Food Noise, Part II: The Effect of the Food Environment (You’re Not Broken or Powerless)

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This is Part II of a blog series that is based on the transcripts of my podcast series on Food Noise, which includes these 4 episodes:
Ep. 198: Food Noise, Part 1: Bingeing is Not a Solution
Ep. 199: Food Noise, Part 2: The Effect of the Food Environment (You’re Not Broken or Powerless)
Ep. 201: Food Noise, Part 3: Mindset Shifts for More Peace and Self-Trust
Ep. 203: Food Noise, Part 4: Eating Foundations for More Stability and Ease (with Marcus Kain)

In this post, I’m going to address an aspect of the food noise topic with the hope that this discussion will give you a better understanding of why food noise is coming up for you. I also hope it helps you have less self-blame and self-criticism when it does come up. The goal of what I’ll talk about here is to shift your perspective so that the food noise starts to feel like less of a threat and more like a natural, expected, and common response—but one that you absolutely can learn to overcome.

As a recap from Part I, I discussed what I believe is the most important thing to understand as you approach food noise in the context of binge eating recovery, which is that binge eating is never a solution to food noise. And in fact, bingeing makes food noise so much worse. I explained that you can learn to avoid acting on the urges to binge even if you have food noise, and that idea is the foundation for this series. You never want to feel powerless against bingeing because you struggle with food noise.

However, just because you can avoid bingeing when you have food noise doesn’t mean you want to stay stuck having a lot of food noise. Once you remove bingeing from the equation, you can start working on solutions; and actually, removing bingeing is a huge part of the solution to food noise. I believe that another part of the solution is simply a better understanding of food noise and even an acceptance around it—not in a way that you’re resigning yourself to it, but in a way that helps it make sense as far as why you’re having it. When you approach it with some acceptance and some self-compassion, you gain clarity, and it becomes much easier to implement solutions.

So here in this post, I’m going to help you with developing that understanding and self-compassion by talking about a factor in food noise that affects everyone. And that’s simply the food environment that we live in, particularly in developed countries.

Looking Beyond Yourself at the Modern Food Environment

Since the idea of food noise became popular, I think a lot of the conversation has suggested that there is something “wrong” with people who are having food noise. Then, the message is that they need to “fix” themselves, and the suggested fix is often a GLP-1 medication. I don’t think there’s enough conversation about why it makes sense that more people are having more food noise at this point in history.

The fact is that increased food noise is an expected effect of our modern food environment on our biology, and especially our modern food environment combined with the pressure to look a certain way. I’m not going to spend a lot of time here placing blame on any one thing like food manufacturing, marketing, social media, or diet culture. The point here is just to have you look outside of yourself to see the bigger picture and to stop blaming yourself for something that is a larger issue that’s affecting all of us.

If I had to sum up what I’m going to talk about today, it would be to not let the food environment make you feel like you’re broken, but also not to let the food environment make you feel like you’re powerless. There’s a middle ground here that I think is really important. We can acknowledge that the environment around food, weight, and body image has developed in ways that have increased the tendency for us to struggle with food noise. We can acknowledge that some of us are more sensitive to this environment than others because of our upbringing, genetics, and many other factors; but we can still hold onto the truth that we can learn to determine our own actions within the context of this challenging environment.

The message here is not, “well, of course it’s hard, so just deal with it.” The message is about having compassion for yourself first and foremost for the situation that you’re in, and then developing a greater understanding of the factors at play so that you can respond more skillfully, instead of thinking you’re at the mercy of those factors.

If you’re fortunate enough to live in areas where food is abundant, highly stimulating food can feel like it’s everywhere. It’s in the gas station, at events, on your phone, on your TV, in ads, and it can be delivered to your door in minutes. It’s engineered to be highly rewarding. It’s packaged in a way that grabs your attention. It’s talked about constantly, either as entertainment or in marketing as something you “should” desire, and it’s also talked about as a problem to be solved. There’s just a lot of focus on food out there, and there’s a level of food reward that our biology didn’t necessarily evolve for.

How Body Image and Restriction Can Amplify Food Noise

We also live in a culture that’s extremely focused on the body’s appearance and weight, so then all of this highly stimulating food out in the world becomes the enemy in a way. It becomes something to forbid yourself from having and something to criticize yourself for wanting. Food becomes this loaded thing, and eating can feel like it’s constantly tied to whether you’re good or you’re bad—and that’s definitely a recipe for mental preoccupation. It’s well researched that having rigid food rules and forbidden foods tends to increase food cravings and food thoughts and obsessions. To sum this up, we’re in an environment with a lot of already appealing foods that are manufactured to be more stimulating, and then we’re inundated with messages telling us that we should not eat those foods, which can have the unintended effect of amplifying the appeal of those foods.

