I’m starting 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)

Food noise has been getting a lot of attention right now, and I want to provide what I hope will be a helpful perspective on how to understand and deal with food noise while also ending the binge-eating habit. Food noise is something that needs to be talked about in the world of eating disorder recovery, and I’m glad to see others in the field discussing it, and I hope to add something meaningful to the conversation.

I’m calling Part 1 of this series, Bingeing Is Not a Solution to Food Noise, because when it comes to binge eating recovery, I truly believe that is the most important thing to understand and remember as you approach learning to manage your food noise.

What Is Food Noise?

Food noise is a term that I’m hearing everywhere recently, and you probably are too. It’s not that food noise is new—people have likely experienced some variation of what we’re now calling “food noise” since eating existed. I looked a bit into the history of the term “food noise,” and it seems like no one can really pinpoint exactly where the phrase comes from, but it’s thought to have originated from patient anecdotes that led to more conversation in the media and among clinicians.

Based on Google search analysis, public interest in the term “food noise” hit an all-time high in the spring of 2024 and then has remained fairly high since then, and the interest is primarily coming from the United States. I’m getting the background information in this post from the article, Food noise: definition, measurement, and future research directions (Journal of Nutrition & Diabetes), which has a lot of good information that could be helpful if the term food noise is new to you.

As far as an official definition, an expert panel convened at the American Society of Nutrition meeting in June of 2024 and defined food noise in this way:

Food noise is persistent thoughts about food that are perceived by the individual as being unwanted and/or dysphoric and may cause harm to the individual, including social, mental, or physical problems.

This concept is receiving a lot of publicity lately in the mainstream media, in the weight loss industry, in research, and in relation to the rise of the GLP-1 medications (and many people’s experience that those medications quiet food noise).

Food noise is not defined by thoughts about food alone, because thoughts about eating are very natural to the human experience. You could think about food noise as not just thinking about food but really ruminating about it. Rumination involves obsessional thinking or excessive, repetitive thoughts that interfere with your life. Again, this is not a new experience for people, but it’s the label of “food noise” and the widespread public discussion about it that’s relatively new.

The Difference Between Food Noise and Urges to Binge

Now let’s turn to the point of today’s post specifically, which is that binge eating is not a solution to food noise. With all of the talk out there about food noise, I’m starting to hear an unintended message in relation to binge eating, which sounds like, “If I have food noise, I’m destined to binge,” or “Food noise is the cause of my bingeing.” I don’t believe those statements are true. Food noise and binge eating can absolutely be related, but food noise does not make bingeing inevitable.

To help explain this, I’m going to separate food noise from urges to binge because this is an important distinction. When we think about food noise, it’s an overabundance of thoughts about food and eating—whether that’s thinking excessively about what you’re going to eat, obsessing about calories, craving certain foods persistently, or not being able to focus on other things because of the food thoughts. Food noise can absolutely feel intense, consuming, and distracting.

Urges to binge can also feel intense, consuming, and distracting, but binge urges are the desire to binge eat. Binge urges are the thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations that encourage the act of bingeing. From a clinical perspective, binge eating means eating, in a discrete period of time—for example, within a two-hour period—an amount of food that is definitely larger than what most people would eat in similar circumstances. Binge eating is also defined by experiencing a sense of lack of control during the episode.

An urge to binge usually has that “screw it, I’m going to eat everything and start over tomorrow” quality. People can and do have food noise without ever experiencing an urge to binge, which is an urge to eat massive amounts of food. Some people have both food noise and urges to binge. Some people have urges to binge and not that much food noise otherwise, but that is more rare because the act of bingeing itself leads to increased food noise.

You could think of urges to binge as an extreme type of food noise—encouraging the specific food behavior of binge eating. This extreme type of food noise often develops after a period of food restriction, which is part of the brain’s survival response. Then eventually the bingeing becomes a habit that’s reinforced over time, which can perpetuate the urges to binge even if normal eating is reintroduced.

Even though there is a relationship between food noise and urges to binge (and the two very frequently exist together in someone who is struggling with binge eating disorder or bulimia), I still believe it’s important to avoid blending the two experiences together too much. I understand that there can be some overlap and gray areas, but that does not stop us from acknowledging that these are two—possibly related—but different experiences.

You Can Have Food Noise Without Bingeing

It’s crucial to realize that you can have food noise and still choose not to act on the urges to binge. You can ruminate about food and still not obey the thoughts that encourage you to let go of all control and eat massive quantities. You can obsess about servings or ingredients and still not follow thoughts that say, “Screw it, just eat anything and everything.” You can be unfocused because your mind keeps thinking about sweets, and you can still not act on the urge to eat sweets until you’re stuffed and sick. You can have anxiety about food without believing your thoughts that say a binge will solve that problem.

