The Mind Body Project

Healthy Huddle: Quieting Food Noise

• Aaron Degler

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We explore “food noise,” the nonstop inner chatter about eating, and show how diet culture, social media, and rigid rules drown out real hunger. We share practical steps to pause, reframe self-talk, slow down, and use simple structure to build a balanced, guilt-free routine.

• defining food noise and why it persists
• diet culture’s clean vs cheat framing
• social media conflicts and indecision
• ignoring hunger cues then overeating
• mental and physical costs of constant chatter
• pause-and-check questions before eating
• removing food morality and savoring joy foods
• slower eating to hear fullness signals
• reframing control talk into curiosity
• unmet needs behind cravings
• meal prep and structure to reduce decisions
• balance over perfection across weeks

“Thank you for joining us on Healthy Huddle. I’ll look forward to seeing you right here next time on Healthy Huddle.”


https://aarondegler.com/

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to Healthy Huddle. Thank you for taking a little time to join us. Each week we have our Healthy Huddle to talk about a different food topic of the week. And if this is your first time to join us, we're going to be joining our live call in just a minute and share our topic for tonight, for today, and have some questions or some interaction with those on the live call. So they may be asking some of the very same questions that you are asking. So thank you for joining us on Healthy Huddle. Let's go to the live call. So we'll get started. So we're going to talk about something that probably nobody has, but we're going to talk about anyhow. We're going to talk about food noise. So the food noise is what do you think food noise would be? The constant thinking about food. The constant thinking about food. Growling stomach. Growing stomach. That is definitely audible food noise. That's food noise that everybody can hear. A lot of our food noise really happens when nobody can hear it. Now, believe it or not, if you do experience food noise, I mean we're going to go more in detail about what food noise is. But and you and chances are you've probably always experienced food noise. If you haven't ever experienced food noise, probably chances are you've never experienced it. But if you've experienced food noise or you still deal with food noise, believe it or not, there are people in this world that that does not enter their brain. They do not think about it. I mean, it's not something that they are always thinking about. To be one of those people, I would love to be one of those people. Wouldn't that be great? Yeah, also people that don't remember to eat, but that's not me either.

unknown:

Yes.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, they don't have food noise, and then they go, I oh man, I forgot to eat all day. Yeah, never happens. So if you do experience food noise, I've talked to those that don't experience and I and I have to question them over and over and over. It's kind of like if you watched Angela's interview, I kept bringing up the the Wahoo board because I like after every meal. But so there's I keep grilling people when they tell me they don't have food noise. I'm like, no, so I try to explain in all the different ways to try to catch them, and they're like, no, that doesn't happen. So good for them that don't have that. But we're gonna talk about those of us that do. What is that? It's really the constant mental chatter about eating. It's when am I gonna eat? What am I gonna eat? When's my next meal? How close is it to my meal? It's kind of think of like a uh a toddler that's always saying, When are we gonna eat? What's for supper? I'm hungry. Or sometimes it's a teenage, a teenager that's always saying, you know, when are we gonna eat? What's to eat? What's what do we have to eat? All those things. And those things are food noise in our brain. It also sounds like I should eat this. It also sounds like I already messed up today. It also sounds like, how many calories is this? It also sounds like I'll be better tomorrow. So all of that is really the food noise. It's just those conversations we have in our brain over and over and over in regards to food. It's that really that that mental noise that drowns out our natural hunger or our fullness signals. And those those mental noises create anxiety, create guilt, create confusion. Even even if we eat healthy, you know, if you're eating healthy and you eat something not so healthy, again, it's how many calories is that? I messed up, I'll do better tomorrow. All those things, and you may think I don't have food noise, but as I say some of these, you go, Oh, I guess that's what that is. You know, it's those thoughts that you keep having going over what you eat. Maybe it's you critique everything you eat. Is it measured right? Is it the right food? Is it organic? Is it not organic? What was it sprayed with? What was it cooked with? All of that is food noise. There are some people that can drive through McDonald's, that can go through Sonic and never have a thought about it. Zero food noise. Chances are most of us would do that and have some food noise for all the different things. So when we think about food noise, we think sometimes it's a lack of willpower, but sometimes it's really just a lack of trust between our mind and our body, what our mind's saying and what our body needs or wants. So we're gonna talk a little bit about where does that come from? Where does all that noise come from? As we've talked about before, sometimes it's our diet culture. We we spent a whole topic about diet culture, and that is, I mean, I think when we if you're there for a diet culture, when we talk about it, you can really understand where sometimes your thought process now in your 30s and 40s and 50s, even 60s come from is those diet cultures. And it was decades of good versus bad food labeling that we kept getting hammered with. Then it was clean eating versus a cheat day mentality. So do you think should we ever have a cheat meal or a cheat day? Sure. I mean so what does what does the word cheat imply? That you're restrictive. Yeah, that that you're doing something and you cheated, like if you're on if you're taking a test and you cheated, it means you maybe got the answers or you got a copy of the test and you knew it. You're doing cheating is almost, you know, there was a 5K in Henrietta this past weekend. And there's some that I think the course was way, way messed up, from what I understand. And so maybe some got only a couple miles, or maybe some got more, but there's probably a thought of I cheated, I didn't follow the right course. And so cheating is really a negative term of I didn't do something right, I took a shortcut, or it it's it was the wrong thing to do. And so, really, when we think about our, you know, and that's been ingrained us in us is uh a clean eating and cheat day mentality. But really, when we talk about, and this is when we talk about our mental standpoint, is when we're talking about food and eating and a healthy lifestyle, there is no cheating. Because if you can have anything you want, is is it really cheating? No, it's just choosing I don't want that or I do want that. But the food noise again comes from those years and years of saying it's a cheat meal. You know, I worked really hard, so on Thanksgiving Day, I'm gonna cheat and have all I want. A balanced lifestyle doesn't say that. It says I've been planning for it, I'm gonna eat it. Next day I'll be fine. Then when we have diets, uh when we talk about our diet culture messages, our diets, every diet adds more rules, which is more news, no news, more noise. Think about all the list of rules every diet you've ever been on has. It's probably not eat sensible, and that's it. It's probably not, you know, it's probably you can only have a certain kind of meat, you can only have a certain kind of carb, you can't have any sugar, you can't have any fats, you can't have any alcohol. It has a long list. It's kind of like the medications that you see the commercials for. The side effects are way longer than what it actually does good for you. And the same thing is with the diet. The the what you can have is way longer than what you can have. It'd just be easier to say, well, you can have, you know, a piece of chicken and one little thing of rice, like one little grain, and that's it. So they just create more noise. And then more noise comes from how food becomes a coping mechanism. Sometimes it's a coping mechanism, then you do it, and guilt follows, and then it's more chatter. It's more saying you shouldn't have done that. I can't believe you