RYW 147: The 5 Stages of Food Noise

So today's episode is called the five stages of food noise.

Over the years I have noticed something that just keeps showing up in almost every conversation that I have with clients and And it's this.

On the surface, everyone believes that they're struggling with something slightly different.

So one person says, I can't stop snacking in the evening.

Another feels constantly distracted by thoughts of food.

Someone else is exhausted by work.

sort of endless internal debate about whether they should or shouldn't eat.

Someone else may say, oh, it's definitely to do with sugar.

It's not necessarily savory things.

The details vary, but underneath those experiences, I see the same journey or the same pattern playing out again and again.

And it's a pattern that often starts with the very best of intentions, but then gradually becomes this cycle that can feel really impossible to escape.

And I think of it as the five stages of food noise.

Now, just to put a definition around food noise, I did a social media post about this a little while ago.

Just to kind of explain the definition, because if you know, you know, if you're not 100% sure what it actually means, it means constantly thinking about food.

So it's not just about what you're actually eating as in food choice.

it's everything around it.

So it's thinking about what might be in the kitchen, what you're going to buy from the shop, should you be eating that, have you had enough, have you had too much, is this okay, is that not allowed? It's constant mental chatter.

So if you are someone who spends too much time trying to control your eating patterns because you just think about food way too much then that basically is the definition of food noise.

So let's kind of delve into these stages because I find that when you understand again the patterning it's going to help you see in a different way so I believe there are five stages to food noise as in what I've just said this constant all-consuming repetitive obsessive compulsive thinking around food and eating and And the reason that I find this framework so helpful that I'm about to share with you is because it really does shift the conversation away from blame.

When you can see the cycle for what it is, you stop assuming that your struggle is this personal failing on your behalf and it's unique to you and you begin to understand it as something that your brain has actually learned over time.

So let's go through these.