Ep. 31 | Exploring Food Noise: What it is & Why we have it

NOTE: I am not a medical professional or therapist, this episode is not to be used as medical advice it is based on my experiences, thoughts and opinions.

Welcome to episode 31 of The Culture Of It All! this week we’re exploring the term ‘food noise’. Since 2022, as weight loss jabs have become a casual part of conversation, so has the term ‘food noise’, but what does it mean? What is food noise, and why do some people not experience it? In this episode I’ll be sharing my thoughts about the term, how food noise develops, and ways we can quieten the noise without the use of GLP-1s. There is a content warning and context for this episode at the beginning; please note I will be discussing hunger, appetite, cravings, emotional eating, food addiction and intuitive eating.

Chapters:

00:00 Content Warning For Episode
02:04 Understanding GLP-1s and Their Impact
03:38 NHS Guidelines for GLP-1s
04:34 The Impact Of Diet Culture And Concerns Over Prescribing GLP-1s
14:03 Defining Food Noise
16:11 The Biological Responses to Hunger
18:42 The Influence of Genetics on Eating Behavior
24:22 Other Ways We Can Quieten The Noise
30:11 Body Change and Intuitive Eating
32:45 The Misunderstanding of Food Addiction
37:40 The Nuances of Intuitive Eating: Trusting Ourselves
42:53 Autonomy and Informed Choices in Dieting

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Transcript

Melanie Knights [she/they] (00:00)
Hello everybody, welcome back to The Culture of It All. This is episode 31. Hello my plus-size pals, hello everybody. If you are new here thank you so much for joining us. This is a big episode, a big week, because this is something I have wanted to discuss and explore with you for quite some time. This episode has been planned and pushed back multiple times because I really needed to figure out my feelings.

As you can probably tell from the title of this episode, we are going to be talking about food noise. A term that I was not that familiar with until a few years ago, but it has gained quite a bit of traction and it's probably something you're seeing on a regular basis because of the rise of GLP-1s. So this week, inevitably, as we talk about food noise, we will talk about GLP-1s and I'm kind of...

wanting to give you a content warning straight from here onwards. We're talking about hunger and appetite and cravings. We will be talking about the term food addiction, and I'll be sharing some of the misunderstandings around that term and the ways in which it's being used as a marketing tool. Very much the same as the term food noise. And we'll also be talking about what is food noise? Why is it that some people don't seem to have it? Is it really possible to

curb your food noise or, you know, reduce your food noise, get rid of your food noise. Is that really possible? And is it possible without GLP-1s?

I also want to start with a caveat for this episode. In particular because this is something that gets brought to my comments section on social media on an almost daily basis. And as I've said before, people tend to clutch their pearls and say, but what about people's health when I talk about diets not working and being anti-diet? So

You know, just a reminder, I'm anti-diet, but I'm not anti-dieter. I am not anti-health. And today for this conversation, when we are talking about GLP-1s and some of my concerns and some of the thoughts and opinions I might have or the questions I've got, because there's questions that I do not have the answers to and feelings that I'm uncertain of, I'm never talking about this from the point of view of health. So what I mean by that is if someone is being prescribed GLP-1s,

for a health condition, whether that is a health condition related to their weight or not, that is not up for discussion. It is not something that I am getting involved in. That is a conversation for that person to have with hopefully an unbiased medical professional. So that is not even up for discussion today. And, One of the things I find very frustrating, and again, I've probably said this before,

is the lack of nuance and context on social media. It is impossible, right? It's impossible when people's attention spans are short and you're trying to make short form content. It's very difficult to get a lot into that minute.

I do not blame individuals for pursuing weight loss. for choosing to pursue thinness and taking weight loss drugs in order to do that. I blame the system and society that we live in that consistently and persistently tells us that our worthiness is conditional. That our success in this world will be determined by our body size and how we look.

