How to Get the Upper Hand on Food Noise

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Episode Description

So where do you go from here?

This series may be ending, but the work of changing your relationship with food noise is something you continue to practice.

In this episode, I wrap up the series by talking about what comes next. The goal was never to eliminate every thought and feeling you have around food. It was to become more comfortable sitting with those thoughts, understanding them, deciding which ones need your attention, and learning how to respond in a way that works better for you.

Some thoughts you may be able to let go. Some may need to be processed. Some may need to be redirected into something else.

That takes practice.

And a lot of what we have talked about throughout this series goes far beyond food noise.

Self trust, consistency, body image, discipline, emotional awareness, patience, and learning how to navigate your own thoughts are all part of building a forever active lifestyle.

That is why this conversation does not really stop just because this particular series does.

I also talk about where you can continue exploring these ideas across the other Your Level Fitness podcasts.

How to Make Your Fitness Journey a Lifestyle takes many of these same underlying principles and applies them more broadly to fitness, eating, consistency, and building something sustainable.

Love the Body You Have goes deeper into how you feel about what and who you see in the mirror, including the insecurities that are often reinforced by fitness and weight loss marketing.

The Daryl Perry Podcast takes a wider look at the mindset, personal development, and life experiences that shape the way I approach all of this.

If you are listening to the dedicated How to Get the Upper Hand on Food Noise feed, this is the final episode of this finite series.

If you are listening through the Food Noise Podcast, I may return when there is something genuinely new in the conversation that is worth unpacking. But I do not want to keep filling the feed with repetitive episodes just for the sake of continuing it.

You now have the framework.

Keep practicing. Keep observing. Keep journaling. Keep learning how to trust yourself.

The goal was never to finish this perfectly.

The goal was to give yourself a better way to navigate it for the rest of your life.

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Episode Description

How do you know when your relationship with food is actually changing?

You may not wake up one day and suddenly feel completely different. A lot of the progress you make with food noise is going to be much more subtle than that.

In this episode, I talk about what progress can actually look like when you are working to get the upper hand on your thoughts and feelings around food.

You may notice that you feel more at ease with yourself. You may feel more comfortable with the decisions you make before, during, and after eating. Thoughts that once created immediate anxiety, guilt, or shame may still show up, but you may start responding to them differently.

That is progress.

The goal is not to completely eliminate every thought or feeling around food. Some of those thoughts are useful cues. They can tell you when you are hungry, what sounds good, or what your body may need.

What we are really working toward is a stronger connection with yourself and more trust in your ability to navigate what comes up.

I also want you to revisit the picture you have in your head of what getting the upper hand on food noise looks like.

Has it changed since you started this process?

Maybe you originally imagined a life where food noise disappeared completely. Now you may be starting to see that the better outcome is becoming more equipped to experience those thoughts without immediately needing to escape them.

Over the weeks and months, you may start noticing less guilt, less shame, more confidence, and a greater ability to move forward after the choices you make.

Some days you may feel like you have everything under control. Other days something may catch you completely off guard.

That does not erase your progress.

You deal with what is in front of you as best you can, dust yourself off, and keep going.

You are not waiting until you are perfect to say this is working.

You are learning how to trust yourself more than you did before.

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Episode Description

What if you did not have to wait for proof before deciding to trust yourself?

In this episode, I talk about one of the biggest mindset shifts in getting the upper hand on food noise, choosing to trust yourself before you have all the evidence that you can.

A lot of us are taught that change works in a very specific order. Take the action first, collect enough evidence, and eventually you will feel confident, capable, or like you finally belong.

But that does not always happen.

You can take action over and over again and still feel like a fraud. You can continue doing the right things and still question whether you are capable of navigating the process.

I want you to consider reversing that order.

Make the decision first.

Decide that you are someone who will figure this out. Decide that you are capable of navigating your thoughts and feelings around food. Decide that when you do not know what to do next, you will learn, adjust, and keep moving.

Then let your thoughts and actions reinforce that decision.

This does not mean pretending you have all the answers. It does not mean you will never fall into an old thought loop or make a choice that feels familiar. Those patterns will still show up.

The difference is that you are no longer using every difficult moment as evidence against yourself.

You can redirect.

You can change your thoughts. You can change your actions. You can move back toward the direction you have already chosen for yourself.

Self trust is not something you have to earn perfectly before you are allowed to use it. It is something you can begin practicing now.

The more you reinforce that decision, the more comfortable and confident you can become in your ability to navigate food noise without needing every thought or feeling around food to disappear.

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Episode Description

A familiar thought does not mean you are failing.

A familiar feeling does not mean you are headed back down the same path.

In this episode, I talk about why one of the most important parts of getting the upper hand on food noise is learning not to decide too quickly that something is going wrong.

