Bite Back with Abbey Sharp - Food Noise, Ozempic and the Drug-Free Solutions NO ONE is Talking About

Starting point is 00:00:00 You can think of Q reactivity as the spark, food reward as the fuel, restriction and moralization as the accelerant, and food noise as the experience of that fire never getting snuffed out. Welcome to another episode of Bite Back with Abby Sharp, where I dismantle die culture rules, call out the charlatans spinning the pseudoscience, and help you achieve food freedom for good. In today's solo episode of Byteback, we're going to be diving into a food and eating experience that likely affects a lot of you listening right now. It's the constant calculating, the negotiating, the replaying of what you ate, and the pre-planning of what you'll allow yourself later. It's the voice that tells you to be good today, to compensate tomorrow, to earn your dinner, or to make up for dessert.

Starting point is 00:00:57 It's the food thoughts that are robbing you of the mental energy for other acts of self-care. And while not an official or scientific diagnosis, that experience is colloquially called food noise, or our unrelenting, distracting, all-consuming mental chatter about food. In today's episode, we're going to talk about the psychological and physiological drivers behind food noise, how GLP1s like Ozempic work to suppress it, and some not non-pharmological solutions to quiet the racket in a sustainable way. If food feels like it is taking up way too much real estate in your brain, this conversation is absolutely for you.

Starting point is 00:01:40 But very quickly, I want to just remind everyone that my brand new best-selling book, The Hunger Crushing Combot Method, is now on sale and is available as a hardcover, e-book and audiobook. And I talk about a lot of nutrition strategies to quiet food noise in the book. So if you haven't already picked it up, I would love if you would. March is not only nutrition month, but it's also frozen food month, which I honestly celebrate all year long with a freezer full of Nature's Touch fruits and veggies. Their produce is so sweet, flavorful, and packed with nutrition because they've frozen

Starting point is 00:02:21 at peak ripeness and packaged in recyclable packaging ready to eat. I also love that Nature's Touch is a Canadian company that sources its fruits and veggies. from the best growing regions to prioritize sustainability and quality. You can snack on them straight from the freezer or use them in smoothies, meals, and desserts. So check out my blog and social media for some fun ideas on how to use Nature's Touch, frozen fruits and veggies and stock up at Costco Canadawide or online at the link in the show notes. All right, friends, let's get into this episode. So to set the stage, I think it's really important to clarify that,

Starting point is 00:03:01 food noise is not a personal failure. It's not a lack of willpower or a moral weakness or proof that you're hopelessly addicted to food. So what exactly causes this overwhelming chatter? Well, restriction and dieting are probably the most well-established amplifiers of food noise. When the body perceives scarcity, food becomes more cognitively and biologically salient. This is essentially an inborn adaptive mechanism to try to force you to eat more when your body is in a state of deprivation. One of the most famous studies to demonstrate this mechanism was Ansel-Kee's Minnesota Semi-Starvation Study, where they cut healthy men's caloric intake in half and waited to see what transpired. Perhaps not surprisingly, these men became obsessed with food. They talked about food, they read about

Starting point is 00:03:57 food, they dreamt about food, and they became aggressively territorial with the meals that they did get. What perhaps was less expected was that this food noise persisted up to years after they returned to normal eating. So that short period of scarcity was enough to rewire their brain long term. And you don't need to be literally starved to see these effects. Research using far less extreme conditions clearly demonstrates that any dietary restriction can increase food preoccupation and intrusive thoughts. Now, dieting may be the most predictable source of food noise, but it isn't the only potential pathway. There can also be other psychological origins of food noise that often start with something called food cue reactivity. Food queue reactivity is a concept rooted in classic

Starting point is 00:04:51 Pavlovian conditioning. In so many of our love, lives, a certain smell or place or time a day or person or even a TV theme song can become deeply intertwined with eating or even specific foods. Eventually, those cues alone can trigger physiological and psychological responses like salivation, cravings, mental imagery, or anticipatory pleasure. If you always eat chips while watching The Bachelor, eventually the theme song itself, can spark a craving, even if you were not even physically hungry five minutes earlier. That's not pathology. That is literally just learning. Now, on its own, Q reactivity is generally just fleeting or momentary. But it could become more persistent when combined with other forces