And coincidentally, the other reason why it happened to be great timing that I felt ready to talk about this subject is because the NHS guidelines for GLP-1s came through just this week at the time of recording this. I will pop a link to them in the show notes. But essentially here in the UK, the NHS are now able to prescribe GLP-1s, specifically Mounjaro to patients. And at first glance, the screening process seems fairly stringent.

especially in comparison to what I've heard about private clinics or online services. You they're not being offered for aesthetic reasons. It is specifically for folks who have multiple health conditions correlated to body weight. And in the next two to three years, as they plan to roll this out even further, at the moment, what they're saying is they're only going to adjust a couple of the guidelines. It is based on BMI, which I know is trash, but it's based on BMI and health conditions correlated to body weight.

you at the moment have to have four out of five and I think in 2027 it's going to be three out of five.

But the guidance also suggests that patients will receive wraparound care, encouraging them to follow other healthy behaviors, quote unquote healthy behaviors, related to diet and exercise, which I know is also the current guideline, even with private access.

And over the last year or so, I've kind of gradually spoken to people, whether that's people in real life, people in groups I'm part of, or even just through social media, people have come into my comment sections and have talked about their experience accessing these drugs. And some of the concerns I have from just stories that I've heard is like the screening process doesn't seem as stringent online.

⁓ I know that some people I know who have pre-existing chronic illness have had contraindications with their existing medication and that hasn't been picked up during the screening process and it's left them very ill, which is, you know, that's deeply concerning. And a question I consistently am left with is why are we prescribing medication when people don't have a health condition?

Because being fat isn't a disease. Right? Being fat is not a disease. I know that that is something that is being used on the regular as a marketing ploy, but being fat is not a disease. That inherently is not true. And so why are we prescribing medication to people who don't have pre-existing health conditions?

And this is one of my big concerns is that folks who didn't have health conditions are now experiencing these side effects as a result of taking them. Some of these side effects are quite severe.

And one of my big concerns is folks who didn't have health conditions are now experiencing side effects as a result of taking these drugs. Literally a day after we received the NHS guidance, a study into potential serious side effects of weight loss jabs has been launched. After hundreds of people have reported problems with their pancreas, ⁓ enough people and enough concern

that a new study has been launched and yeah I just I I'm concerned that there are also people minimizing the side effects because of weight loss and I was talking to a couple of friends about this just this week I was like I know from my own experience that I would have been willing to ignore other potential side effects if I was losing weight.

I know of people who have tried to come off of the drugs because they are having ⁓ really bad mood swings and like feeling mentally like the drugs are affecting them and they start to regain weight so they're going back on them and you know autonomy always but also that's very concerning to me and I'm not a medical professional but

It worries me that people are going to ignore other symptoms because they are losing weight, because they are quote unquote successful. And I know that there are lots of reasons why people are being prescribed or taking weight loss drugs, but there are many folks taking them because diets didn't work, right? Diets don't work long term and this feels like the only solution and because it's being presented as this miracle cure.

that's how it's been publicised across the media for now going on three or four years, people are constantly turning to it because it feels as though this is the only option. Because we know the diets don't work. Even though I still see people telling me the diets work in my comments, right, we know the statistics, we know the data, we know the...

percentage of people that will regain weight and more. But just like diets, this is not about individuals, this is about the system and societal beauty standards that continue to tell us we need to be thin in order to be happy. You know, I've been thinking about this for a while, but I really had to sit with my own feelings because there are people taking GLP-1s for all sorts of reasons.

context and nuance often is lost online and because I don't blame individuals for wanting to pursue thinness I really wanted to establish why I include GLP-1s in my anti-diet culture.

You know, I'm anti-diet and for me that includes weight loss jabs, that includes weight loss surgery. But again, there's always context, there's always nuance, right? So one of the reasons I struggled to really put this episode together is because I started intuitive eating in around 2022.

right around the time that we started seeing a rise in GLP-1s. For me personally, I wasn't even that aware of them. I'd spent a couple of years really trying to unfollow anyone online who was talking about diets and weight loss, anyone who was kind of pushing that narrative. And I spent a lot of time

following and finding anti-diet and fat liberation creators, activists and writers. And I kind of created this bubble, right? This bubble that was going to support me as I was working through my intuitive eating so that what I would see in the online space was more supportive and aligned with what I was what I was working on personally. And

As these drugs started to become more prevalent, I noticed that people I followed were talking about them. They were talking about them through the lens of anti-diet culture, but nevertheless they were talking about them. And I remember saying to my coach at the time, you know, I'm not seeing adverts for diets, I'm not seeing adverts for these drugs, but I'm seeing the people I follow talk about them. So they're still on my radar. I'm still aware of them. And within that, I started to hear the term food noise.