A lot of us have a story we tell ourselves about our past. Maybe you remember your highest weight. Maybe you remember a period where you felt physically or emotionally awful. Maybe you look back at choices you made around food and use those experiences as evidence that you cannot trust yourself.

But your past does not have to become your future.

When an old thought or feeling shows up, you now have something incredibly valuable that you may not have had before.

Awareness.

You can recognize the familiar path and decide whether you want to keep going in that direction or redirect yourself somewhere else.

The first time you do that, you start creating evidence that you can trust yourself differently.

Sometimes you will redirect quickly. Sometimes you will notice what is happening after you have already gone pretty far down the old path. Sometimes you may decide to stay there for a while.

That does not mean you failed.

You can own the choice you made and make another choice when the next opportunity comes.

I also talk about why the new direction can feel uncomfortable simply because it is unfamiliar. We often trust the old path because we know where it goes, even when we do not like the destination. Building self trust means practicing a different response enough times that the new direction starts becoming familiar too.

Food is also more than fuel. We enjoy it. We connect memories, emotions, preferences, and experiences to it. The goal is not to eliminate any of that. It is learning how food fits into your life in a way that feels like yours.

You are allowed to make the rules.

And if you feel like you have gone several steps backward, you can still take the next step forward.

You are not starting from nothing. You are continuing to learn how to trust yourself.

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Episode Description

What happens when you stop trying to immediately shut down the thoughts and feelings you have around food?

That is one of the biggest challenges in getting the upper hand on food noise.

In this episode, I talk about what it means to actually sit in the noise, experience the thoughts and feelings that come up, and give yourself enough time to understand what is happening instead of immediately deciding that those thoughts are something you need to eliminate.

For some people, food noise is tied to guilt, shame, anxiety, decision fatigue, restriction, emotional eating, or years of feeling like thinking about food means they lack willpower. Those experiences can overlap, but your relationship with food is still uniquely yours.

This is why I continue to encourage working with a therapist who is the right fit for you. There can be a lot tangled together underneath our relationship with food, exercise, our bodies, and the way we see ourselves.

I also talk about why quieting food noise is not automatically the same thing as changing your relationship with it. If the noise becomes quieter for any reason, you are allowed to enjoy that relief. You do not have to immediately turn it into another project.

There is no finish line.

You are building a lifestyle that you may be navigating for decades, and what matters most is creating a foundation you can return to.

Part of that foundation is becoming more comfortable with your own ability to make choices. Sometimes you may emotionally eat. Sometimes you may make a choice that looks different from what you originally planned. The goal is not to turn every decision into another reason to judge yourself.

It is learning to own the choice, observe what happened, let it go, and move forward.

I also share how I changed my own relationship with foods I once believed I could not keep around by giving myself permission to have them and allowing the intensity around them to gradually change.

As you work through this episode, pay attention to what you actually feel when the food noise gets loud. Write those thoughts down. Notice where food overlaps with other areas where you may fixate, criticize yourself, or feel like something needs to be fixed.

Then remind yourself of what you are working toward.

You can have thoughts and feelings around food without allowing those thoughts and feelings to control everything that comes next.

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Episode Description

What does food noise actually mean to you?

We hear a lot about quieting food noise, turning it down, or trying to eliminate it completely. But before you decide what needs to happen with those thoughts and feelings, I think it is worth slowing down and figuring out what food noise actually looks like in your own life.

In this episode, I talk about why food noise is going to be different for each of us and why a broad definition can only take you so far.

The term itself can be helpful because it gives us language for something many people experience. But once we attach a label to something, it is easy to start accepting somebody else's definition of what it is supposed to look like and how we are supposed to feel about it.

Instead, I want you to start observing.

What thoughts come up around food? What feelings come with them? What situations seem to make those thoughts louder? What parts of the common conversation around food noise actually apply to you, and what parts do not?

Write it down however works best for you. Use pen and paper, your phone, a journaling app, or anything that helps you get the thoughts out of your head and in front of you.

There is no wrong answer.

The goal is to practice observing what is happening without immediately criticizing yourself or deciding that every thought about food is something that needs to be fixed.

We are constantly surrounded by messages about food. Food can be celebrated, feared, restricted, marketed, moralized, and connected to everything from culture to fitness to weight loss. Of course we are going to have thoughts and feelings about it.

Those thoughts do not automatically mean something is wrong.

Learning to notice them without immediately judging them is a skill, and like everything else we are talking about in this series, it takes practice.

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Episode Description

Getting the upper hand on food noise does not mean making every thought and feeling around food disappear.

It means learning how to understand those thoughts, trust yourself to navigate them, and build a different relationship with the choices you make around food.

In this episode, I introduce the foundation for this series and talk about why so much of the conversation around food noise is connected to something deeper. The fitness and weight loss industry has always been very good at marketing against our insecurities, including the fear that we cannot trust ourselves.