When you step back and look at this, I hope that it helps you stop jumping into “something is wrong with me” when you have food noise. It may simply be that your brain is responding to an intense environment the way a human brain is supposed to respond to stimulation, reward cues, and also restriction. Here I want to acknowledge that all of us have a different experience with this. I think there are a ton of messages out there blaming food manufacturing—saying that we’re all victims of this overstimulating food environment. And yes, that has some level of truth in various degrees for each of us when we’re comparing the world we live in to an ideal world. But some people exist in this environment without it creating any major issues. I hear this a lot from recovered people (and I’ve definitely experienced this myself) in that when you stop viewing food as forbidden, nourish your body, stop the restrictive dieting, and stop the bingeing, all of this highly processed and overstimulating food loses a lot of its appeal.

I now look at something like, let’s say, the candy aisle at a grocery store and mostly just think, “yuck.” Genuinely, it just doesn’t look that good to me. There are certainly desserts, sweets, and processed foods that I absolutely do enjoy, but some of this “food” that really isn’t even food does the opposite for me now, so that instead of creating temptation, it creates a lack of interest and even aversion. And maybe people who have never been on restrictive diets and who have had a healthy upbringing around food may have this reaction from the start. I just wanted to mention that because there are so many messages today—especially from the fitness and health influencer world—saying that these highly processed foods are like “drugs.” But in contradiction to that, some people just aren’t that attracted to them, some people overcome their attraction to them, and so many people eat them without a problem. I’ll add that these people don’t eat them because they feel “powerless” against their cravings; they eat them because the world is set up in a way that eating them is sometimes the most convenient or cost-effective choice, or they simply don’t have a choice for various reasons.

Food Noise Does Not Have to Be Inevitable

When you look at the fact that the environment does tend to create noise, have compassion for yourself, but also look to these examples that I’ve mentioned to help yourself believe that it’s not inevitable to struggle. Some people who used to have noise don’t anymore, even though the modern food environment has not changed. When you think food noise is inevitable, or you put a lot of attention on the messages saying that certain foods are like “drugs,” it can serve to make the food noise even worse. When you go into eating a food with the expectation that you’ll respond like a drug addict and that you’re powerless, you’re going to interpret the desire the food may create as a threat, and that can activate your nervous system, amplify the desire, and make you feel more powerless.

All of this is to say that yes, the noise that the environment creates is real, and it affects some people more than others; but the messages telling us that “certain foods are like drugs” can be another part of the food environment that may be making things worse for you.

This is where I’m going to go down a path in this discussion that might be slightly sensitive (and it’s an adult topic), but to explain the environment’s contribution to the food noise, I think it’s a lot more helpful to compare addictive issues in our culture surrounding food to addictive issues surrounding sex, rather than making that comparison to drugs. When we think about drugs—and here and I’m talking about drugs used for non-medical purposes—they are something we don’t need to face on a daily basis. Having drugs that are not for a medical reason is not a true need. Stopping an addiction to drugs is very difficult and takes courage, but people do accomplish this, so as a little aside…even if we do compare eating certain foods to drugs, that still does not mean we’re powerless because people do end their drug addictions.

That being said about drugs not being true needs, on the other hand, food and sex are true needs. Food is more immediate as far as something we truly need to do each day to survive, but sex is also a need in terms of the survival of our species, and most of us feel pulled toward it as a need to varying degrees in our lives. People often tell me they wish they could just stop eating like a drug addict can stop taking drugs, because the idea of facing food each day feels daunting. It can almost feel easier to be a drug addict at that point, with the opportunity to just quit the substance cold turkey. So that’s where my suggestion comes in to stop seeing it as similar to a drug addiction and seeing it as more similar to a sex addiction because eating and sex are both behaviors that you don’t stop entirely even when you stop the addictive behaviors.

Comparing Food Addiction and Sex Addiction in the Modern Environment

I’m going to go somewhere with this comparison as far as the food noise, but as a background to what I’ll discuss, it helps to recognize that the treatment for a sex addiction or porn addiction would never be a lifetime of abstinence from sex. With addictions that surround true needs, it’s about finding or rediscovering the healthy part of you that can fulfill your needs in a satisfying way, without harming yourself or others. Sex or porn addiction recovery and food addiction recovery are not about never finding pleasure in that activity again. It’s about learning to overcome the unhealthy noise and the unhealthy urges and engaging with food or with sex in a way that feels aligned with you and that nourishes you.

So getting back to the topic of food noise, when we consider our modern food environment and how all of the overstimulation has created a lot of food noise, that can also lead us into thinking about other ways that our modern environment is overstimulating us. Sex is one of the biggest examples of this, in that our modern environment has created something maybe we could call an overabundance of “sex noise.” That’s not an official term as far as I know, but it’s a way of describing how the modern world can overstimulate another natural human drive.