And this was a term that I wasn't familiar with and yet somehow I kind of knew what they were talking about. It wasn't something I had ever said, I'd never used that term and now we see it everywhere. And over time I started to do my own research. I wanted to know, okay, what is food noise? Why are people taking these drugs? How is this, you know, how is this drug?

helping to minimize food noise or get rid of their food noise and like how is that then in turn affecting their weight? And I was curious because my own food noise, quote unquote food noise had quietened.

During that first one to two years of me practicing intuitive eating, my relationship to my body and food and my hunger and fullness and movement was positive for the first time as an adult.

Before we get into today's episode, a quick reminder that you can subscribe to the Culture of It All on Substack by heading to cultureofitallpod.substack.com forward slash subscribe and choosing the free or paid plan. Subscribers get early access to episodes, regular bonuses, including creative resources, blogs, videos and more. You could follow the show over on Instagram at Culture of It All Pod, where I share episode updates and the stories, my fat thoughts and the odd Aquarius meme.

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So one of the big questions I had is, what is food noise? Like, what is food noise? Where does this come from? Because as I said, it was something that I didn't, I'd never heard it before, but I also deeply resonated. Like I understood what it meant. And Kate Manne describes food noise as just another rebrand of hunger, appetite and cravings, which I agree with.

I think it's important to also discern between the food and the noise. The noise part that we associate is a combination of the feelings and the emotions and desire for control that we experience in response to these three very normal biological responses, right? Hunger, appetite and cravings.

And the term food noise is directly related to diet culture in the diet industry because they continue to demonize hunger, appetite and cravings and promise you fixes, right? How many times have we heard about a diet that's going to, you're never going to be hungry on this diet, right? That's always a selling point. And it's just one of the ways in which it continues to harm us and keep us in this diet cycle because inevitably if you are in a calorie deficit, you are going to be hungry.

your appetite and your cravings will get heightened. And our relationship to hunger and appetite and cravings has become so incredibly complex. There are so many factors that will influence that noise. Things like body image, diet cycling, restriction, eating disorders, and of course, hunger and fullness is going to impact our cravings.

And the irony is that the diet industry plays games with our biological responses. It tells us that we should never be hungry. Whilst telling us that we should only ever eat to 80 % fullness, which I've realised is something you just can't quantify. I spent so many years trying to wrap my head around how do you eat to only 80 % fullness? Like, what does that mean? What does that mean? What does that feel like?

And one of the reasons, I mean you can't quantify it, and also one of the reasons that it was impossible is because I didn't know what hunger or fullness really felt like in my body because of diet culture. And also if we only ever eat to 80 % fullness we will always be 20 % hungry, right? Will we not? So we're constantly taught to ignore our internal cues, hunger, fullness. We're taught to ignore

and silence our natural human body responses. And a quick Google search and you'll be inundated with tips and tricks and ideas in order to suppress your appetite. And some of these things are actually nothing to do with weight loss and like just generally helpful. Things like manage your stress or get some sleep. But there's so many others that are going to further distort our internal cues. They are gimmicks. They are

the tips and tricks that are supposedly gonna outsmart the human body. But the more we try to hack our way out of hunger and try to avoid cravings, the more we are likely to experience them. This is where there's a major difference between honouring our hunger and managing our hunger, because diet culture teaches us to silence our hunger.

And then all of the outcomes of that are the things that it's promising to fix. Cravings. Hunger. Changes in our mood. Headaches. Stomach ache. Less energy. Fear of food or eating. And I was having a conversation with a friend the other day and I realised that these are things that we've just accepted. These are things that we have just accepted as part of the process.

we accept it as part of the process of pursuing thinness, of intentional weight loss. We have been taught these like ways in which our body is responding to cutting out food groups or, you know, things that we've, we just have to accept as like part and parcel. If we want to be this size then, or if we want to lose weight, then we just have to get on with it.

