How To Stop Food Noise Without Using Weight Loss Drugs

It’s annoying, isn’t it?

Constantly thinking about food.

What you’re going to eat next; what you’ll have for dinner later; when you should eat; what you shouldn’t eat; how much you should eat; whether you can get away with having another one of those chocolate-covered doughnuts someone brought into the office.

It’s relentless.

And, ultimately, it’s hampering your chances of developing and sustaining a healthy relationship with food – and your body. 

What’s more, this ‘food noise’ has become a trending topic recently, with the proliferation of weight loss drugs, inadvertently designed to help diminish those constant thoughts swirling around inside your head. 

But, do we need those weight loss drugs when it comes to food noise?

Can we cultivate skills and tactics to harness a healthy relationship around those food thoughts without leaning on GLP-1s? 

The journey to managing the constant deliberations and ruminations over food starts with unearthing the reasons behind food preoccupation and detailing what strategies you can implement to address your diet and eating psychology.

What Is Food Noise?

You can’t scroll or look anywhere nowadays without encountering those two words: ‘food noise’.

This, undeniably, owing to the growth of drugs that have recently taken the weight loss world by storm, as users have remarked on the sudden ‘quietening’ of constant and persistent thoughts about food. 

But what is food noise?

Review articles have ostensibly coined this phenomenon as the ‘heightened and/or persistent manifestations of food cue reactivity, often leading to food-related intrusive thoughts and maladaptive eating behaviors.’ [1]

Patients have anecdotally stated, amongst other behaviours, they:

-> Think about foods all the time (particularly highly palatable and energy-dense foods)

-> Feel tempted to check food delivery applications multiple times a day

-> Often think about the next meal they will consume while eating their current meal [2]

It’s also been shown that thoughts can also include whether a person is eating the ‘right’ way at the ‘right’ time in the ‘right’ amounts, and whether they have these foods available.

It can be unrelenting.

This kind of rumination and obsessive preoccupation about food has been referred to as food-related intrusive thoughts (FRITs), which are experienced by people with and without clinically diagnosed eating disorders, particularly those struggling with body weight or image [3].

It makes sense that our brains excel at stimulating motivational responses to food cues: being reactive to these signals has enabled the survival of humans in times of food scarcity over time.

When a significant investment is required to obtain food, and food availability is high, food noise may be a critical and routine signal to seek and eat food while it is available.

And so now, when we pass a Greggs and inhale the waft of a freshly-baked sausage roll, or suddenly start to salivate when perusing photos of steaming hot cheese-filled pizzas, or hear the crunch of a salty, vinegary crisp, we often develop a strong desire to devour that food.

This responsiveness to food cues represents our reactivity to them.

And it’s clear that people differ in how reactive they are to these food cues, with some people consistently overwhelmed and overwrought with them.

This leads to the acting on these thoughts, resulting in overeating, sometimes binge eating, and, subsequently, weight gain. 

Here’s A Mouthful: The Cue–Influencer–Reactivity–Outcome (CIRO) Model of Food Cue Reactivity

Researchers in the US recently set out to detail the variety of food cues that foster ‘food noise’ and, subsequently, food cue reactivity [1].

They made this fancy-looking graph:

They proposed that food cues can be internal (i.e., hunger signals, and thoughts about food and/or eating) or external (i.e., the smell and sight of food, and/or environmental and social factors). 

The presence of these food cues elicits different ways we react to – and think about – food. 

These could be ‘constant factors’ (i.e., genetics, weight status, etc.) or ‘temporary factors’ (i.e., the time of day, environment, sleep, etc.). 

Depending on these factors, an individual will react more or less strongly (or not at all) to these cues, manifesting as either biological symptoms (i.e., changes in heart rate, blood pressure, salivation, etc.), or psychological symptoms (i.e., increased food attention, food cravings, the anticipation of relief). 

Subsequent short-term outcomes may include instant eating (see: Greggs’ sausage roll), whereas long-term outcomes may comprise increased sensitivity to rewards, disordered eating, and even the increased association between certain cues and food intake. 

