Food can be enjoyed insofar as triathlon can be enjoyed. You don’t need to enjoy every second of training. You don’t need to enjoy every bite of food. You can be hungry, you can be full, you can be tired, you can be fit and ready.
Whomever came up with the term “food noise” deserves a big raise.
I think everybody experiences this to some degree. Seems like it was previously described as hunger, and one of the things my dietician colleague works on with her patients is trying to differentiate between physical hunger and psychological hunger. I’m sure the terminology varies a bit.
growing up in Italian family. Whenever you had a problem, the answer was always food. Happy, sad, special celebration, day of mourning or loss, whatever your problem was, food was central to the solution.
from my teens until my early 30s I had an insane metabolism due to sports and having physical jobs. I remember summers when I would work 8-10 hours framing houses, then go home and run 15km, or bike to the lake and swim 4k. Ironman was a walk in the park compared to many of those days. Because of this expenditure I gained a very distorted view of portion sizes. I just couldn’t eat enough.
I love to cook. I’m the chef in the house so I’m always planning and thinking about meals.
My lifestyle has dramatically changed (two kids and a dog, small business, replaced 12+ hours a week of endurance training with 3 hours/week CrossFit and maybe a 5-10k run or two) but the constant desire for food has not reduced with my metabolism.
What I need to maintain my weight is around 2800kcal/day. Left to my own devices and hunger signals, I generally eat around 3000-3200. That’s when I feel satiated. That would see me gain around 0.5-1lbs of fat a week.
What I do to control it:
I hired a dietician for 6 months to follow my diet. Learned about my specific caloric needs, protein intake, etc. This really helped me gain control. I realized a lot of the time when I was hungry I was really just thirsty, or tired, or stressed. When I really crave junk food now, I’m mindful enough to realize it’s usually a stress reaction, or I’m about to get a cold.
no junk food in the house. It just can’t be there, or I eat it. I can’t open a bag of chips or cookies without finishing it. This drives my family bonkers.
track my diet for a few months a year. I stay in a caloric deficit for around 8 weeks following the holidays, then stay at maintenance calories for a month. I don’t track as religiously in the summer because I want to enjoy BBQs with friends and all that stuff. If I know I have a big meal coming up, I just eat very little, if at all, the rest of the day, and often won’t eat the following day until dinner as well.
limit alcohol to 1-2 drinks per week. I make exceptions for holidays only.
This type of balance works well for me. It keeps me fairly lean without being obsessive, only requires a couple months of diligent work a year, and I can still indulge now and then so I never feel like I’m going without.
This past week was hectic at work, and the prior thread was rattling around in my head.
I hover about 10-15lbs above where I want to be. When I am focused, can exercise 3-4 x week, and am deliberate with meals, I can get there in 3 months.
But typical busy life, and I easily overeat, mostly dinner portions to unwind. The noise is my favorite song as a reward. I can’t imagine how hard for people that don’t have disposable time nor a motivation to commit to active lifestyle.
i get circular, intrusive thoughts about food when I haven’t had breakfast and it’s coming on 1-2. Mostly what I want and what I have to do to get it. Always when I’m out of the house.
Once I settle on what I’m eating the noise shuts up, don’t have to actually eat to get there.
My words would be a copy and paste from google AI.
“Food noise” refers to the persistent and intrusive thoughts about food that can disrupt daily life and make healthy eating habits challenging. It’s that internal chatter, the constant thinking about what to eat, when to eat, and how much to eat. This preoccupation with food can lead to eating when not hungry, being easily distracted by food-related thoughts, and even overeating."
I think I’ve covered my thoughts on the subject in that other thread. None of your bullet points resonate with me. Your AI definition sounds right to me. I think about food all the time and being on this drug has eliminated that.
There have been times in my life where I’ve controlled it but there is a cognitive load to doing that. I find it difficult when other things in my life are out of control. I gained weight after each of my parents died, when my wife was having some health problems and with the work stress of working at a failing company.
no junk food in the house. It just can’t be there, or I eat it. I can’t open a bag of chips or cookies without finishing it. This drives my family bonkers.
My mother-in-law recently: “You don’t have any snacks in the house?!!”
Very few snacks. No soda. We have plenty of beer, but I rarely drink it outside of social occasions, so having it in the house doesn’t make me want to drink it.
My mother-in-law always has a ton of snacks, and bakes a billion calories worth of cookies every year. Both in-laws are obese. They are just wired to prioritize having lots of unhealthy food around.
Here’s one thing I started doing: when we come home from the holidays with a giant bag of cookies, I throw 1-2 away every time I eat one (shhh…I’ve not told my wife this)
As I said, I grew up as a soda addict. It took me years to figure out how to replace it. I now brew iced tea regularly, and I load it up with lemon juice. I make it 1/4 caffeinated, so I get a drip all day.
I probably go through a liter or two a day, in addition too one black coffee in the morning.
I had to google. Oh yes. Aware. It doesn’t help that work has free food. Not just snacks and meals in the cafeteria, but free fruit, cereals, chocolates, nuts. My brain shuts up about food on the weekend but during the week? Oh boy…