And as if this is just like a blip in the road, right, because inevitably we're promised that at some point it's all gonna be worth it. Spoiler alert, I really didn't think it was.

Now, growing up, I always wondered why some people just didn't seem to have these like quote unquote food issues. Which by the way, I've realised, I think back in the 90s and in the 2000s, we were calling food noise food issues. Right? I think the food noise is just food issues rebranded as well. I think it's just like a bit sexier. But yeah, I think that's the same thing because I remember in like

The early 2010s when I started my online business, I remember hearing people say, well, you weren't born with food issues, You weren't born with food noise. Yes, you're born with biological responses of hunger, appetite and cravings, but it's the noise part that is the issue. It's the noise part that has been taught through diet culture, and generationally, right? So I'd always wonder.

Why do these people not have food issues? I had friends who didn't eat in the same way to me. I felt like I was the only person that ate the way I did, or was so focused on food, even as a young person. They seemed to quote unquote eat normally. They were also often in smaller bodies and it just felt like it was a cruel joke, you know? It's like, why?

how is this fair? Like that was how I felt. How is this fair? Why did they get to eat whatever they want, seemingly, and also be in a smaller body?

And unfortunately, I think like many people, I spent an awful lot of time thinking there was just something wrong with me. It never occurred to me that it could just be genetics. It never occurred to me that it could just be genetics. And I remember, have a core memory of spending a month with our friends in Canada when I was around 14.

They're all in smaller bodies. And I kind of always grew up being aware of the fact that, you know, my mum always compared herself to her friend. And so I inevitably grew up comparing myself to my friend, right, her daughter. And...

I spent a month with them and like, we had meals together, And all I remember is observing that all food was available. Nothing was off limits. There was not a diet food in sight. The fridge was always full.

and

I this core memory of them packing up a cooler to take on the boat and I rummaged through the cooler looking for a diet soda and there was no diet soda and I remember even at that age thinking, well what am I going to drink. There's no diet soda. can't, I've never had a regular soda before. I still have memories of sipping ice cold Pepsi twist on that boat. Whenever I drink Pepsi with lime, I'm just like, ugh.

It takes me back to that moment because I felt so free. Like it's such a small thing, but I can still, I can see it, I can taste it. Like it was such a small thing, but it was such a big moment. Obviously it had no lasting impact, but yeah, I felt so free drinking that regular Pepsi. And it's scary as well that even at 14, I was super puzzled.

and still felt like I couldn't eat what everyone else was eating. I couldn't just eat the same foods, even though those were the only foods available, right? I didn't have full autonomy over my food at that point because I was still a child.

What I realised as I got older is that, you know, genetics makes a difference. It makes a difference. And even though we all are impacted in some way or another by diet culture, it's going to look different for all of us.

But for people who haven't necessarily felt the pressure to pursue intentional weight loss, certainly not in the same way, say as myself, the diet industry hasn't necessarily had the same impact. And so what I call intuitive eating, other people would just be like, that's just eating. And...

This is where those factors that we have to consider when it comes to body weight and these factors are so important.

And it's so clear that...

being in a larger body, being put on diet, is going to impact the emotions and the feelings we have about food. Some people just don't experience the noise. They still have hunger, cravings and appetite because those are normal bodily responses. But our relationship with our bodies and how society treats us is going to reinforce the relationship that we develop.

with hunger, appetite and cravings. And if there is one thing that you take away from today's episode, I want it to be that there are other ways to quieten the noise associated with food. And I want to discern that I'm not talking about quietening hunger, appetite and cravings or like curbing them. I'm more so focused on

the noise part. The emotions, the feelings, the control. Because in my opinion, pursuing diets with the intention of- with intentional weight loss...

and the false promises they have is part of the reason we're here. It's part of the reason why we have the noise to begin with, because again, we're not born with it.