did that, you wasted all this, you know, you were doing so good, it all that stuff. And the interesting thing about the brain sometimes, for those of us that have food noise, is the brain associates food with control. I can control this. And it's not always when when everything feels uncertain, I can control this food, but it's usually not in a good way, it's usually not your mind saying, I'm not gonna have this or have that focused. Usually it's I can I'll do what I want, so I can control the food. I'll eat what I want to eat. Um, and then um some other noise. This is big noise. Um, social media. Um, you probably have you probably follow people, influencers, that say you should eat this or you should not eat that, you should do this exercise, not it, this exercise. I mean, there's probably a long list of and probably people you watch, influencers, and why are they influencers? Because they probably influence you in some way or others. They're and some of them probably contradict each other. And then you go, well, now I don't know what to do. You know, they look really good, and if I do what they do, I really kind of want to look like them, but then this person says, Don't do that, and they look really good, so now I don't know what to do. And if we don't know what to do, what do we do? Nothing, nothing that was like unanimous, like nothing. Yeah, and that's the truth. And a an indecision, get this an indecision is a decision. So to do nothing is a decision, and then then we another thing with the food noise is we ignore our hunger cues. I'm gonna skip a meal, I'm gonna ignore that craving, which leads us to overeating later, and then the psycho repeats with our food noise. And I can't believe you did that. And then I'm gonna go look up this influencer, see what they did to get rid of this bloating. Um, I'm gonna take this, you know. You've seen probably women should take lots of creatine. I think that's one of the trends now is take creatine. And you're finding those that probably don't have any trouble with bloating. But if you start taking a lot of creatine, like they say, you're gonna notice within a week you're bloating. When that bloat, unfortunately, doesn't really go away, it's gonna stick around, and then you get frustrated and think, why am I taking this? I'm getting bigger. So, but those again, those are things sometimes we do, and then we have more food noise, more noise about what am I doing wrong. So then how does that affect us? When all that stuff is coming in at us, how does it affect us? We overthink every meal, you know, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And is that exhausting? Yes. Yes, yes, and you think about exercising. Exercising is physically exhausting. You come in, you do an hour, you do 20 minutes, you do 30 minutes, you're on your way. But with food noise, it is constant. It's like all day long. You know, if you're out shopping, I kind of want, you know, I'd kind of like a Starbucks coffee, but I gotta get a whatever, a skinny or can't have many calories, or sugar-free, or that. You know, I really want a margarita, but I really need a skinny girl margarita. I mean, it's constant, but it almost feels like you can't go anywhere without that noise screaming at you. So then you feel guilty after eating it. Then then it then it gets hard to enjoy food because you go, this was so much work thinking about this, I just don't want to even eat. And there's some people that go, you know what, it's too much work to even think what to have, so I'd rather just not eat anything and just move on because it's too much work and hurts my brain too much to think. Figure it out, huh? Too hard to figure out. It's too hard to figure out, and I would just rather not eat again. Then that that leads to other issues, and then sometimes we eat reactively. This food noise causes us to eat reactively instead of intentionally. How often do you think about eating intentionally? Intentionally would almost be like kind of have an idea what you want, what you're gonna do, where reactive is, well, I don't have anything, so I'm just gonna grab whatever in the refrigerator, or I'm gonna grab whatever in the pantry. And then again, it leads back to you overthought it, you feel guilty, the food noise all starts again. So if we if we refer back to kind of what we talked about last night about on Mindful Moment, about breaking the cycle, this is a cycle that goes around and around and around that we have to break by trying to get through some of that food noise. And so that's kind of how it affects our brain, and so has it affect us physically. Um, we have irregular hunger cycles. We you know you're hungry late at night or early in the morning or um you know mid-afternoon, um, you have energy crashes, uh, poor digestion. Because why? Because you're you're eating when you're stressed turns off those digestion hormones, which creates all kinds of other problems. So the big question is how do we quiet the noise? How do we kind of keep it down a little bit? Again, it it's it's gonna take practice. One is maybe you pause before you eat. When we eat reactively instead of intentionally, reactive we're acting reacting to an emotion or an event, but we should be intentional about it. So when we pause before we eat, maybe we ask, am I physically hungry? I am emotionally empty, or am I mentally bored? Maybe those are some questions you ask, like, Am I really hungry? Or is it just something else going on? Maybe what do what do I need right now? What does my body need? Do I need fuel? Am I looking for comfort in the food? Or do I need rest? And sometimes when we need rest, um, we'd be just as well going to take a nap as we do grabbing the the uh dye free Doritos. If you haven't seen, they're gonna be dye free. Doritos, huh? They're gonna be naked. They're naked, yeah. Cheetos and and I mean, and ever since we were kids, they had color on them, so that's gonna be way different. I bet in our mind