This model essentially explains how seeing, smelling, or being around food can elicit different reactions – and, subsequently, intensifying food noise. 

When food thoughts become constant and hard to ignore – what’s labelled ‘food noise’ – they can lead to strong urges and, ultimately, have a negative impact on daily life.

What Else Causes Food Noise?

Unbalanced Hunger Hormones

There’s burgeoning evidence to suggest that constant dieting and the severe restricting of food intake can increase ghrelin levels (the hunger hormone), increasing appetite and making it harder to feel satisfied after eating [4]. 

This hormonal imbalance can create feelings of continuous hunger, subsequently triggering a preoccupation with food. 

It’s why people who cut out the chocolate or stop the alcohol can then only think about the chocolate and the wine.

Moreover, it’s been shown that patients on ‘energy-deficient diets’ (think: that detox diet you last tried) often report obsessively thinking about food for prolonged periods and spending increased time engaging in things related to food [5].

What’s worse is that when we do lose weight (often too quickly), our bodies will perceive this as a threat and generate biological reactions to offset those sudden drops in bodyweight and fat [6].

It’s why hunger increases and movement and metabolism decrease with weight loss, and, ultimately, that food noise becomes a constant thorn in our daily routines. 

*Hiring an online weight loss coach is one of the best ways to minimise the damage from restrictive and harsh dieting methods*

Dopamine Seeking

It’s no secret those hyper-palatable foods we all enjoy (think biscuits, crisps, chocolate, etc.) are now often within arm’s reach, whether at home, at the shops, or simply out and about. 

When you couple this with the release of the ‘feel-good’ neurotransmitter dopamine whenever you consume one of these food items, you can see how eating is often associated with feelings of pleasure. 

The dopamine ‘hit’ from eating salty, sugary, fatty foods reinforces the enjoyable behaviour, encouraging it over and over again. It’s no wonder we often can’t stop thinking about these items. 

Studies have used brain imaging to test how food availability influences reward system activity when people view pictures of food. 

Results showed that immediately available foods, especially high-calorie ones, triggered stronger brain responses in reward and control regions [7].

The more hyper-palatable foods you have in your diet, the more you’ll keep thinking about those same items.

True Hunger

The unrelenting nature of diet culture has often led to people completely disregarding their own hunger and fullness cues at the expense of chasing weight loss, thinness, and perceived standards of beauty. 

This has been to the detriment of their enjoyment, satiety, and sanity around food.

Individuals simply can’t recognise when they’re truly hungry – and truly full – and will suppress these signals from the body in favour of harsh dieting techniques. 

When hunger surfaces, food becomes more mentally salient. 

Studies have shown that, when individuals are genuinely hungry, accessibility to food-related mental content increases, and they experience more intrusive thoughts about food – essentially, more ‘food noise’ [8]. 

It’s also why, when we consume meals that don’t leave us satisfied, we experience the psychological resistance of restrictive eating and a subsequent preoccupation with food [9]. 

It’s no wonder that consuming bland salads, dry chicken dinners, and putrid weight loss shakes often leaves us thinking about all the foods we’re missing out on. 

If you continue to overpower your body’s innate hunger and satisfaction prompts, you’ll experience greater thoughts around food. 

Dysregulated Emotional Systems

Emotional eating is the act of turning to food for comfort, stress relief, or reward rather than to satisfy physical hunger.

It’s having the tub of ice cream when you’re sad, it’s ordering a takeaway when you feel overwhelmed, and it’s constantly snacking when you’re trying to suppress feelings of rejection.

We eat even though we may not be truly hungry.

Negative emotions induce eating – often compulsive eating – because eating has the capacity to reduce their intensity.

Emotional eating can heighten food-related preoccupation with food. 

When someone eats to soothe emotions, the brain may start forming stronger associations between emotional states and food. Over time, this can make food-related thoughts more automatic and persistent – essentially increasing food noise.