We’re living in a time where sexualized imagery and content are far more available than at any other point in history. A person can be exposed to sexual cues very frequently without even seeking them out, and then there are, of course, many ways to seek it out. All of this can possibly create more thoughts, more cues, more stimulation, more preoccupation, and for some people, it can contribute to compulsive and extremely harmful patterns surrounding these behaviors. There’s been more awareness about this in recent years—about how our hypersexualized world can hijack the brain to the point where normal sexual relationships feel dull or uninteresting, in the same way that maybe a normal meal feels uninteresting to people who struggle with bingeing.

Just like the food noise, this type of “sex noise” affects some people more than others based on various factors. I believe it’s likely harmful to everyone at some level, just like overstimulating food is harmful to everyone at some level. However, some people go through their lives not paying much attention to these messages and keeping a healthy relationship with their natural desires—or even having an aversion to these messages and content—while others get completely wrapped up in that world and it takes over their life, and they end up hurting themselves and others. It’s the same environment, but different reactions; and those differences, again, show that it’s not inevitable to struggle in an overstimulating environment. It shows that we’re not powerless, but it also makes it understandable why many people do struggle. Always remember that people can and do learn to exist in an overstimulating world without letting themselves go down unhealthy paths.

Desire and Temptation Do Not Necessitate Action

If you’re someone who struggles with food noise in this overstimulating environment and you don’t struggle with sex noise, this could be a really good example for you because the world is overstimulating us in both of these ways, but you’re able to ignore some of that noise, and it’s very possible for you to do the same with food. When we have an understanding of how certain factors in the environment affect us and create noise in our minds, we can have compassion for ourselves and for the reactions that our brains have to all of these unnatural inputs—while still taking responsibility for what we choose to do about it.

Getting back to the sex noise, most of us who have been in committed relationships can agree that having increased sexual desire because of the environment does not make it okay to act on these urges outside of the relationship. Most of us wouldn’t say to a partner who, let’s say, cheated, “Oh, that’s okay. It’s just the modern world that we live in.” No, we would acknowledge that there is temptation out there, but that we still expect proper behaviors. The noise does not excuse betraying commitments, and it certainly does not excuse even more terrible behaviors in that realm. I know it can be a bit of an extreme example, but I think it’s one that most people understand and may have experience with at some point in their life—and I’m talking about the idea that desire and temptation can be present while you still stay true to a commitment. Basically, sex noise from the environment doesn’t necessitate acting on that noise. In areas where actions have harmed us in terms of relationships, we understand that very clearly. I think when we make the comparison to food, we can hold ourselves to that same standard in that we can keep our commitments to ourselves to nourish our bodies and to recover—even if there is food noise from the environment.

This comparison is meant to show you how our natural drives can sometimes get skewed by the world we live in, with some of us responding more strongly than others. No one is defective for having a brain that reacts to this unnatural environment, but we’re all responsible for our actions within this context. There’s actually another tie-in here that I was thinking about as I was writing this, in that the loud “sex noise” in our culture can include a constant focus on appearance, which contributes to negative body image in a lot of people. Then that negative body image can lead to dieting, restriction, and attempts to tightly control the body. Then that deprivation can trigger a very real survival response in the brain and body and make food more compelling, cravings more intense, and thoughts about food more persistent. In effect, the culture’s obsession with sex can actually end up creating food noise for a lot of people. This is just another example of why you need to have compassion for yourself for the food thoughts that you have. What you’re calling “your” food noise is not just a random personal defect. It can be the result of a whole chain of cultural, social, and biological factors.

Understanding Food Noise Without Giving Up Your Power

The point of recognizing the chain of factors that lead to food noise is not to say, “Well, then I can’t help it.” The point is to say, “Okay, this makes sense, and of course this is challenging for me. I don’t have to shame myself for being personally affected by the food environment, but I also don’t have to hand over my power or think my actions are outside of my control.” There’s a big difference between understanding why something is happening or why something is difficult and using that difficulty as a reason to give up.

It’s worth noting that in the past, before this level of constant stimulation, it was probably easier for many people to stay within healthy limits in a lot of areas. It may have been easier to stick to simpler foods when convenient, engineered, hyper-palatable food was not everywhere and available at all hours. It may have been easier to stay faithful to a partner when there weren’t constant cues and constant content. But just because something might be harder now in the world we live in does not mean it’s impossible. I want you to take away this balanced perspective: I want you to acknowledge that the modern environment can increase food noise and make it harder to feel peaceful around food, especially if you have a dieting history or you’re struggling with bingeing. I want you to give yourself some grace for the food noise that you experience. I want you to recognize that every period of history has had its unique challenges, and overstimulation is one of the challenges that we face. This is not to minimize anything that you’re going through, but I think sometimes perspective can help in that if you’re reading this and you’re lucky enough to have food abundance, start trying to generate gratefulness as you approach food, despite our food environment riddled with problems and despite the food noise.