Starting point is 00:05:44 like restriction, or what we need to speak about next, food reward. Food reward is basically how reinforcing a food is, or how strongly your brain lights up in response to it. And scientists often break this into two parts, liking and wanting. Liking is the, wow, that cookie tastes amazing feeling that is tied to our pleasure or opioid systems in the brain. Whereas wanting is the drive or motivation. It's the I Need Another One energy that is more closely related to dopamine and the brain's motivational pathways. And here's a really important part. You can want something even if you're not physically hungry or deprived. Because as we've now uncovered, this system isn't just about survival. It is about learning and reinforcement. So when you repeatedly pair a cue with a rewarding

Starting point is 00:06:43 food like cookies in a coffee shop or popcorn with movie night, your brain strengthens that association. The cue then leads to the consumption of the food which boosts the reward and pleasure, and the stronger that reward and pleasure, the stronger the neural pathway becomes. Now, this still doesn't automatically mean that you'll experience overwhelming food noise, because liking food is normal, wanting food is normal, and having craving sometimes is also quite normal. But food noise is what happens when those thoughts don't just come and go. They linger. And this is where it all connects. You can have food cues constantly around you. You have foods that are highly rewarding. And if you layer on restriction, stress, guilt, or rigid food rules, food becomes highly salient. So instead of a

Starting point is 00:07:40 cue triggering a single passing thought like, oh, cookies sound good, it instead turns into, I shouldn't, maybe later. Did I eat too much? I'll start again tomorrow. Why am I such a freaking failure? The thoughts stick, they loop, and they take up space. So you can think of Q reactivity as the spark, food reward as the fuel, restriction and moralization as the accelerant, and food noise as the experience of that fire never getting snuffed out. But here is where it gets even more nuanced. For some people, it's not just the environment or the restriction that is lighting matches. Sometimes the fire alarm system itself is just simply wired differently, and there's an evolving area of research pointing to real biological differences in how our brains regulate hunger, satiety, and reward.

Starting point is 00:08:43 There are some known genetic variations that may play a role in the risk of food noise. So for example, folks with variants on the FTO or fat mass and obesity associated gene are more likely to experience higher self-reported appetite, reduce satiety, stronger brain responses to food cues, and increased hunger hormone levels. Someone with one copy of the risk allele will have a 23% increased risk of obesity. And folks with two copies of the allele will have a 70% increased risk. So for these folks, food noise overeating and as a result, obesity, just might be somewhat out of their control. There's also the role of potential abnormalities in the activity of our fullness hormone leptin, either from congenital leptin deficiency or from leptin resistance, which occurs when obesity interferes with normal leptin signaling.

Starting point is 00:09:51 And in far more rare cases, we may see disruptions in the Melano-Corden pathway or the MC4R system, where overeating and persistent preoccupation with food is part of the clinical picture independent of dieting history. In situations like these, food noise isn't just spark plus fuel plus accelerant. It's also about how sensitive that smoke detector is. how strong the hunger signal is or how slowly the I'm full signal gets through. And that is a really important distinction here because it shifts the conversation away from willpower towards obesity. And that is where OZempic can come into play. OZempic and other GLP1 receptor agonists are some of the most powerful weight loss drugs

Starting point is 00:10:43 we have ever seen. Hands down, hard stop. Yes, these drugs act to reduce physical hunger by delaying stomach emptying and stimulating the release of insulin, both of which can suppress appetite. But what differentiates GLP-1s from the weight loss medications of our past is that they can also act on the reward centers of the brain. So the literature to date has consistently shown that GLP-1 use is often associated with reduced reactivity to food cues in regions of the brain involved in salience, reward, and interception. We still need a lot more research in this area to connect the dots, but these are mechanisms that map really well onto reduced, quote, quote, wanting and reduced Q-triggered motivation