Further, emotional eating can lead to guilt or shame afterwards, which exacerbates rumination [10]. 

This obsessional thinking often involves thoughts about food, dieting, and body image, further increasing food noise.

Ultimately, emotional eating doesn’t just respond to food noise – it can actively worsen it, making the mind more preoccupied with food even outside of hunger cues.

How To Stop Food Noise Without Using Weight Loss Drugs

Stop Restrictive Dieting

While the debate over whether dieting is a healthy and fruitful endeavour or not rages on, we simply can’t deny that engaging in overtly restrictive and harsh dieting techniques is to your detriment. 

None more so than when it comes to food noise. 

Whether it be abolishing foods from your diet completely, eulogising only eating other certain foods, or trying to lose as much weight as possible in a short time as possible, these harsh weight loss strategies seldom lead to long-term success. 

They foster a preoccupation with food that leaves people miserable and obsessed.

If you can’t have the foods you actually enjoy, then the foods you actually enjoy are all you can think about.

Instead, when you can focus on and build effective strategies for mindful, emotional, and psychological eating – while adopting the help of an online weight loss and nutrition coach – you start to shift towards a healthier, long-term outlook on your relationship with food and remove that food noise from your mind. 

-> Start removing those ‘food rules’ you’ve adhered to all your life, and realise there is no such thing as forbidden foods. 

There should be no shame or labels assigned to particular foods because, ultimately, food is morally neutral with no dichotomous rules or epithets attached to them. 

-> Work on leaning into your hunger and fullness cues, so you can permit yourself the foods, snacks, and meals out you enjoy without fearing you’ll overeat or ‘ruin’ everything. 

When you know when it’s OK to eat and when it’s acceptable to stop, you’ll be at ease with eating a variety of foods and won’t have crippling anxiety over what you’re going to have and how much. 

-> Focus on what you can eat rather than what you can’t. 

An ‘abundance mindset’ (compared to a ‘scarcity mindset’) allows you to fixate on the limitless opportunities and decisions available to you. It transforms the typical dieting mentality from feelings of despair and longing to those of freedom and control.

-> Stop fixating on weight loss itself. 

When all food-based actions and choices are explicitly tied to the sole purpose of ‘losing weight’, it becomes impossible to navigate meals, food, and decisions with any sense of rationality and health.

Instead, move away from weight loss and towards an outlook that focuses on nourishment and joy.

Exercising can be a way to connect with friends, enhance mental clarity, and improve health. Cooking home-made meals can be a chance to bond with family, practice new skills, and boost confidence.

You can find out more about healthy, sustainable, and effective online weight loss coaching here. 

Change Your Environment

The research has shown that our environment has a clear impact on our constant thoughts around food, and while easier access to healthier foods, supportive policies, and environments that reduce stigma and stress can all quiet food noise, it’s hard as individuals to regulate these methods. 

Trying to avoid walking past the hundreds of fast-food restaurants on your way to work or avoiding the aisles littered with convenient, hyper-palatable snacks in your supermarket is a futile endeavour; however, there are more practical steps you can take to avoid the mental chatter around food:

-> Keep visual cues minimal and create ‘cue-free’ zones to minimise the triggers around food. 

Store the snacks you want to minimise eating in hard-to-access places while avoiding eating in bed or in front of the TV, so your brain doesn’t start pairing those environments with food.

-> Unfollow food-heavy social media feeds and limit exposure to food delivery apps. 

Instagram and TikTok feeds are bursting with recipes, reels, and food ads that act as constant cues for eating and thoughts around food. 

Start removing these – along with food delivery apps – and curate your online life to one designed to avoid those food cues. 

-> Design pattern interrupt tools that remind you to slow down, pause, reassess your hunger and fullness levels, and notice whether you’re really enjoying the food you chose.

When you initiate a thought or behaviour that interrupts an automatic, mindless behaviour and reminds you to pause, think, and then respond mindfully, you’re less likely to be influenced by your environment. 