In talking about gratefulness for food, I do want to mention that issues surrounding food noise can also bring up some social issues and issues of food access, and I don’t want to be insensitive to that. But this post is assuming that, at this point in time when you’re reading this, the food noise is in the context of you having food available. And to add even more self-compassion to this discussion, if you had issues with food scarcity in your past or any food insecurity, that has also been shown to make you more prone to food preoccupation and eating issues once food is no longer scarce. This is another way that our environment—or your past environment—can contribute to the food thoughts that you may be having now. Please don’t criticize yourself for having more food noise when your younger self did not even feel safe with food or didn’t know if you were going to be able to get enough. Your brain likely learned to prioritize food and find it even more rewarding than someone who did have food safety at home.

Seeing Your Food Thoughts in a Larger Context

Seeing any of your patterns from the larger perspective of the environment you grew up in and from the larger context of our culture can help you soften just a little bit around the food noise. It can help you take it less personally. It can help you to see it—not as a flaw within you—but as more of a result of what you’ve been through and all of the inputs around you. When you understand that, you stop making the noise a threat. You stop thinking, “this must mean something terrible about me,” and you start thinking, “okay, my brain is doing what brains do when they’re exposed to what I was and am exposed to, but I get to choose what I do next.” That’s the shift from feeling broken to feeling capable of experiencing the noise and deciding what to do in response.

When we stop fighting, resisting, and making every habitual thought and desire that runs through our minds so meaningful to us, we can start to rise above the food noise. This post is nearing its end, but I’m going to close this discussion—like I also did in Part I—by talking about the GLP-1 medications, because they’re so interconnected to conversations around food noise, and they’re a big part of why food noise is such a hot topic right now. I’ll always remind you that I’m not a doctor, and everyone needs to make medical decisions with their providers; but I do want to say something that relates to the point of today’s post.

In the GLP-1 era, the message can sometimes start to sound like, “none of us are capable of living in this food environment and we need to shut off the noise with medication.” I think it’s worth asking a gentle question here. With these GLP-1 medications, are we shutting off too much in terms of our natural desires and needs? The GLP-1s are often quieting more than just the harmful noise. They can often shut down appetite and desire in a way that can go beyond what may be healthy for someone. Those of you who follow my podcast know that I’m not completely opposed to the use of GLP-1s in all cases, and I think there can be ways to mitigate the risks. If you want to hear a more detailed discussion about this, you can listen to Episode 183: GLP-1 Medications, Food Noise, and Binge Eating Recovery with Marcus Kain. One of the many risks of these medications is too much suppression of the natural and healthy drive for food, which can be especially problematic in those with an eating disorder history.

Making Peace With Natural Appetite and Desire

Here I want to come back to the comparison I made earlier with food addiction and sex addiction. With someone who struggles with sex addiction or porn addiction, the answer is not shutting down the sex drive altogether. That would not be normal or healthy. The goal is to stop the harmful behaviors, to regain choice, and to regain control of the body and mind—while still allowing the underlying drive to exist. I think it’s reasonable to approach food and the drive to eat in the same way. We don’t want to build recovery by erasing desire and shutting down our natural appetite. We want to learn to make peace with our appetite, our desire for food, and the food environment as a whole without going into harmful behaviors. Wanting food is very natural, but as I’ve talked about throughout this post, the food environment and social pressure can cause this natural drive to get skewed.

When you have more acceptance around this and stop blaming yourself for the food noise, it’s a powerful starting point for change. When you stop reacting to the noise as if it’s dangerous, you stop intensifying it. When you learn to exist with your natural appetite and nourish yourself amidst the noise in today’s world, your brain can start to quiet down because it starts to feel safe. Then you’re in a better place to start working on helping yourself overcome any noise that remains.

This post has been more of a general discussion rather than a practical set of steps and actions, but the takeaway is an overall understanding of the situation that we’re all in, so that you can hopefully have less anxiety about the food noise when it comes up. You can start to recognize that you did not choose for this to happen, and there are so many factors that you can’t necessarily control that are at play. When you become a little more gentle with yourself when the food noise arises, it gives you more space and more capacity to learn to make different choices. With this perspective, you can start to be more intentional and self-caring even in the middle of a challenging environment, and you can begin proving to yourself that the environment does not have to dictate your actions.

Do you need more help as you stop binge eating? 

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hunger fullness stop go signals

Beyond Hunger and Fullness: Learning to Deal with “Stop and Go” Signals around Food

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Hunger and fullness signals are an often-discussed topic in the eating disorder space, but today, I’m going to go beyond that to discuss what I’m calling stop and go signals and to explain how these signals come into play in binge eating recovery.

Stop and go signals aren’t the same as our physical cues of hunger and fullness. The go signals are primarily thoughts, but also feelings and sensations, that drive us to eat (or keep eating), and they are independent of actual physical hunger. The reason I say go signals are primarily thoughts is because the physical feelings and sensations are usually more indicative of actual hunger, but you can definitely still have physical sensations encouraging eating when you’re not truly hungry.