we won't think they taste the same because they don't have the color. It's kind of interesting. Um, so we have maybe we pause before we eat, we think about it. Um, we think about why we are fixed to eat this food? What is it? Um, maybe it's just convenient. Maybe you're walking by the candy dish and somebody's desk at work, and that's just on your path, so you're grabbing it. And you pause before you do, go, I'm just grabbing it because that's a habit. That's just what I do. Um, so maybe you pick a different path. Um and maybe you know, we we take out, we we remove the food morality. So, what does that mean? It means there's no good or bad foods, there's helpful helpful choices or unhelpful choices in the moment. So um, cake is bad. If we say bad, what do we have? We have guilt. Um if we say cake is a joy food, I enjoy cake, I'll enjoy it slowly. It adds peace. Have you ever taken a bite of something and just like savored it? Like that was the best thing ever. Um, it might be a drink, it might be just one of your favorite drinks, and maybe it's alcoholic, maybe it's not. Um, you know, you go, oh, that is so good. Like, that is amazing. And so you look at it as I'm gonna enjoy it. How do I how do I create joy out of this food without without trying to get joy from that food all the time and after every meal? Because cake after every meal is not gonna, you know, that's gonna show up on the uh waistline. But we can say, I'm gonna enjoy this, I'm gonna enjoy it slowly, and it just adds a little bit more peace instead of adding guilt to it. And and so we look at how do we how do we start switching our relationship with food? Again, just like the word cheat. Um, if you cheat, you automatically think you did something wrong. If a teacher says you cheated on a test, I did something wrong. Um, if you uh whatever whatever word that you cheat, um I ran a race and I won, but I cheated. You did something wrong. Um, and so we want to remove that and say it's a choice, it's it's not a cheat day or cheat meal, it's just part of my healthy living. And remember, a healthy living and healthy food, healthy eating is a balance. It doesn't mean perfection. A healthy lifestyle doesn't mean that there's maybe one or two days that you don't get any exercise in. It doesn't, it doesn't mean that it maybe it means that there's a meal that you go out to eat and you really enjoy it. Uh there's balance, and that's really what healthy living is is balance. Because if we narrow it down too much, it gets really restrictive, and then it's not enjoyable. How do we keep keep doing it long term? We enjoy it. Because are you still doing things today that you don't enjoy? Probably not. There's you know, because eventually we go, man, I gotta do this, I don't enjoy it, I hate it, but we're not gonna keep doing it. If you hate a job, are you gonna stay there for 40 years? No, there's gonna have to be some enjoyment in it to stay there, so we change kind of the way we look look at it. Also, we just try to eat a little slower. Um, have you ever seen those TikToks where one person tries to match the eating of another? Yeah, and sometimes it's a husband and wife, and and I think sometimes it's a wife, and usually the husband is just scarfing it down. And then if you typically if the the guy's trying to keep pace with the lady, it's usually real slow, like he's about to starve to death. Like he's trying to find everything to do until she takes that next bite because he's just ready. And that's kind of what we should do. And I'm not very good at this. I'll finish when Kim and I eat together, I'll finish, and she'll only be halfway done. So, like, I would probably feel like I'm gonna starve to death if I tried to match her eating pace, and she'd probably feel stuffed if she tried to eat at my pace. But if we slow down, it really is a better habit because it really takes our brain anywhere from 15 to 20 minutes to register fullness. Because typically, what happens when we go back to that second plate? When we go back to that second plate, we're about 10 to 15 minutes in it when all of a sudden we think, I'm stuffed. But if we would have waited, that feeling would have came along and we would have recognized it. So we just try to eat slow, we try to calm that noise. Like, let me just sit here for a little bit and enjoy the conversation. Have you ever been at a restaurant and finished eating and still kind of been hungry? But then you stay and visit for 15-20 minutes and you leave and you don't really think about it because you're full. That's typically what happens. So, and then we and again, this this takes practice. It takes um if we reframe our self-talk, um, because what is food noise? It's self-talk, yeah, constantly. Like you want to tell yourself to be quiet, go in the corner, you're in time out, don't talk to me anymore. So when we reframe that, we can replace controlling thoughts with curious questions. So, what does that mean? It means a controlling voice says, I shouldn't eat that. Whereas a curious voice says, Do I really want it right now? And doesn't that give you power when you say, Do I really want it? And you're like a kid when it says, I shouldn't eat that. Well, I'm gonna have it anyway. A controlling voice says, I ruined my diet. A curious voice says, What does my body need next? Another controlling voice says, I can't stop thinking about food. And then the curious voice might say, I'm undernourished. Am I undernourished or am I under-rested? You know, it's more digging into why can't I stop thinking about food? You know, what what is it that um is keeping me thinking about food and wanting to eat? Um, and again, I think it's because we've been conditioned to be restrictive of good and bad, and you know, you're always thinking about making the right choice, and I don't want to make the wrong choice, and I want to control my calories, and I've worked out so hard I don't want to mess it up. And we think about all this