Beyond the Scales

Pt 2 | When Food Noise Goes Quiet

There has been a lot of conversation recently about food noise: that almost constant background chatter about food. What shall I eat? When can I eat? What is in the cupboard? I really fancy something. I probably ought not to have that. I have already eaten too much today. I will start again tomorrow. For some people using the newer weight-loss medications, one of the most striking changes they describe is not simply feeling less hungry. It is how much quieter all of that becomes.

For someone who has spent years, perhaps decades, negotiating with food, that quiet can feel incredibly freeing. Yet it also makes me curious, because if food has occupied an enormous amount of space in our thoughts and our lives, what becomes visible when it no longer occupies quite so much?

In my last blog, When Food Has Been Your Friend, I wrote about the many roles food can play in our lives. Food is not simply fuel, and I do not think we help anybody by pretending it is. It can be comfort, reward, pleasure and something to look forward to. It can also dampen emotions, both wanted and unwanted ones. It can punctuate a difficult day and give us a reason to stop. It is also deeply social, woven through birthdays, celebrations, family gatherings, holidays and friendships.

I wonder sometimes whether the balance has shifted without us really noticing. We meet for lunch, go out for cake, order a takeaway as a treat or plan the restaurant before we have planned much else about an evening together. None of that is wrong. I love good food and I certainly do not want a life in which it becomes merely functional. Yet I find myself wondering whether sometimes the food has gradually become the treat, rather than the conversation, laughter, company and connection around it.

Perhaps that is one of the interesting things about the food noise becoming quieter. It does not mean losing everything that food has given us. It gives us an opportunity to notice it. What do we want to keep? What might we no longer need? And what else becomes visible?

What was I actually looking for?

I have started noticing some of this in my own life. There have been many occasions when I have finished an evening meal without dessert, perhaps partly because somewhere in my head dessert felt like something I did not really need or perhaps “should not” have. A few hours later, though, I could quite happily find myself looking for something sweet whilst watching television.

That has made me curious. Was I hungry? Sometimes perhaps, but often I suspect not. Was the television particularly gripping? Frequently not! Maybe what I wanted was a change of sensation, a little hit of pleasure, something that marked the evening in some way. I had decided against having a dessert as part of the meal, yet somehow grazing on something later could slip through a completely different mental doorway.

I am not presenting that as nutritional science or suggesting everybody experiences the same thing. It is simply something I have noticed in myself, and noticing is useful. Perhaps the interesting question is not whether I was “good” for refusing dessert or “bad” for wanting something later. Perhaps it is: what was I actually looking for?

Boredom matters. Pleasure matters. Ritual matters. Having something to look forward to matters. If I am sitting in front of fairly uninspiring television at the end of a long day, food can provide a moment of interest and an uplift that the programme certainly is not providing. When the pull towards that food becomes quieter, the evening is still there. So is the boredom. That gives me a choice I might not previously have noticed.

What do we do with the space?

This is the part of the current conversation around weight-loss medication that particularly interests me. If something reduces the strength of the pull towards an old behaviour, there may be a precious opportunity to practise something different whilst that pull is quieter.

It reminds me, in a completely different context, of some of the conversations we are having about AI. One of its promises is that it can give us back time. That creates an opportunity. We could simply fill every newly available hour with more work, or we could use some of that space for better quality time, creativity, relationships, rest or the things we have been telling ourselves we never have time for.

Perhaps there is a parallel with medication and food noise. If medication dampens appetite and quietens that constant pull towards food, it creates an opportunity too. Not because it teaches us new habits, meets our emotional needs or changes our lives for us, but because we may have some space in which to do those things for ourselves.

Changing a long-established behaviour can be incredibly difficult when the old behaviour is constantly calling us back. If that voice becomes quieter for a while, perhaps we can use that opportunity to practise something different whilst we are not fighting quite so hard against the pull of the familiar.

If I am bored, what genuinely engages me? If I need comfort, what actually feels comforting? If I want a treat, what else feels like a treat? If food has helped me cope, what other mechanisms can I develop? If it has given me something to look forward to, what else could I put into my life that I genuinely anticipate and enjoy? If sharing food has been one of the ways I connect with people, how do I make sure I keep the connection even if my interest in the food itself changes?

The needs that food may have been meeting have not necessarily disappeared simply because the food noise has become quieter. Yet perhaps we now have an opportunity to meet some of them differently.

Every time we practise a new response, it has the chance to become a little more familiar. We can strengthen those new habits whilst the old pull is quieter, rather than waiting to find out what happens if that pull becomes louder again.

The quiet is not the change itself. It is an opportunity to create change.

Perhaps this is bigger than food

I recognise something of this in myself beyond eating. I am someone who likes doing things. I like ideas, projects, creating, learning and the next challenge. I can finish something and remarkably quickly find myself thinking, “Right, what is next?” Much of that brings me enormous pleasure, so I have no desire to remove it. I have become curious, though, about the difference between doing something because I genuinely want to and doing something because an empty space feels uncomfortable.

We all have our own ways of filling those spaces. It might be food, scrolling, shopping, work, looking after everybody else, another project or even constantly trying to improve ourselves. Sometimes the behaviour itself is not really the most interesting thing. What becomes interesting is the need underneath it.

Perhaps that is why I do not see quieter food noise simply as an opportunity to eat less. That feels like missing something much bigger. There may be things about our relationship with food that we absolutely want to keep: sitting around a table with people we love, enjoying something delicious, celebrating, cooking for somebody, sharing a favourite meal or experiencing the sheer pleasure of taste. Changing our relationship with food does not need to mean stripping the joy out of it.

There may also be things we discover we no longer need quite so much. Food might not need to rescue every boring evening, soften every difficult emotion, reward every achievement or provide the only enjoyable moment in an exhausting day.

Then comes perhaps the most interesting part: what else becomes visible?

Maybe we discover that we need more rest. More stimulation. More laughter. More connection. More pleasure that does not need to be earned. More things to anticipate. More boundaries. More time doing things that absorb us rather than merely distract us. Perhaps we discover that what we thought was a problem with food was sometimes a life asking for something that food happened to be very good at providing for a while.

Medication may change appetite and the experience of food for some people. What it cannot do is decide what we want our lives to contain. That part remains wonderfully individual.

So perhaps, when the food noise goes quiet, we do not need to rush to fill the silence. We can listen to it. We can ask ourselves what we want to keep, what we might no longer need and what we can see now that we could not see quite so clearly before.

And whilst the old voice is quieter, perhaps we can begin practising the things we would like to hear instead.