Bingeing is a harmful and dangerous behavior, and it’s never a valid response to food noise. Of course, constantly thinking about food or having anxiety about food is not an ideal state to be in, but it’s so important to recognize that bingeing is a much worse state to be in and that bingeing does nothing to solve food noise.

Why Bingeing Doesn’t Solve Food Noise

Even if you understand that bingeing doesn’t solve food noise, you may be thinking, “But, at least I get some temporary relief from the food noise when I binge.”

This is crucial to talk about because this is where food noise often turns into urges to binge. The urges to binge convince you that bingeing is a way to get relief from the experience of food noise. To stop bingeing, it’s necessary to stop believing this.

By telling you to stop believing that bingeing will give you relief, it may sound like I’m telling you to just stay stuck in the misery of the food noise. I hope that by the end of this post, you’ll understand that is not my goal. However, it’s important to acknowledge that even if that’s exactly what I am saying—that you need to stay stuck in the food noise—that actually is the more appealing option. That is the safer path. The discomfort of the food noise is preferable to the discomfort and the pain of a binge.

It’s like having a heart-to-heart with a smoker and saying, “Yes, staying with the cigarette cravings is preferable and safer than having the cigarette to get relief.” Your thoughts and urges can make it feel like bingeing is the compassionate thing to do for yourself—to give you some relief from the food noise—but if you’re reading this, I know that you understand the pain that bingeing brings. I know that you understand it’s never truly a relief. I know that you’re never glad you binged. I know that you never come away from a binge thinking that was a kind thing to do for yourself. I also know that you can likely recognize that bingeing just makes the food noise so much worse as soon as the binge is over.

A Better Way to Think About the Relationship Between Food Noise and Binge Eating

Think of the relationship between bingeing and food noise as if the binge is like blasting music at an extremely harmful level to cover a sound you don’t want to hear (and that sound is the food noise). For a brief time, yes, the blasting sound can divert your attention, but you can’t keep listening to that harmful level of music forever. You eventually have to turn it off, and, in effect, you’ve hurt your hearing in the process and sensitized yourself so that the original sound you were trying to drown out becomes even more bothersome.

In this analogy (and with binge eating), the perceived solution is more harmful than the original problem and makes the original problem worse, and then the cycle continues. I know it’s not a perfect analogy, but it explains the experience that many people have of bingeing to try to make the food noise go away and ending up with even worse food noise.

I encourage you to start seeing the thought that says, “I need to binge to quiet the food noise,” as not aligning with your actual experience and as not speaking your truth.

Something I also think is worth considering is that the temporary relief you may feel when you binge is actually just another form of food noise. When you’re bingeing, you’re thinking about food, you’re eating, you’re highly focused on food, you’re eating in a harmful way, and you’re thinking of the next thing you’re going to eat in the binge.

Even though you might interpret this as “relief,” when you step back and think about it more deeply, it’s just a heightened focus on food—a more extreme and harmful form of food noise. A binge is trading one form of food noise for another, and the food noise of a binge is dangerous.

I always want to remind you that bingeing is not a neutral behavior that simply “makes you feel better”. That’s what your lower brain thoughts will say, but that’s never actually true.

After a Binge, Food Noise is Worse

To further this idea that bingeing is not a solution to food noise, also think about what happens to your food thoughts after the binge. Most people end up ruminating about the physical effect of the food, worrying about the impact the binge will have on their weight and health, feeling guilty about the food and the quantities they ate, thinking about how they’re going to eat to try to “undo the damage,” and ruminating about new diets or new weight loss plans.

In addition, on a physiological level, eating large amounts of the food that people typically consume in a binge leads to more cravings, heightened hunger, and dampened fullness—which are all more forms of food noise. Think of the binge eating itself as one of the biggest factors that keeps the whole food noise system activated.

If you’re trying to recover and you do have a binge, I want you to have as much self-compassion as possible and not criticize yourself for all of these thoughts that may come up after the binge. Simply notice them, and notice that the binge was not the solution to the food noise and, in fact, created more. Then, try to redirect your brain to more healthy thoughts, and also toward some healthy thoughts about food—determining how to learn from the binge and move toward recovery by getting back to nourishing your body properly.

To end the binge eating habit for good (even if you still have some food noise), it’s necessary to dismiss any lower brain’s message telling you that a binge is a helpful or logical response to food noise.

Making Bingeing “Not an Option” to Deal with Food Notice

Once you realize that bingeing is never a solution to food noise and makes it worse, it puts you in such a powerful position—because you get to start to work on real solutions to the food noise and discover strategies to support yourself while the food noise is present.

The goal is to completely cross out bingeing in your mind as a viable option for dealing with food noise or getting relief from it. When you do that, you give yourself so much freedom to be able to truly help yourself in those moments of difficult food noise.

