Stop the Food Noise!
One of my clients said this to me, and while a formal definition hasn't made it into Merriam-Webster, I knew exactly what she meant.
Food noise is one of the biggest things that gets in the way of weight loss, or almost any behavior change that involves food.
What is Food Noise?
Food noise (noun): always thinking about food, when you’re eating, and when you’re not
Food noise can sound like:
What am I going to have for dinner (even though it's only 9am)
Dinner isn't ready. Where are the chips?
There are Tate's cookies in the pantry, calling my name.
I'll just stop at the Wawa. Tastykakes are so yummy.
I shouldn't eat that, but she went to all that trouble to make it for me.
I can't believe I ate that (with a heavy dose of shame).
If I'm 'good' all day, I'll reward myself with an ounce of dark chocolate tonight.
I'm on vacation. I deserve a croissant in Paris . . .
Sometimes food noise sounds like your mother, or your wife, or your skinny best friend.
Quiet Food Noise by Balancing Your Blood Sugar
Food noise is often connected to blood sugar swings, which are driven by a high-carbohydrate diet and fueled by insulin resistance. When a high-carb meal spikes your blood sugar, a surge of insulin is needed to reduce it quickly. When your brain senses this rapid drop in blood sugar, it creates cravings and food noise to convince you to eat quickly. This cycle is aggravated by insulin resistance.
Insulin resistance is a complicated topic, and food noise is only one of the consequences. Learn more in Understanding Insulin Resistance.
I can usually tell when a client is experiencing blood sugar swings by the metabolic questionnaire they complete as part of their intake, or by simply talking to them about what they eat and how they feel.
For those clients, I introduce them to easy strategies to balance their blood sugar. For example, replacing the oatmeal and almond milk they're having for breakfast with scrambled eggs, spinach, and cheese.
There are lots of benefits to making these swaps — feeling full longer, reducing cravings, and lowering insulin — but one of the most surprising is how much it calms down the constant thinking about food.
After only one session of working with a client to reduce refined carbohydates and ingredients found in processed foods, she reported that she had stopped snacking after dinner, something we hadn't even talked about. By helping her structure her meals to stabilize her blood sugar, the food noise and cravings went away.
How Sleep and Stress Contribute to Food Noise
Blood sugar swings can also be caused by poor sleep and elevated stress.
Have you ever noticed that you are hungrier after a poor night's sleep? Lack of sleep sets off a hormonal cascade that increases your hunger hormone, ghrelin, and decreases the hormone that makes you feel full, leptin. That combination is a one-two punch that increases your hunger.
To make things worse, poor sleep temporarily increases your insulin resistance. So, when that increased hunger drives you to eat more, your cells have a hard time absorbing the glucose, which aggravates the blood sugar swings.
The connection between stress and blood sugar is more direct.
When you experience stress, whether acute or chronic, your body releases cortisol and other stress hormones. One of the functions of cortisol is to tell your liver to make glucose and release it into the bloodstream.
The evolutionary purpose of this is to ensure you have adequate blood sugar to deal with the source of the stress, for example, running away from a bear.
Your stress is more likely to come from a slow driver in front of you when you're late for work, and you're not burning off the resulting surge of blood sugar by running. That surge can cause blood sugar swings, which drive food noise in the same way that excess carbohydrates do.
Other Ways to Quiet Food Noise
Incidentally, quieting food noise is one of the surprising benefits of GLP-1 medications for weight loss. Those meds help balance your blood sugar and manage insulin, so this benefit isn't surprising to me, but medications aren't the only way.
For more ideas about how to manage your blood sugar to help reduce food noise, download Ten Easy Ways to Balance Your Blood Sugar.
Clients who work with me in my program, Personalized Nutrition to Improve Metabolic Health, often have a complicated relationship with food. Taking easy steps to balance their blood sugar, including reformulating their meals, improving sleep, and reducing stress, can quiet the food noise enough so that when we get to their story, it's a lot easier to rewrite.
I'll share more about how we do that in an upcoming post.