So there's a few ways we can do this, right? One of them is divesting from diet culture. Divesting from a system of beliefs that tells us there is only one way to have a body. Because if we start to unpack that, if we unpack that set of beliefs and realize that our internalized fatphobia is going to not just affect our own bodies, but affect the way we perceive other bodies, and...

the way in which diet culture doesn't just affect what we eat or whether or not we want to be thin, it affects so many decisions in our lives. It's the culture of it all. It is a culture that affects so many of the decisions that we make in our lifetime.

Another way, or guess ways, because they work hand in hand is ditching diets and practicing intuitive eating.

You know, ditching diets, no longer pursuing intentional weight loss. ⁓

is is a really big decision especially right now it's a really big decision to make

It's incredibly freeing, but it's also a really big scary decision because there is a lot of comfort in that discomfort. If it's something that you spend your whole life doing, it's been like a recurring theme. It feels comfortable. We know what to expect. Most of us don't know what to expect.

if we ditch diets, if we no longer pursue weight loss, if we no longer pursue thinness, what does that look like? Most of us don't know. I know for myself that my default was either I was dieting or I was binging or kind of coming out of this

you know, phase of restriction and then thinking about dieting again. It was just ongoing. And of course, practicing intuitive eating means inevitably we're going to be ditching diets because intuitive eating at its very core means that all foods within reason become available to us.

Also, a very scary process. I will openly admit that I was terrified of figuring out whether or not I actually like certain foods. It was also enlightening. It was enlightening to realize how many foods I associated with diet culture.

The fourth way we can quieten this noise is certainly part of the intuitive eating framework, it's unlearning the food rules. Unlearning the rules that we were taught as young people normally. You know, the moralizing of food, the policing of our food and others,

the language that we use when we talk about food or meals or even our bodies. you know, ending this diet talk and unlearning these food rules is going to contribute towards quietening that noise associated with food.

And again an important part of this is honouring our hunger. It's unlearning the tips and the tricks and learning how to recognise hunger in our own bodies. Eating when we are hungry, even if we've already eaten. Even if that meal can't be perfect.

When I started learning about intuitive eating, I was stunned because I definitely thought it was just another diet. And I remember just asking my coach, do people know about this? I was like, wait, I've just come out of the health and fitness industry, being a coach and I heard about intuitive eating and I just assumed it was another diet. I actually thought it was a fad diet. I had no idea. So was like,

Why aren't people talking about this? And I think my really big and slightly naive question was, okay, so why aren't people being offered this alternative?

why aren't doctors and clinics learning about this and then helping people? Because for me, a lifetime yo-yo dieter, intuitive eating made a world of difference. Made a world of difference.

And guess one of the key barriers, let's put it that way, with intuitive eating is that there's a chance folks are going to gain weight. There is a chance, and this comes up in the framework, there is a chance people will gain weight when eating intuitively.

And that's complicated for us if we have just come out of this kind of phase of our lives where we're dieting to then want to ditch diets but still have the possibility of controlling our bodies. And unfortunately, those two things can't go hand in hand. And I remember feeling that way.

I was still holding on to this idea that I could do something. was still holding on to this idea that my body would be smaller. Like we could just stop dieting, we could figure out how to stop dieting, but we could still make our body smaller. And obviously over time, I started to realise that no, that wasn't going to happen. Like that wasn't going to happen for me. And

Body change is inevitable, Weight gain and weight loss, body change is inevitable for various different reasons. But if our bodies have been starved, we've been diet cycling throughout our lives, there is a probability of weight gain. And because for decades, health organizations, governments, drug companies have preached about an osmicity crisis and the risk of weight gain, they've prescribed outdated methods.

that were known not to work long term and have had a symbiotic relationship with the diet industry.

Because diet culture is set of beliefs upheld by capitalism, there's an awful lot of money to be made within the diet industry.

So, you know, there is a chance that people will gain weight when practicing intuitive eating. And also there is a chance people will gain weight no matter what because body change is inevitable. And at the root of it, what we need to be more focused on is why are we so afraid of fatness?

Because again, being fat is not a disease, so therefore if we're focusing on health conditions that should be dealt with separately.

