What Food Noise Actually Sounds Like

What Food Noise Actually Sounds Like

I woke up this morning already thinking about food.

Not hungry. Just thinking. What am I going to eat today? What shouldn't I eat? What will I pack for lunch, and will I still want it by 12?

That's food noise. I'd heard the term thrown around and thought, well, that's me. That's been me for years.

For me it sounds like this: one more won't hurt. You're already fat, so it doesn't matter. It starts before I've even got out of bed and it doesn't switch off.

It gets bored too. People say just eat the same thing every day. My brain won't have it. I'll pack a lunch, decide halfway through the morning that I don't want it, and end up at the shop buying something else. I'm planning lunch well before lunchtime. It's exhausting.

Here's the hard part to admit as a coach. I teach women that changing your thoughts can change your life, and I believe that. I also really thought I could think my way out of this one. I can go three or four weeks doing everything right, lose five or six kilos, and then the noise gets loud again and undoes it. I couldn't do it on my own.

For a long time I didn't want to look at what was going on underneath. I've got little marks on my eyelids that are linked to cholesterol. I had no idea what my actual levels were because I was too scared to get tested. Easier to not know, right?

Except my body was already telling me. I couldn't get up and down off the floor with ease anymore. I was getting breathless. When I did catch a cold or the flu, it took me out for a week or more. In my early fifties, I shouldn't be struggling to pick something up off the ground.

There was shame in it too. I'd been fat shaming myself for years, which is a pretty awful way to talk to anyone, let alone yourself. I want to feel nice in my body again. I don't at the moment, and I'm done pretending that doesn't matter.

So I've decided to ask my doctor about medication designed to quiet the noise. I've done my research. It won't get rid of it completely, and the research says the noise can come back if I stop. It's not a magic fix and it's not the easy way out. I still have to do the work. More protein, strength training to protect my muscle, and the daily choices that nobody can make for me. This is a journey of two or three years, because I didn't put this weight on overnight.

What the medication might give me is enough quiet to actually do that work.

Nobody is coming to do this for me. That doesn't mean I have to do it with nothing.

Asking for help isn't giving up. For me, it was the first honest thing I'd done about my health in years.

Have you got a noise in your head that won't quit, about food or something else? Let's chat. Email me at [email protected]