Why do I think about food all the time? What forbidding a food does to your attention

Mela Theory, the framework behind Nutrimelab, reads thinking about food all the time as often tracing back to two everyday sources, hunger left waiting too long and a food you have forbidden yourself. It reads the second as a habit that the rule itself keeps alive. Nothing here asks you to weigh, count or measure anything.

Say it's eleven in the morning. Lunch is at one, and you have already planned it twice. You know what's in the fridge, you know what's in the café downstairs, and somewhere behind both plans sits the packet of biscuits in the cupboard at home, the one you've decided you're not having this week. You haven't eaten a biscuit, and you've thought about them for most of the morning.

That tiring background hum is what this article is about. It sits close to the on-it, off-it swing I wrote about this week, and in Mela's reading it often arrives before the swing does. The question underneath is why food takes up so much room in your head, and whether that can change. It often can, and the place to start is with what the thoughts are pointing at.

Intuitive Eating is an approach created by dietitians Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch, first published in 1995. It is weight-neutral, which means its aim is a working relationship with food and your body, not a number on a scale. What follows is my own teaching, shaped by that approach and by what I see in my work.

> Key Takeaways > > - Mela reads food on your mind all day as often tracing back to hunger left waiting, or to a food you have ruled out. > - In two studies, people told to avoid a food thought about it more afterwards, and in another, women who went a week without chocolate and usually held back on food ate more of it later. > - This week's practice is one chosen, low-pressure meeting with the food you think about most, with your thoughts noticed before, during and after.

Why do I think about food all the time?

Mela sees food on your mind as often coming from one of two places. Your body may be hungry and asking, or a food you have ruled out may have become louder for being ruled out. Both are information about your day and your rules, and neither says anything about your character.

People describe the experience in very similar words. Someone on a UK forum put it like this, "the minute I thought about having a snack, I just couldn't stop thinking about it". Some people call it food noise. Whatever the name, your attention is split between the meeting you're in and the plan for later, and a lot of quiet effort goes into not eating something.

Mela describes six layers that shape eating, which are cues, habits, emotions, culture, identity and biology. Constant thoughts about food tend to sit across two of them. Biology covers the hunger. Habits cover the rule, the "not this week" that runs in the background whether you are thinking about it or not.

It helps to work out which one you are dealing with, since Mela reads them as asking for different responses. In that reading, hunger often gets quieter when it is fed, and a ruled-out food tends to get quieter when the rule loosens. Often it is both at once.

Hunger as the first cause

Mela puts the plainest reason in the biology layer, which is that you may need some food. A long gap since breakfast, or a morning that started with coffee and nothing else, can leave you with food on your mind by mid-afternoon. In Mela's reading, the thought is a message from your body.

Hunger left waiting often comes back louder. In my work I see a long gap earlier in the day often turn up in the evening as food on your mind, which can feel like a lack of control when it is closer to a delayed answer. I've written more on what a long gap between meals does later.

So the first question when food is on your mind is when you last ate. If the answer is "a while ago", eating is a reasonable response and a good place to start.

What forbidding a food does to your attention

When the hunger is answered and the thoughts carry on, Mela looks for a rule close by. In its reading, a forbidden food tends to get louder. Telling yourself not to have it keeps it on the list of things to watch, and a thing you keep watching often stays near the front of your mind.

Research on forbidden foods supports the first part of that. In two studies by Mann and Ward in 2001, people who were asked to avoid a food thought about it more afterwards, and this happened whether they had been told to avoid it or had chosen to. Wanting the food rose only when the ban came from outside. In those studies, more thoughts did not lead to more eating (Mann and Ward, 2001).

A longer ban looks different. In a study by Polivy, Coleman and Herman, 103 female undergraduates spent a week going without chocolate, going without vanilla, or eating as usual. Afterwards, the women who usually held back on food and had gone without chocolate ate more chocolate than any other group, and women who usually held back reported more cravings in general (Polivy, Coleman and Herman, 2005). It was one week, one food and a group of young women, so treat it as a pointer.

Mela places this in the habits and emotions layers. The rule runs as a habit, checking the food each time you pass the cupboard. Then the emotions arrive, the wanting and, when the rule finally gives, the relief or defiance. That is one way a forbidden food can end up eaten in a hurry, which is the swing back.

In Mela's reading, trying harder at the rule rarely quietens it for long. There is a longer piece on why willpower is the wrong tool for patterns like this one.

Why the pull fades once the food is allowed

In Mela's reading, the pull of a food tends to fade when it stops being scarce. Research on habituation describes how we respond less to a food we meet again and again. In my work I often see a food's shine fade once it is allowed on an ordinary Tuesday.

A 2009 review in Psychological Review brought together animal and human research on habituation to food. It describes how responses to a food cue fall off with repeated presentation, and how this fading is related to how much is eaten and to when eating stops (Epstein et al., 2009). It is a review and a theory built on many studies rather than a single experiment, and it does not test what happens when someone lifts a food rule in daily life. I use it as a plain description of a familiar experience, that the tenth biscuit of the week is less exciting than the first one after a ban.

Tribole and Resch's phrase for allowing food in this way is unconditional permission to eat. In my own words, it means the food is allowed today and tomorrow, so there is no last chance to make the most of. That last part often lowers the volume.

Allowing the food is different from making yourself eat it. Some days you'll want the biscuits and some days you won't, and both are fine.

One more distinction is useful here. A strong want for one particular food at one time of day, chocolate at four o'clock, say, is a craving, and it has its own page on what a craving is telling you. This article is about the wider hum, food on your mind across the whole day.

This week's practice

This week, choose one low-pressure meeting with the food you think about most, if that feels easy enough. If it doesn't, choose a food lower down your list. Low-pressure means an ordinary day, a setting where nothing much rides on it, and enough of the food that you aren't rationing it.

Notice your thoughts at three points. Before you eat, notice what the rule says, and whether there's a "just this once". While you eat, notice the taste, and whether you're eating quickly to get it done. Afterwards, notice what your mind does over the next hour. Does the food stay on your mind, or does it go quiet?

Write a line about each on your phone. Say it's Wednesday and the food is the biscuits. The note might read "Before, felt like cheating. During, nice, ate two quite fast. After, forgot about them until I wrote this." Nothing in the note needs to be clever.

Whatever happens, the next meal is the one you would have had anyway. Nothing in this practice asks you to weigh, count, restrict or compensate.

Today, decide which food it will be and put it somewhere you'll see it.

If food is taking up most of your day

Thinking about food a lot is common, and it often eases once hunger is answered and rules loosen. For some people it goes further than that. If thoughts about food have started to feel frightening, or take up much of your day, please talk to your GP, or contact Beat, the UK's eating disorder charity, at beateatingdisorders.org.uk, where you'll find their free helplines.

Next step

See the 7-week programme