One of the other terms that I've seen used a lot in the last few years with this rise of GLP-1s and this real focus on pursuing thinness is food addiction. I've also seen a rise in my comments, people talking about food addiction. It's been very interesting because a lot of the time people are commenting on my videos

where I'm talking about the fact that diets don't work, where I'm talking about the fact that we need to understand people and we need to understand people as individuals and like being fat isn't a choice. All of these different things. People will come into my comments and say, they agree with me and they agree with me because they believe food is an addiction. And this has been said in various ways to me and...

Food addiction is not real. food addiction is not real and at the moment we're seeing it used as a marketing ploy but the reason it's so commonly used in marketing is because there is a fundamental misunderstanding of the data. There have been numerous studies over the years looking at food addiction, specifically sugar addiction. None of these studies have been able to prove that food or sugar are addictive.

And one of the studies that is often cited to prove sugar addiction and is talked about within intuitive eating is a Princeton study on rats. They had two groups of rats. One group was given their normal rat chow at normal times and they ate normal amounts of their food. The second group of rats were deprived of food for 12 hours and then they were offered a sugar substance and their rat chow.

And the rats gravitated towards the higher calorie sugary food and they ate it in larger amounts, they ate more of it.

And so this is often used as proof that sugar is addictive and the food is addictive. However, the fundamental misunderstanding of this data is that they couldn't replicate these results without the period of deprivation first.

Therefore a study that is supposed to prove that food or sugar is addicting actually proves the impact of restriction and deprivation on the body. And this is why things like making peace with our food actually resolves things like binging when there isn't a period of deprivation first.

It's also why things like eating consistently throughout the day and not getting overly hungry are important. So again, this is why...

hunger and appetite and cravings are entirely normal.

But we're not taught to eat when we're hungry. Instead, we're taught to be afraid of fatness and food. We're taught to silence our hunger and try to hack our way to fullness. But all this does is lead to disordered eating behaviors and an increase in hunger and cravings. You can see how this cycle continues. Now you may remember,

few years ago now, I think it was like 2017, there was a lot of chatter online comparing Oreos to cocaine and this happens a lot with processed foods, especially sugar, but what we have to keep in mind is that whilst

Oreos and cocaine may light up the same pathways in our brains, that doesn't make Oreos addictive. And anything that is necessary for survival lights up that same pathway. Like eating or sex. The drugs are designed to mimic that and give you that same feeling, whereas things like food and sex naturally light that up because you're supposed to want to keep doing it. It's supposed to feel good.

Now the nuance here is that when folks are depriving themselves of things, it can very much feel like an addiction to food.

Right, those feelings are absolutely valid. I know I felt that way.

Food addiction resonates with us because that's how it feels to be deprived, but that's because we're the rat who has been deprived of food for 12 hours. It's not that we're addicted to food, it's because we're trying to control ourselves around food. It becomes an addiction to control and also the cravings feel like we're never gonna stop eating or binging. And these are things that we associate with addiction behavior, but if...

were an actual addiction you couldn't solve it by giving yourself more of the thing.

If it were an actual addiction, you wouldn't be able to solve it by giving yourself more of the thing.

In reality, intuitive eating or eating intuitively isn't really about curbing hunger or even quietening the food noise. This comes from the diet industry and diet talk and it's phrases that form part of our relationship that we've been taught to have with food.

curbing hunger and even trying to quieten food noise is a desire to control ourselves around food. It is possible to naturally do these things, but it looks very different to the ways in which we've been taught. You can't really trick your body into being full.

And the wonderful thing is that intuitive eating is about bringing us back to, your normal biological responses. Hunger, fullness, cravings, like feeling those things and recognising those things within our own bodies. It's about finding peace with food. It's about honouring our hunger instead of silencing it. And it's ditching the diet talk and the rules that we've created around food. And I think this is one of the reasons why intuitive eating is so daunting, because when you've spent a lifetime

trying to control yourself around food, it is a complete unknown. It was for me. And as I said, for a long time, I just thought it was another diet. And even when I started working with a coach, I believed that the whole process was going to be about food and movement, which in fact is actually a very small part of the framework. And whilst there is a framework, because as humans, we like structure of some kind,

As the name suggests, it's intuitive. Meaning that it's gonna look different for each of us. The process to get there is gonna look different. And it will look different on any given day, week or month or year. Because that's kinda how it works. It will ebb and flow with our lives. It can be proactive, it can be reactive, it can be imperfect and gentle. And...