Starting point is 00:11:32 to eat. And this is huge. For folks who have struggled with food noise their entire lives, these medications can offer a monumental relief valve that may open up mental capacity for other acts of self-care and make health-promoting behaviors finally feel more intuitive. And this is one of the reasons why I am so grateful that we have pharmacological supports like this. Now with all that said, whether you have a genetic predisposition to food noise, are managing obesity-related leptin resistance, or having residual food preoccupation from years of dieting, there are a lot of folks, for whom these drugs are just not indicated or accessible. They're expensive, they come with serious side effects,

Starting point is 00:12:24 and they typically require you to stay on them for life. So it isn't an easy or obvious choice for a lot of people to make. Food noise is multifactorial. And although JLP ones have demonstrated a lot of success in quieting it, they're not the only way to tackle it. So how can we turn the volume down, without medication? First, you remove the accelerant. That means reducing restriction. Scarcity mentality is one of the biggest drivers of salience. But when your body trusts that food is consistently

Starting point is 00:13:00 available, when you're eating enough, eating regularly, and not labeling foods as off limits, that urgency greatly reduces. Food becomes less novel, less charged, less loud when it's not restricted. This is why in the hunger-crushing combo method, we talk about the importance of adding, not restricting. Shifting that scarcity mentality into one of abundance and nourishment that makes our body and our brain feel safe. Number two, we strengthen our satiety signaling. That means eating regular meals and snacks that prioritize protein, fiber, and healthy fats,

Starting point is 00:13:43 aka the hunger-crushing combo. The hunger-crushing combo has been shown to help stimulate satiety hormones, including GLP-1, slow digestion, stabilize blood sugars, and reduce cravings and food preoccupation. And I've got loads of evidence-based tips and strategies to help you get started in the hunger-crushing combo method. Number three, we gently reduce Q intensity. We live in an environment that is basically engineered to light up our reward systems all day long. Food is visible. It's convenient. It's heavily marketed, scented, and paired with

Starting point is 00:14:22 entertainment that is designed to hook us in. And I just want to remind everyone that cue reactivity is normal. If you repeatedly pair a food with a context, your brain is going to learn that association. That is not a weakness. It is just basic psychology. So if you know certain cues are particularly powerful for you, like keeping hyper-palatable snacks open on your desk while you're trying to focus, it is okay to create gentle environmental boundaries. Not from a place of fear or deprivation, but from a place of empathy and understanding about how your brain works. So that could mean putting snacks in a cabinet instead of directly in your line of sight, or plating food instead of eating from a large open bag or working in your office instead of at the kitchen counter

Starting point is 00:15:15 if that is a grazing trigger for you. Modifying your environment isn't restriction. It is simply turning the dial down so that you have space in your brain to notice or think about things other than food. Number four, slowly increase exposure without moralization. When you unapologetically allow yourself access to food in neutral contexts without getting. guilt or shame, it dampens the reward intensity and dopamine spike. This is again where the hunger crushing combo method comes into play. By placing your fear food literally on the same plate as foods rich in fiber, protein, and healthy fats, we strip it of its power over us. That cookie becomes no morally better or worse than the berries, nuts, and cheese it's on the plate with,

Starting point is 00:16:08 making us far less likely to obsess and subsequently binge. And finally, and perhaps most importantly, have some compassion for the process. If your unique hunger signals are stronger or your satiety signals are quieter or your reward circuitry is just more sensitive to the cues it receives, that is not failure. It's just biology. And the goal shouldn't be to eliminate all food thoughts because that would literally be working against our. her biology and what has kept us alive as a species since the dawn of time, it is to simply work towards reducing the intensity, the stickiness, and the space that it takes up in our life. And on that note, I'm going to leave it there for today.

Starting point is 00:16:54 But if you like this episode, I would really love if you would subscribe and leave me a five-star review and a comment because it really does help me continue to fight the good fight. And another quick reminder that if you're looking for a gentle, evidence-based approach to quieting those intrusive food thoughts and cravings, my best-selling book, The Hunger Cushing Combo Method, is available now in hard copy, digital e-book, and audiobook versions. Signing off with Science and Sass, I'm Abby Sharp. Thanks for listening.

Bite Back with Abbey Sharp - Food Noise, Ozempic and the Drug-Free Solutions NO ONE is Talking About

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