– Breathing for 30 seconds as soon as you sit down to eat

– Placing a piece of fruit next to what you’re about to eat. (Not necessarily to eat the fruit, but to act as that ‘bump’)

– Reading the ingredients of the snack you’re about to have (Or, if no ingredients, detailing the colours of the food you’re about to eat)

– Put your knife and fork or between bites and give yourself a score of 1-10 on fullness

Stop Fearing Food Noise

The idea of food noise itself may carry risks of stigma. 

Stigma develops when this food noise is labelled as a negative trait, leading to judgment, distancing, discrimination, or self-stigma [10]. 

People may blame themselves or be blamed by others for experiencing food noise, especially if it is viewed as a matter of willpower, which can foster shame or feelings of inadequacy.

We know, however, that willpower is simply not a prerequisite for weight loss success, nor is food noise inherently someone’s ‘fault’. 

Instead of fixating on the thoughts you have around food – which are somewhat inevitable – describe your situation as ‘experiencing’ rather than ‘suffering from’ food noise. 

While this topic will undoubtedly go hand in hand with those weight loss drugs now readily available, frame food noise as a ‘biopsychological process,’ rather than something those drugs are trying to ‘fix’.

It’s simply part of your genetic make-up, designed to help with survival, only made harder by how easily accessible those hyper-palatable foods now are. 

Develop Mindful Eating Skills

Mindful eating is the state of being ‘fully present aware during meals, paying attention to internal signals like hunger and fullness, the sensory experience of food, and emotional cues, all without – crucially – judgment or distraction’ [11].

Mindfulness can be a powerful tool for calming food noise because it shifts the way we relate to food thoughts rather than trying to ‘fight’ them.

Attention is paid to the foods chosen, both internal and external physical cues, and your responses to those cues [12].

And herein lies the answer: it’s often about accepting your thoughts around food, rather than trying to suppress or knock them away.

When we engage in mindfulness practices, we activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which reduces stress-driven reward-seeking. 

Whereas stress can amplify food preoccupation, mindfulness indirectly quietens food-related thoughts.

Not only does mindfulness create a ‘pause’ between thinking and acting (i.e., ‘I want the chocolate biscuit; I must eat the chocolate biscuit’), but it can also break those habit loops (i.e., always thinking of snacks as soon as you sit down on the sofa after dinner).

-> Surf The Urge

By acknowledging and observing the thoughts we have (for example, “I’m currently having the urge for a chocolate-covered Hobnob”) and being open to it (“It’s perfectly acceptable to encounter this urge”), we’re able to let those impulses appear, then eventually fade away.

We know that suppressing any nagging thoughts only heightens their strength; by respecting them, we’re able to face their charm instead of fighting it.

Think about scoring the intensity of your craving on a scale of 1-10 (for example, “My desire for that Hobnob is now a raging 9”). Don’t feel the need to censor or reduce it; simply notice the thought and how it’s affecting your body.

You’ll soon see the craving start to dissipate (“My desire for that biscuit is now a 4”).

Staying with your physical sensations – such as your breathing and the desire to reach for the biscuit tin – will allow the urge to rise, crest, and fall (“What biscuit?”).

-> Mindful Breathing Practices 

Mindful breathing quietens the food noise during and between meals by regulating the body’s reward and stress systems.

Studies on mindful eating interventions show that incorporating mindful breathing reduces binge eating and emotional eating, and increases awareness of hunger and satiety, which all help with food noise [13].

Whether it be focusing on 30 seconds of elongated and concentrated inhalation and exhalation, or exhaling with an audible ‘sigh,’ these breathing practices act as a ‘reset button,’ slowing down reactivity, calming the nervous system, and quietening the mental chatter around food. 

You don’t have to do this while eating; even the act of mindful breathing can help with your long-term ability to deal with food noise. 

You Don’t Always Have To Be Losing Weight

There are undoubtedly times, places, and opportunities for weight loss phases in your life.

When your focus is on weight loss seven days a week, 365 days a year, however, problems start to arise. 