For example, a go signal could occur when you’ve finished eating a meal, and you’ve had plenty of food and possibly even dessert, but then your thoughts keep telling you to eat more—even though you’re full. These go signals can also occur when you’re not hungry at all, but you see some delicious food or you’re offered something to eat, and your thoughts and cravings encourage you to have some. The most extreme go signals are the urges to binge, which drive you to eat so far past fullness that it’s painful.

The stop signals are primarily thoughts, but also feelings and sensations, that tell us to stop eating—which are also independent of actual hunger or fullness. The stop signals I’m talking about here primarily show up if you are restricting. I’m not talking about the stop signals that come up after you’ve had a reasonable, nourishing amount of food. Problematic stop signals come up when you’re actually hungry or you physically need more food, but you think and believe that you should stop eating in order to control your weight or because eating is somehow “wrong.” The stop signals tend to be very self-critical and come with a lot of guilt.

 It’s not just binge eaters—everyone has stop and go signals

What both the stop and go signals show us is that our thoughts and feelings encouraging eating (or eating more) are not always based on hunger, and on the other hand, our thoughts and feelings encouraging us to stop eating are not always based in fullness. This is something that people with or without a current or past eating disorder have to deal with, especially in the modern food environment that we live in. Highly processed, highly stimulating, highly pleasurable foods can turn up our food desires, promote more food thoughts, and rev up our cravings—in other words, increase the go signals around food. Additionally, those very same foods can also create some of the problematic stop signals in our minds as well. If we tell ourselves that certain foods are “bad,” or if we’re worried that certain foods will lead to weight gain, it can lead to restrictive thoughts telling us to stop eating (or avoid eating in the first place), even if we’re hungry.

Food is not just fuel, and you are not broken

There is a common analogy about eating being like filling the gas tank of your car, and that analogy makes sense if we’re strictly talking about hunger and fullness—you fill your stomach or your gas tank when it gets low and stop when it is full. But, when we’re talking about these stop and go signals, this analogy doesn’t hold up. There’s just so much more to human food decisions and consumption, especially with all of the modern foods that we have available.

Cars don’t face tempting food (fuel) on a daily basis, or social settings where there is pressure to overeat, or highly processed options that can make cravings and desires stronger. Basically, we’re facing a lot more challenges than a car that simply needs energy to run, and I think it’s important for everyone in recovery to come to terms with this. I encourage you to accept that hunger and fullness don’t tell the whole story, and that you’ll need to learn to make peace with the stop and go signals as well.

Having stop and go signals does not make you broken or mean that something is wrong with you, and this is something I frequently remind people of in my books, blog, and podcast. Everyone with or without an eating disorder has to deal with the effect that modern food has on the brain’s reward system, and everyone also has to deal with the messages telling us that certain foods are “bad,” so we should stop eating them. When you realize you are not alone and this is simply the way the brain works, it puts you in a more powerful place to start making choices that are best for you.

I want to say here that—even though everyone has some form of these stop and go signals—they are a lot stronger in people who struggle with bingeing and restricting. Furthermore, because restricting leads to bingeing, when the stop signals are strong and you follow the thoughts telling you not to eat, this has the effect of strengthening the go signals—which can lead to urges to binge. The result of strong and opposing stop and go signals is the dangerous restrict-binge cycle.

Why we have stop and go signals in addition to hunger and fullness signals

I want to dive a little deeper into why we have the stop and go signals. These are primal or primitive brain signals, which are part of the reward system in our brain that has helped humans survive by motivating us to perform behaviors that are necessary for our existence. Eating is basically at the top of that list of necessary (and pleasurable) behaviors.

Our primitive brain’s reward system has three basic goals: 1.) To survive, 2.) To seek pleasure, and 3.) To avoid pain. Some experts also add a fourth goal that is: To exert as little effort as possible.

When we’re talking about hunger and fullness signals, it’s more about that first goal of survival, but of course eating also brings pleasure and helps us avoid the pain of hunger. When it comes to stop and go signals, it’s no longer just about basic survival. The go signals are primarily about meeting that primitive goal of seeking pleasure and also avoiding any discomfort that comes with craving.

The stop signals are a little less clear as far as being a primitive drive, because often these messages arise from cultural conditioning and expectations surrounding how we should look or what we should eat. While it’s fine to want to eat well and take care of our bodies, when we make ourselves stop eating (or not eat in the first place) when we need food, this goes against our survival. However, it can feel like it’s helping us fulfill other needs like being accepted or connected with others or feeling safe, and that can seem like it’s meeting some of those primal needs for pleasure and pain avoidance. Plus, once repeated enough, the stop and go signals become habitual as well, and our habits are driven by the primal brain.