I think we have to just be reminded that it's safe to trust ourselves. Because again, diet culture teaches us to focus on external factors and tells us that we don't know our bodies well enough. But it's safe to trust ourselves.

So earlier in this episode I mentioned that I have been ruminating on this topic for months and I think that's because like a lot of people I have a lot of emotion associated with my past dieting experiences, Just because I'm now anti-diet doesn't mean I've forgotten the way I felt, the way I used to feel.

And I watched as people I trust within the anti-diet and fat liberation space talked about weight loss drugs and food noise. And some of those were anecdotal and some were statistical, but...

I needed to formulate my own feelings because there's a lot of emotion about a drug that has become increasingly available since I started practicing intuitive eating. at the same time that I made the decision to quit dieting and learn how to heal my body image, we entered into this thin as in era and all the fatphobia and diet talk became even louder.

I had to sift through everything I'd learned and everything I value and still was left with questions like, am I just being judgmental? Am I jealous? Right? Are my thoughts actually fat phobic?

Am I being a hypocrite by being worried about the health implications of these drugs? And the more I've listened and learned, and even the new NHS guidance kind of helped me to get those thoughts in order. And here's what I've come up with, Here's kind of where I've got to. Food noise, very much a valid feeling.

But in my opinion it's not so much about the food. It's more about the emotion and the feelings that we have around food because of diet culture and body image and the food rules. Food noise is also internal dialogue that we use in order to police ourselves.

And GLP-1s don't and won't change how we think about our bodies.

They might quieten the noise, but the thoughts are still going to exist. So if an individual still moralises food choices and is focused on external factors instead of internal cues and is afraid of weight gain, that will still be present if or when they come off of the drugs.

And I am also concerned about improper screening by private and online clinics, taking drugs with pretty scary side effects when people don't actually have medical or health conditions to begin with. The impact of these drugs on otherwise healthy pancreases, the marketing and the way in which it further demonises fat bodies by calling fatness a disease or using terms like addiction, the increased fat phobia,

folks who are being prescribed these drugs but have to stop taking them due to side effects. I cannot imagine the mental and emotional impact this must have, When the narrative is this is the revolution, this is the miracle and for some their supposed last attempt. I haven't seen anybody talk about this. Like have we stopped to consider those who may be eligible but cannot take it? What then?

And I guess my biggest takeaways are this, autonomy always. But true autonomy requires us to be fully informed. And I don't know how informed we are. I don't know how informed we are, at least not through private clinics.

GLP-1s will not heal body image. They will not heal body image. And none of this changes how society sees fat bodies or fatness. If anything it's making it worse.

And based on everything I've learned, I came to the conclusion, as I think many others have,

Peace with food, honouring our hunger and eating consistently through the day will also quieten the food noise.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of The Culture For All. I am honestly still nervous to put this out into the world. If you have comments or thoughts in your own opinions, please be kind, but feel free to drop them over on Substack if you are listening over there. I'm so curious to know what other people are thinking and how they feel. As I said, this has taken me close to a year.

to really be able to formulate my thoughts about how I feel. And I think one of the reasons is because we are individuals and there are so many reasons why people might choose to go down this route. And at the same time, we need to call out the system and the society that tells us this is not just a option, but potentially the only option for some people.

And that's really scary. So yeah, be kind, but feel free to let me know your thoughts. ⁓ I hope this episode is useful. If you feel that there is someone in your life that would benefit from this episode, please feel free to share this with them.

Next week's episode is going to be a replay from last summer. Some of my most popular episodes of the show were from last year's summer series so I'm going to be dropping one next week for you and you'll hear another couple of them in August whilst I am on holiday and getting my kid prepared for high school. I'm gonna be taking time off from putting out brand new episodes.

But more on that very, soon. But yeah, stay tuned next week for a summer series episode from last year. And thank you so much for being here. Thank you for listening. Thank you for subscribing. And I will see you next time.