kind of stuff, and so it all goes into our food noise, and then sometimes really food noise is sometimes unmet needs. So, what does that mean? Maybe it means rest, you know, maybe it needs connection when we when we crave comfort foods. Really, we when we crave comfort foods, what is that? We're looking for a connection of some sort. So maybe we just find somebody to connect with. And instead of the comfort food, maybe you just need a hug. You know, then when we look for reward foods, when we crave those, maybe we just need some relief from something like, oh, I just need a break. So we have to kind of be, we have to be more in tune with our body to see what it wants because the the food noise is all mental. We have to connect with our body and say, what does it want? What's it trying to tell me? Am I physically hungry or am I just bored? And so again, I think sometimes we just let food noise just run rampant and we don't really control it. So, like if you food prep, it really helps with food noise. If you have a big problem with food noise, food prepping really helps. Not only you already have everything planned for you, but then you don't have to necessarily have all that food noise because you eat breakfast and you already know what your next meal is, and then you eat that meal and you already know what the next one is, and so it really helps kind of quiet that food noise because you've taken out something you have to worry about. Kind of like when you come to circuit class or treadmill class. If you go to the gym by yourself, what are you trying to think? What am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to do? How many reps do I do? How many sets do I do? How heavy do I go? What do I do? Is this right? Is this wrong? You have all these questions. When you come here to a circuit class, it's limed out. Boom, you know what to do. The noise isn't, you know, I know exactly how many to do, I know how long to do it. I have a general idea of the weight. So really all you're focused on is the weight. Same thing for treadmill. How many times have you gone on treadmill by yourself and go, ah, I don't know what to do. I really need to do some hills, I really need to get my heart rate up. Man, I just don't feel like it. And then I you take the easy route, then you feel guilty for it. So again, it's noise. So what happens when you come to treadmill class? The hope is it all you do is step on, turn it on, and then you just have to put in the work. You don't have to think about the time, you don't have to think about the music, you don't have to think about the effort, you don't have to think about any of that. So the hope is that again, it takes out that exercise noise. And that's kind of what what food prepping does. It takes out that noise. Like you already know what the next meal is, what time it is, what you're doing, and and and and so on. So you know, when we can, and that and that helps. So when we can quiet that noise, it does help us be able to hear what our body needs and what it's trying to tell us. And we have to become in tune with that. And and and food noise can cause anxiety too about what am I gonna eat? I don't know what to eat. And so we can replace that with awareness. I'm aware of what my body needs, I'm aware of what I'm gonna do next. I'm intentional with this. You know, I don't have a cheat day, it's I can have anything I want, so it it's I'm eating a balanced diet. And a balance now, balance doesn't mean meal for meal. Maybe you have three days that you eat horrible, and a balanced life means that you eat as well as you can for the following weeks. It's balance. Balance isn't equal for equal. It will equal out over time, but it doesn't have to be equal, equal in the present. So, so the challenge is to kind of think about some of the things, how we reframe it with your noise, how we eat slower, how we take out some of those words, because those are really big. When we take out some of those negative words and apply some of those positive things, what does my body need? This help, this nourishes me. These foods are helpful. I'm being intentional with my my food, just as we're intentional with our exercise. You know, you feel successful when you come to a class, you've signed up for it, you come to it. Same thing is true with if you meal prep or you have a good meal, you feel good about it. It's not necessarily guilt if you don't, it's just like, oh, here's the next one. But again, it takes food noise because we let that food noise run rampant, and now it's like a toddler that we have to retrain. And so we have to retrain our food noise to be a little calmer, to be a little more respectful to us, to be a little more understanding, and to listen to us and do what we tell it to do, but not it tell us what to do. Uh so any any thoughts, comments, or questions on our food noise, the loudest thing in our life. That's the truth. Yes. Constant. Constant. It's constant. But on another note, thank you for telling us what to do every day. Well, you're welcome. I appreciate it. You're welcome. It's one less thing to worry about. Yeah. And and I would love to to give you a diet and say go by this, but we don't do diet. So we do a do a healthy lifestyle. So, which is a diet would be probably easier because you go, I I crossed that off, that off, that off, I'm done. But a healthier lifestyle does make us feel a little more, have more guilt, less guilt, all of that. So, but any any other thoughts, comments, or questions on our food noise. Just remember, practice, practice, practice, practice. There's no quick fix, it just takes practice. And if you practice every day, being positive with yourself, being encouraging with yourself, being your biggest cheerleader, it will get better. So, but if you have any thoughts, comments, or questions, just let me know. Thank you all and thank you for joining us on Healthy Huddle. I'll look forward to seeing you right here next time on Healthy Hut.