You are not powerless against stop and go signals

What is paramount to know is that your higher brain—your more rational, human brain—has the capacity to override any primitive, conditioned, and habitual thoughts and feelings—and that includes the stop and go signals. This is one of the fundamental principles of Brain over Binge, and you can learn more about the higher brain in Podcast Episode 3: The Lower and Higher Brain at Work in Binge Eating.

If you know you need to eat enough food to recover, but your thoughts keep telling you to stop so that you can restrict and lose weight, you can absolutely keep eating in spite of those signals. You can learn to be aware of your brain’s own patterns, you can notice the thoughts that arise, and you can know that these stop signals are faulty, and you can nourish yourself anyway. It’s the same for the go signals. You should allow for food enjoyment, but you can also recognize that when you eat certain foods, your brain may tell you to “go, go, go” and eat excessively, and even to binge. You can use your higher brain to control your actions and choosing a stopping point in spite of these go signals.

This is something that I think should be taught to us from a very young age, especially with the modern foods that we have available. People can be quick to blame the food manufacturers, and yes, there is some responsibility there, but this post is not about that. It’s about helping you take back your own power and realize that any go signals you have around these foods are not destiny. It’s necessary to accept that you will have these signals and not to be scared of them.

What often happens is that people are around tempting food, or they eat tempting food, and then they naturally have thoughts telling them to eat “more, more, more,” and they start having anxiety and negative thoughts about their desires. They might think, “oh my gosh, what’s wrong with me, why do I want so much of this food, why do I lack control?” These thoughts are not productive and having go signals never means you lack control.

It’s much more helpful to think, “oh, of course my brain is signaling me to eat more of this highly pleasurable, highly stimulating food because my brain is wired for pleasure. It’s only natural that I’m having these go signals, but these signals and feelings of desire are safe. I can learn to have feelings of wanting for food, and still be okay, and still have a choice about what I eat.”

Even after recovery, you’ll have something pleasurable like a cookie and your brain will probably want another one, but that doesn’t mean there’s a problem. You can feel those go signals, you can understand them, you can know that it doesn’t mean you’re broken, and then you can decide to have another cookie or not. The good news is that after you stop the binge eating habit, these go signals are so much less strong, and the idea of continuing to eat and eat—let’s say until you’ve had the whole pack of cookies—that just seems like the opposite of pleasure. But you will still have go signals—to a much lesser extent—so I want you to have the proper expectations so that you’re not surprised when you have desires for some extra food pleasure. Always remember that the go signals are normal, but they do not have to dictate what you choose to do.

We have stop and go signals in other parts of life, not just around food

I thought of an example recently regarding these signals and how we need to be more accepting of them, but also not let them lead us into harmful actions. The example that came to mind has to do with sports because I love sports, and I think there are so many life lessons to be learned from them. It’s also timely with the Olympics going on as I’m writing this.

If you read Brain over Binge, you know that I ran track and cross country in high school and college, and now my daughter is actually running track in high school. As an aside, my running got wrapped up in very unhealthy weight obsessions and eventually resulted in many injuries, stress fractures, and an inability to continue to compete. To my daughter’s credit, she’s participating in this sport in a vastly healthier way than I did, and I’m so thankful for that.

The point of this story is that my daughter and I had a conversation recently about stop signals while running. We talked about the fact that—in every single race that we’ve ever run—our thoughts try to convince us to stop. I think this is extremely common, and I’m sure a lot of you can relate if you participate in sports. As I’ve talked about, the brain wants to survive, seek pleasure, and avoid pain, so exerting yourself strenuously in a race (for seemingly no reason at all to your brain—it’s not like there’s a lion chasing you!) is really the opposite of pleasure. It’s very painful, and it also goes against that fourth goal that I talked about of exerting as little effort as possible, so it only makes sense that the brain tells us to stop.

My daughter and I also talked about how we have a lot of justifications for stopping going through our minds too. It’s just something you learn to expect, but you still finish the race in spite of what is going on in your brain, and I know this is not just applicable to runners. Now, I’m sure there are some extremely mentally strong people out there who don’t have these stop signals when performing something strenuous. Maybe the Olympians don’t have them or can override them so well in order to get to such a high level in their sport. But I think all athletes learn to ignore these signals to some extent, and perform the physical endeavor anyway. The brain wants comfort and safety, but if you want to grow and improve, you have to push your own limits.

Of course, sometimes there are real reasons for needing to heed and follow stop signals in a race or any athletic event, but that’s in rare circumstances like when injury occurs. What I’m talking about here is what happens the majority of the time when you simply keep racing or keep performing in spite of the thoughts telling you to stop.

I’m going to bring this back to eating now to say that eating a delicious, highly stimulating food is basically the opposite of running a race. Instead of the brain saying stop in a race, it says go for more food because it wants that pleasure. The takeaway here is that those go signals never have to prevent you from stopping after a reasonable amount of food—just like those stop signals don’t have to prevent you from going on to finish the race.