When we feel out of control, we start looking for something outside of ourselves to fix the problem.

My approach is different.

I want you to start recognizing that you are the expert on your own life. You already have years of experience showing you what works, what does not, what you prefer, and what fits into your lifestyle. The work is learning how to use that information while developing more trust in yourself.

I also talk about why the beginning of this process can feel intense. When you start leaning into the thoughts and feelings you normally try to suppress, the food noise may initially feel even louder. That does not automatically mean something is going wrong.

This is something you practice.

Fitness can actually give you a clearly defined place to build these skills. You can practice consistency, observation, adjustment, patience, and trusting a process while creating a forever active lifestyle that fits you.

As you begin this series, take a few minutes to consider one question.

What would it feel like if you trusted yourself to navigate food most of the time?

You do not need perfection. You are simply starting to imagine what a calmer and more confident relationship with food could feel like for you.

When did thinking about food become something we decided needed to be fixed?

The term food noise has helped put a name to thoughts and feelings that many people have experienced around food for years. That can be incredibly useful. Having language for an experience can help us recognize it, talk about it, and better understand what is happening.

But there is another side of the conversation worth exploring.

In this episode, I talk about what happens when something that finally has a name also starts being marketed as a problem that everyone needs to solve.

Not every thought about food automatically means something is wrong.

For some people, thoughts and feelings around food may genuinely feel overwhelming, exhausting, or disruptive. For someone else, hearing the term food noise may be the first time they started questioning thoughts that previously did not bother them at all.

And there is a lot of space between those two experiences.

I also dig into how health, fitness, weight loss, and weight loss medications can influence the way food noise is discussed, and why I am cautious anytime an incredibly individual experience gets reduced to an absolute.

Instead of immediately asking, “How do I fix my food noise?” it might be worth asking a different question.

When did I decide this needed to be fixed in the first place?

Your experience matters. Your preferences matter. Your history with food matters. And ultimately, you are the person who gets to decide what a healthier and more peaceful relationship with food looks like for you.

The goal is not to eliminate every thought or feeling. It is to build something that does not feel like a constant mental tug of war.

Continue the conversation around food noise by joining the Your Level Fitness live streams.

https://yourlevelfitness.com/stream

How much should you actually be thinking about food?

The conversation around food noise can make it seem like thinking about food at all is something we need to eliminate. But food is constantly around us. We see advertising, hear conversations about it, plan meals, eat socially, celebrate with food, and sometimes simply enjoy eating something because it tastes good.

In this episode, I explore why the goal may not be to reach some universal definition of the "right" amount of food thoughts.

What matters more might be understanding how those thoughts and feelings affect you personally.

Are they creating anxiety?

Are they bringing up guilt or shame?

Are they consuming a large amount of your mental energy?

Or are they simply part of having a normal relationship with something that plays a practical, social, cultural, and emotional role in our lives?

I also talk about why food noise is so individualized, especially for people navigating weight loss, weight management, or weight loss medications. Instead of automatically labeling thoughts about food as good or bad, we can start observing what those thoughts are telling us and how we respond to them.

The goal is not perfection. It is developing a relationship with food that feels more manageable, less consuming, and more aligned with your own life.

Be patient, compassionate, and curious with yourself as you figure out what that looks like for you.

Continue the conversation around food noise by joining the Your Level Fitness live streams.

https://yourlevelfitness.com/stream

What if the thoughts and feelings you have around food are not automatically a problem that needs to be eliminated?

In this episode, I’m taking a deeper look at food noise and why I think the conversation needs more nuance than simply trying to silence every thought about food.

Yes, the food and weight loss industries have learned how to use our natural cues, emotions, cravings, and eating behaviors against us. Foods are intentionally developed and marketed to make us want more, and we are surrounded by messaging about food all day long. That matters.

But that does not mean having thoughts and feelings about food makes you weak, undisciplined, or out of control.

Those thoughts can also give you useful information. They can tell you when you are hungry or full. They can help you recognize whether you are actually enjoying what you are eating. They can also give you an opportunity to notice guilt, shame, anxiety, stress, habits, and other patterns that may be influencing your choices.

The answer does not have to be letting food noise run wild or trying to shut it off completely.

I believe your answer is probably somewhere in the middle.

We’ll talk about learning to navigate food without turning it into a game of willpower, recognizing how much more experience you have now than you did earlier in your journey, and rebuilding trust in your ability to make decisions around food.

I also share why kindness and compassion toward yourself matter, why guilt and shame do not need to be part of your eating plan, and why learning to trust yourself may be one of the most important skills you develop for your long term health and fitness.

You have more tools, experience, and awareness than you probably give yourself credit for.

You are capable of figuring out what works for you.

Continue the conversation around food noise by joining the Your Level Fitness live streams:

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