the direction of not enough.
Additionally, they are often going too many hours between eating occasions. And sometimes overcompensating when they do finally eat. (Which is a natural biological response.)
Eating a wide variety of food, including foods that are just eaten for pleasure (a.k.a. snack foods, dessert foods).
If you are loading up on veggies and lean proteins, but find yourself obsessing over carbs, you probably need to allow yourself to eat more carbs.
Sounds scary, I know. Because you’re probably thinking, “I can’t trust myself with carbs.” But the reason you feel like you can’t trust yourself may have a lot to do with them being restricted in the first place.
Additionally, allowing more flexibility with how we feed ourselves is going to release some of the pressure we feel to “get it right.”
Re-connect with your body and your appetite cues.
There’s so much fear and judgment wrapped up in how we experience hunger and fullness cues. And the message we receive is that those natural, biological cues to guide our decision making around food actually cannot be trusted and therefore must be contained and controlled.
But the more disconnected we become, the more self-critical of ourselves and pre-occupied with our food decisions we become.
Re-learning how to sense into and interpret these cues, through supportive structure and mindfulness practices, improves trust in ourselves and our body to be our own authority on our food decisions.
Identify the unhelpful messages and subsequent belief systems that you have internalized regarding food, bodies, and health.
Our relationship with food and our body is formed and influenced by many factors. Family members, peers, the medical system, media and social media, cultural and societal beliefs and pressures, and more.
Much of the information we receive, even if well intentioned, isn’t helpful. Like that 1200 calories is enough energy for most adults (it’s not) and that carbohydrates cause weight gain (they don’t).
Becoming a critical consumer of nutrition and health information, challenging these belief systems rather than merely accepting them, boosts our confidence and helps quiet the noise of uncertainty that surrounds food decisions.
Getting adequate support.
Often folks find their way to me because they struggle with their relationship to food and want to work on healing that. They seek out support from a dietitian because, as they see it, they have a food problem, so they see a nutrition professional.
And, in our first session together it usually becomes very clear to us both that this is more than just a “food problem.” In fact, the challenges with food are a symptom of something more.
There is a lot that we can work on from a nutrition and relationship-to-food perspective within the nutrition counseling setting. But it’s usually not long before I recommend they bring up some of what we’ve started talking about in our sessions in their therapy work, or establish care with a therapist if they don’t already have one.
Because food noise is about a lot more than food. And having a support system to address all angles of where that noise might be coming from is so helpful.
Photo by Sweet Life on Unsplash
Can medication, like GLP1s, help with food noise?
The short answer is: yes.
Glucagon-Like Peptide-1 receptor agonists, usually just referred to as GLP1s, do work in brain to decrease food interest and many folks who use them report much desired reprieve from “food noise.”
However, rarely is the short answer a sufficient answer.
I believe that all humans are entitled to body autonomy and should have the right to make their own, informed decision about what is best for their body. Including the use of these medications.
And I worry that in our thinness-at-any-cost culture, conversations happening around the pros and cons of these drugs are not adequate to allow for fully informed decision making. I’ve seen the fallout for people who have been prescribed these medications and probably shouldn’t have been. Or weren’t adequately counseled, monitored, or supported while taking them.
It’s important to know that these drugs are certainly not the only option for managing food noise.
They also are not a substitute for the deeper work to heal what underlies a person’s experience of food noise.
The bottom line:
Food noise is not new and is also quite common.
The reasons why a person might experience food noise may differ from one person to the next, but there are reasons.
Understanding those reasons can help you determine how to chart your course forward toward finding relief.
And you don’t need to do that alone. Help exists. A dietitian or therapist (and eventually, perhaps both) who understands disordered eating and the complexities of eating behavior will be well equipped to help guide you.
References:
Dhurandhar, E.J., Maki, K.C., Dhurandhar, N.V. et al. Food noise: definition, measurement, and future research directions. Nutr. Diabetes 15, 30 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41387-025-00382-x