When eating the pleasurable food or running the race, you simply have to understand that those signals will be there, but also that you have the ability to do what you need to do anyway—whether that’s crossing the finish line or putting away the bag of chips after a normal amount. When you aim to eat a food that’s challenging for you, you can know that you’re committed to eating a normal amount of it no matter what your brain says, just like you can be committed to finishing any race you start. The race may not look pretty, the eating may not be perfect, but you can commit to doing your best and not listening to the thoughts that try to distract you from your goal.

The last insight around this racing analogy that I’ll talk about here is that you absolutely can be selective about the races you choose to run or the foods you choose to eat. I would never tell my daughter—who primarily runs the mile—to sign up for a marathon and then to just ignore all of her thoughts telling her to stop. That would be foolish and dangerous. The takeaway when it comes to food is to go at your own pace with eating foods that bring up challenging go signals. You may not feel ready for certain foods right now, and that’s okay. You can be strategic until you get more practice.

You can also go at your own pace when it comes to stop signals around food as well. It’s possible that you’ve developed some food fears over time and your brain is telling you not to eat them at all. Or it’s possible that when you do choose to eat certain foods, you feel extreme guilt and your brain says to stop eating them. It can be a gradual process to learn that you can choose to eat any food and override the guilt and the stop signals, but you don’t have to start eating anything and everything right away.

The overall message in this post is that your stop and go signals are a normal function of the primitive part of your brain, but you can use your higher brain to overcome these signals to make the choices that you want to make. You can do this with self-awareness and self-compassion. I hope that this discussion will help you learn to eat a fear food that you want to add back into your life or learn to find a reasonable stopping point when eating a food that is challenging for you.

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If you want more help as you stop binge eating and learn to eating normally (in spite of the stop and go signals), you can check out the following Brain over Binge resources:

One-on-one Coaching – Book a 45-minute private and highly personalized session with Kathryn. You will learn to change your thinking, uncover what is holding you back, and get on a path to complete freedom from food issues.

Group Coaching – Get coaching from Kathryn as well as support from others who are overcoming this habit. Includes a private forum, 4 group coaching calls per week, plus course access.

Brain over Binge Course – Self-paced online lessons (plus an app) for only $18.99/month. Includes over 125 tracks to listen to that give you the information and answers you need as you end binge eating.

Eating the Way You “Should”

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Are you constantly telling yourself that your eating should be a certain way?

Do you believe you should never eat over a certain amount?

Do you think you should or should not be eating certain foods or at certain times?

When you have a lot of “shoulds” around eating, it creates pressure and stress each time you have a meal or snack.

I want to help you have more peace with food, and a big part of that is not getting caught up in thinking that there’s one right way that you should be eating at any given moment.

 Are Your “Shoulds” Leading to Binges?

It’s exhausting to think that there are exact rules to follow with food or that you’re supposed to eat “right” at each meal. You may have thoughts saying, “you’re eating too much, or not enough, or at the wrong times, or too fast, or too slow, or in the wrong place, or with the wrong mindset.” It may feel like you’re always thinking your eating should somehow be different than what it is.

This gets more complicated when you have a binge eating habit, because what tends to happen is that the “shoulds” end up triggering urges to binge. This is because bingeing behavior is often strongly connected to breaking a diet or eating what you think is too much of something, and then thinking “screw it, I’ve already failed, I might as well eat everything and start over tomorrow.” If this has been your diet-binge pattern, then your brain will automatically suggest binge eating at times when you feel you messed up with your eating (even if you’re not trying to diet anymore).

In effect, your brain offers binge eating as a “solution” to eating in a way you think you shouldn’t have eaten.

For example, if you tell yourself that you should avoid food before a certain time of day, and then you eat something before that time, you may have thoughts like, “you’re a failure, you’ll never get it right, so you should just give up and binge.”

You Know You Should Not Be Bingeing

It’s important to realize that the brain has formed a connection between thinking that you did not eat right and encouraging you to eat in a way that you absolutely know that you should not be eating.

Looking at this logically, you can see that it doesn’t make sense. You know binge eating is the furthest thing from a solution to breaking your “shoulds” around food, but if you have this habitual pattern, it can seem very real and convincing in the moment. Instead of learning to accept imperfection in your eating, you may end up in a cycle of trying to eat perfectly, and then not being able to do that (because no one can eat perfectly!), and then jumping right back into bingeing.

You can certainly dismiss any urge to binge regardless of the what the binge-encouraging thoughts say, but what can also help in this specific situation is to stop thinking that you should be eating in a certain way in the first place.

Questioning the “Shoulds” 

It’s difficult to go through life with rigid “shoulds” and a lot of self-criticism surrounding them. Even if you stop bingeing, you don’t want to continue this form of stress. Now, I realize there are certain people who need to eat in a certain way due to health issues/food allergies/sensitivities, and Brain over Binge Coach Julie and I recently discussed this in Episode 147: Redefining Restriction. However, most of the rules people create for themselves are not related to specific health problems, but instead, the rules are based on something they’ve heard or seen about the way they should be eating (and it’s usually aimed at weight-loss).