This perpetual preoccupation with dieting is both cognitive (thinking about food constantly) and affective (emotional responses to food-related cues).

Evidence has shown that when you can transition to stages of maintenance and muscle growth – and even other life goals such as emotional well-being, physical fitness, or mindful living – food noise can decrease.

When you can engage in social events without fearing what or how much you’ll eat, or start to actually enjoy what you’re consuming, you start to diminish the cognitive burden of food preoccupation. 

When food is no longer the central locus of control or reward, the constant food chatter in the mind is silenced, making eating less reactive and more intentional.

Whether it be pursuing physical activity for its pure enjoyment (i.e., hiking, swimming, rock-climbing), embracing the art of making and creating different foods and cuisines, or developing other life skills, transitioning away from archetypal dieting methods and a weight loss mindset will help curtail food preoccupation.

The goal is not to avoid food thoughts entirely, but to diversify your rewards and sources of meaning, so that food no longer dominates your mental and emotional landscape.

References

1. Hayashi, D., Edwards, C., Emond, J. A., Gilbert-Diamond, D., Butt, M., Rigby, A., & Masterson, T. D. (2023). What Is Food Noise? A Conceptual Model of Food Cue Reactivity. Nutrients, 15(22), 4809. 

2. Hohman, M. Some Ozempic Patients Report Less “Food Noise”. Here’s What That Means. Yahoo News. 23 June 2023. https://news.yahoo.com/ozempic-brain-4-patients-share-190933574.html

3. Ain, H.U. Food Related Intrusive Thoughts: A Pilot Study; University of Richmond: Richmond, VA, USA, 2023; https://scholarship.richmond.edu/honors-theses/1676/ 

4. Sumithran, P., Prendergast, L. A., Delbridge, E., Purcell, K., Shulkes, A., Kriketos, A., & Proietto, J. (2011). Long-term persistence of hormonal adaptations to weight loss. The New England Journal of Medicine, 365(17), 1597–1604.

5. Keys, A. (1950). The biology of human starvation. University of Minnesota Press.

6. Martins, C., Roekenes, J. A., Rehfeld, J. F., Hunter, G. R., & Gower, B. A. (2023). Metabolic adaptation is associated with a greater increase in appetite following weight loss: A longitudinal study. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 118(6), 1192–1201. 

7. Blechert, J., Klackl, J., Miedl, S. F., & Wilhelm, F. H. (2016). To eat or not to eat: Effects of food availability on reward system activity during food picture viewing. Appetite, 107, 311–318.

8. Berry, L.-M., Andrade, J., & May, J. (2007). Hunger-related intrusive thoughts reflect increased accessibility of food items. Cognition and Emotion, 21(4), 865–878.

9. Timmerman, G. M., & Gregg, E. K. (2003). Dieting, perceived deprivation, and preoccupation with food. Western Journal of Nursing Research, 25(4), 405–418.

10. Dhurandhar, E. J., Maki, K. C., Dhurandhar, N. V., Kyle, T. K., Yurkow, S., Hawkins, M. A. W., Agley, J., Ho, E. H., Cheskin, L. J., Sørensen, T. I. A., Wang, X. R., & Allison, D. B. (2025). Food noise: Definition, measurement, and future research directions. Nutrition & Diabetes, 15, 30.

11. Peitz, D., Schulze, J., & Warschburger, P. (2021). Getting a deeper understanding of mindfulness in the context of eating behavior: Development and validation of the Mindful Eating Inventory. Appetite, 159, 105039.

12. 1. Fung, T.T., Long, M.W., Hung, P., & Cheung, L.W. (2016) An expanded model for mindful eating for health promotion and sustainability: issues and challenges for dietetics practice. Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, 116(7), 1081-6.

13. Kristeller, J. L., & Wolever, R. Q. (2011). Mindfulness‐based eating awareness training for treating binge eating disorder: The conceptual foundation. Eating Disorders, 19(1), 49–61.