There are so many variables at play when it comes to food noise, including genetics, upbringing, food environment, dieting, restriction, metabolic issues, stress, sleep, activity levels, emotions, weight loss attempts, certain medical conditions…and the list goes on. In the following posts in this series, I will discuss some of these factors and potential ways to support yourself.

The fact that the culprits in food noise can be complex and multifaceted is all the more reason not to wait until food noise completely goes away to stop bingeing (which, like I’ve discussed, may be impossible anyway because bingeing creates food noise).

Some of the factors that may be responsible for your food noise could require some work and time to solve, and you don’t want to be bingeing in the process of trying to solve those factors, because it will hinder your progress. So, if you’re someone with a binge eating habit and you want to work on solving your food noise, your first step should be giving yourself the gift of not bingeing in moments of food noise. When you do that, you’ve stopped inadvertently making the food noise worse, and you’ve stopped inadvertently covering up one problem with an even worse problem.

I say inadvertently because I know that your intention is not to make it worse. I know how convincing the lower brain can be when it feels like bingeing will provide that “relief”. You’ve been doing the best you can, so there’s no need for self-criticism here, but I hope you’re starting to see through the illusion that bingeing provides relief. I also hope that stopping bingeing allows you to start using whatever tools and strategies help you with the food noise.

A Brief Note About GLP-1 Medications

It’s impossible to have this conversation in 2026 without mentioning the GLP-1 medications, which, for many people, have the effect of reducing food noise. This is something I’ll dive deeper into in a future post in this series, but here I want to say that even if you are someone who (with your doctor) decides that these medications are a good fit for you—it’s still not a guarantee that they get rid of all of the food noise.

That means, in order to stay binge-free on a GLP-1, you’ll still need that fundamental belief that you can have food noise and still not binge. You’ll still need to know that bingeing is not a solution to the food noise. That goes for any strategy that you use to try to reduce food noise, because in order for any strategy to work, you will have to dismiss the urges to binge in response to the food noise—so that you can use that strategy effectively.

Basically, it takes stopping bingeing to start to chip away at and resolve the food noise. Another way to say this is that you can’t wait to have a completely quiet mind in relation to food in order to stop bingeing. It takes stopping bingeing to start to quiet your mind.

You can absolutely work on both the food noise and the urges to binge at the same time, but you’re going to make the most progress when you never believe that food noise needs to lead to bingeing.

Stopping Bingeing and Eating Enough Helps Quiet the Food Noise

The great part about working on both the food noise and the urges to binge is that stopping bingeing naturally helps reduce food noise. Furthermore, in order to stop bingeing, it’s crucial to eat enough food to nourish your body—and eating enough food is one component that is immensely helpful and necessary in reducing food noise over time. In effect, what helps you with stopping bingeing is also very beneficial in stopping food noise.

Every time you have food noise and don’t follow that with a binge, you’re weakening the connection that your brain has made between the food noise and the bingeing, and you’re changing your brain pathways.

A helpful way to think about this topic is to understand that food noise and urges to binge are both experiences, but bingeing is an action—and you have the ability to choose your actions despite your experiences. The great part about this is that changing your actions rewires your brain and improves your experiences over time.

Looking Ahead and Final Thoughts

As we move forward in this series, I’ll talk more about how food noise can show up and how to distinguish problematic thoughts about food from normal food thoughts. I’ll also discuss practical ways to support yourself when food noise comes up and some mental shifts you can make that can help you feel more in control.

For now, I want to end this post by encouraging you to believe that quieting your mind completely around food is not a requirement for binge eating recovery. So many people have completely stopped binge eating before the idea of food noise became popular.

In the past, we definitely had other ways to talk about uncomfortable food thoughts, and it’s always been a goal in recovery to have more mental peace with food. However, there was not so much hype around the idea that it’s necessary to shut down the noise in order to control our actions. I hope that if I contribute anything to this conversation, it will be to help you understand that learning to control your actions can absolutely help turn down the noise.

If you’re struggling with food noise right now, try to stop any self-judgment you may have about it. Try to take care of yourself as well as you can while it’s present, use any strategies that currently help you feel more peaceful, and really try to adopt the belief that food noise never makes you destined to binge.

Do you need more help as you stop binge eating? 

Free Inspiration Booklet – The booklet contains 31 daily messages to help you stay focused and motivated each day as you let go of binge eating.

One-on-one Coaching – Book a 45-minute private and highly personalized session with Kathryn Hansen. 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 – Includes 4 group coaching calls per week with Kathryn.  You’ll also get access to a forum for encouragement and accountability, and 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.

Brain over Binge Books – Get Brain over Binge and the Brain over Binge Recovery Guide on Amazon and Audible.