I want you to start questioning your “shoulds” surrounding food:

Where did these rules come from?

What if it’s not true that the way you think you should be eating is the way you really should be eating?

What if there are not any actual “shoulds” around food?

If we go back to the previous example of thinking you should not eat before a certain time in the day… What if that’s simply not true? Or what if that’s not true for you personally? Or what if it’s just not right for you right now? What if it’s totally optional to eat whenever you decide to?

A way you can recognize your should thoughts as just thoughts and not absolute truths is to consider that other people may have completely opposite should thoughts…

If you think that you should avoid eating in the morning, someone else might think they absolutely should eat breakfast because it’s the most important meal.

If you think you should not eat meat, there are people out there who think that they should be eating mostly or only meat.

If you think you should not eat carbohydrates, there are people out there who believe they should because the best diet is based primarily in carbohydrates.

I want you to start believing that you can make your own authentic decisions about food without all of the arbitrary rules. If there is truly something that you feel you need to change about your eating, there’s nothing wrong with making adjustments, but you can make those changes because you want to and from a place of self-care, not from a place of creating rigid “shoulds.”

Drop the “Shoulds,” Create More Peace with Food

You can learn to see that there are simply food choices—which are neutral–and then there is feedback from your body about what foods work best for you. Even if sometimes you choose to eat foods that don’t tend to make you feel good, you can just go on with your life without the self-criticism and without thinking that you “blew it and you might as well binge.”

I encourage you to start dropping the pressure that you’re putting on yourself and to consider that you should be eating in the way that you are eating in any given moment. (I’m of course talking about eating habits that are not bingeing).

It gives you so much freedom to think: “maybe I ate exactly as I should have in this situation.”

This is not about tricking yourself into thinking that you ate healthy when you clearly didn’t, or that you ate the perfect amount when you feel like you overate, but it is about accepting the way that you ate in that moment. Maybe there is something to learn from the way you ate, or maybe not, but either way, you can simply move on without all of the overthinking.

Consider that you can just eat and let it be what it is. 

You can make a decision about food that you think is best for you (for whatever reason), eat the food, let go of any negative thoughts about it, and redirect your focus back to living. And then the next time you eat, you can just repeat this process—all the while thinking this is the way it should be.

Deciding what and when to eat is a lifelong journey, and you may certainly take into account health information, or what foods are going to make you feel the best, or what time it is, or when you’ll be eating again, or where you are, or who you’re eating with, or what foods you have available, or what you can even afford. But a sound decision for any given moment does not have to involve harsh “shoulds.”

Keep Food Decisions Neutral or Positive

If you stop to think about it, you could find flaws in any food decision, and even if you can’t, someone else probably could. You already know you can avoid a binge when you eat imperfectly, but you don’t even have to focus on the imperfection. You don’t have to tell yourself, “I did not eat perfectly, but that’s okay, I can still avoid a binge.” Yes, that’s true, but instead, you can choose to keep it neutral and just say, “I ate,” and that can be the end of the story for that meal or snack.

As I’ve said, there certainly may be lessons to take away from any eating experience, but there’s no use dwelling on what you feel was not perfect. You can even spin it in a positive direction by saying, “I ate, and it was delicious, or it was just what I needed, or it hit the spot, or it will give me energy for living.”

Positive after-meal thoughts will help train your brain to associate eating with decisiveness, confidence, and satisfaction, and it will break the habit of constantly second guessing yourself.

Giving yourself the freedom to decide what to eat without all of the “shoulds” does not mean that you’re going to suddenly start choosing all unhealthy foods. In fact, it will probably greatly improve your eating because you’ll avoid the mindset of thinking that you “blew it so you might as well eat everything in sight.”

You can still make healthy choices, but you can do that without rigid “shoulds.” Any healthier choices you make can be from your own insights into what is most helpful for you, and you can be kind to yourself in the process. You’ll realize that eating does not have to be so hard, and you’ll see that you’re doing so much better than you think.

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If you want more help as you let go of the “shoulds” and create more peace with food, you can check out the following Brain over Binge resources:

One-on-one Coaching – Book a 45-minute private and highly personalized session with Kathryn or Coach Julie. You will learn to change your thinking, uncover what is holding you back, and get on a path to complete freedom from food issues.

Group Coaching – Get help from coach Julie and support from others who are overcoming this habit. Includes a forum that is open 24/7, group coaching calls, mindfulness resources, plus course access.

Brain over Binge Course – Self-paced online lessons (plus an app) for only $18.99/month. Includes over 125 tracks to listen to that give you the information and answers you need as you end binge eating.

© Copyright 2026 Kathryn Hansen