Thinking About Food All the Time? Part One: What Food Noise Sounds Like
- Stephanie Fiorentino
- Jun 9
- 5 min read
If food noise has been taking up more mental space than you’d like, you might recognize some of this . . .
Have you ever seen the movie “Downhill”? The 2020 ski-resort dram-edy with Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Will Ferrell? No? Just me? Well anyway, there’s a scene in the movie where Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s character is planning out the family’s food for the day:
"I'm thinking we should just have some soup right now, and then we can have some of those yummy pastries at 4:00. And then we'll still be hungry for dinner."
Julia delivers the line perfectly, with just enough edge and tightness for the audience to know this isn’t some casual plan – she’s been mentally coordinating this soup/pastry/dinner strategy all morning.
As a lover of winter sports, especially downhill skiing, and someone with a history of disordered eating, food noise, and rigid control issues around food, this line hit like a funny(?) gut punch. I remember so many days on the slopes negotiating with myself – if I had a salad for lunch, could I get the hot chocolate? Had I skied enough (as in, burned enough calories) to warrant being as hungry as I felt? What if we ate too big a lunch and then weren’t hungry for our dinner reservations at the resort’s signature steak house?
There was a stretch of time in my younger years when I was always thinking about food. That was my normal . . . but it didn’t have to be.
Before I go on, here’s my standard disclaimer: This post is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not a substitute for individualized medical or mental health care. It does not constitute a patient-provider relationship. The content of this post might not feel useful to you right now—please take the information that serves you and leave the rest.
Intrusive food thoughts, food noise, obsessing about food . . . chose the language that resonates with you. Whatever you call it, here’s how it might sound:
Planning, then replanning meals for the day:
Having a plan for the day’s food can help keep you structured and bring clarity to your meals. But if you’re finding yourself changing the plan, then changing it again, then changing it back, that may be a sign that food thoughts have taken over. An example might sound like,
“Ok, I’m going to have avocado toast for breakfast, a salad for lunch, and pasta for dinner. But . . . I’d really like to grab a sandwich for lunch with my colleagues. That’s not enough vegetables for the day though, so ok, I’ll have my salad for dinner instead. Although . . . maybe I shouldn’t have toast at breakfast because that’s too much bread if I have a sandwich.”
If this feels familiar, you might notice the plan itself isn’t the problem—it’s how much mental space it’s taking.
Negotiating with yourself about what foods or meals are allowed:
Are you “allowed” to eat dessert if you worked out in the morning but not if you didn’t? Can you have
pasta if it’s your only carb for the day? These food rules alone aren’t great. And the distress ratchets up when you start negotiating about what “counts” as dessert or carbs or pasta.
“A few squares of chocolate isn’t really like a full dessert. And ok, yeah, I did have oatmeal for breakfast, but that’s a “healthy” carb, and this pasta is chickpea pasta anyway so it’s ok.”
Even when you’ve justified eating the food, the experience still feels stressful, tense, or loaded.
Food moralizing or attaching self-worth to food:
Do you feel bad, like, actually kind of a bad person if you eat something outside your food rules? When foods that are too processed, too high in fat or carbs, too . . . whatever, leave you feeling like you’ve done something corrupt, that’s worth paying attention to.
Assigning a moral value to food can negatively impact your self-worth. This can intensify the food noise, pulling in all sorts of judgments about your value when you were only trying to decide what to eat for dinner.
Thinking about your next meal when you’re still eating your current meal:
Oof, this one is so frustrating! Your co-worker invites you out for lunch, you take one look at the menu and immediately start planning how you’ll compensate at dinner. Your lunch order arrives and the chatter only gets louder.
“Maybe I’ll just eat half of this, that way I can still have what I planned for dinner. But you know really, if I cheat at lunch I might as well just order pizza for dinner anyway. No, I’m not going to do that, I’ll get a salad. Or I’ll just skip dinner.”
All the while you’re missing out on the meal that’s right in front of you.
Repeatedly reviewing the foods you’ve already eaten for the day:
Do you get to lunch and start the rough calculation of calories, macros, and “bad” foods for the day? Maybe you review your breakfast and morning snack and feel ok, like you’re on track for the day. But when you run your mental math again after lunch, you’re suddenly not so sure it’s been a “good” day.
By the end of the day, you’ve reviewed your food several times. You might be sitting on the couch watching TV with your partner, quietly stressing about how many calories were really in those healthified black bean stevia brownies your coworker brought in. At this point, it feels like you’ve spent more time evaluating your food than actually enjoying it.
A few more considerations:
Food noise may feel loud and distressing. It may feel constant, low level, and difficult to notice. Or it may feel loud sometimes, and more like background noise at other times.
Not thinking about food can be a sign of avoidance or overwhelm. If you go from constant food thoughts to zero food thoughts, it’s possible that you’ve become so exacerbated by all the noise that your brain has temporarily shut it down. That quiet can feel like relief—but it can also be a form of avoidance.
So . . . are all these food thoughts normal?
Yes. And no.
Yes, food noise, food distress, and intrusive food thoughts are all super normal in diet culture. We are trained to be hyper focused on the food we’re eating – to constantly be tracking macros and monitoring for restricted ingredients or foods. We learn to measure our intake against our physical activity and adjust accordingly. If you’re stuck in food noise, you are not alone.
But no, it doesn’t have to be this way.
If you’re starting to recognize these patterns in yourself, that matters. This kind of intrusive thought spiral sucks the joy right out of life. If this post resonates, consider saving it or sharing it with someone who’s had a similar experience. And if you want to understand why your food thoughts have become so loud, and what you might do to quiet them, check back for part two of this post.
Please know support is always available. If food noise has become distressing or distracting, a dietitian can help. Learn more here.
With Compassion,
Stephanie
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