If You're Constantly Thinking About Food, Weight Loss Will Always Feel Hard

Have you ever lost weight only to gain it back because you couldn't keep fighting the cravings? If healthy eating feels like a constant battle, it’s not a character flaw. You HAVE to get rid of your food noise first. 

In this episode, I'm explaining why sustainable weight loss isn't just about eating less or finding the perfect diet. It's about quieting the constant mental chatter around food. When you're thinking about food all day, resisting cravings, and relying on discipline to get through every meal, weight loss becomes exhausting. And eventually, willpower runs out.

I'll walk you through why food noise makes it so difficult to maintain weight loss, what actually causes those constant thoughts about food, and why reducing food noise can make healthy habits feel natural instead of forced.

If you've ever wondered why you can lose weight but struggle to keep it off, this episode will help you understand what's really happening and what you can do instead.

In this episode, you'll learn:
• Why food noise is one of the biggest barriers to sustainable weight loss
• The difference between losing weight and changing your relationship with food
• Why willpower isn't a long-term weight loss strategy
• How decision fatigue makes healthy eating feel harder over time
• The physical and emotional factors that contribute to food noise
• Why eating enough protein, fiber, and balanced meals can help quiet cravings
• What life looks like when food no longer consumes your thoughts
• Why reducing food noise makes healthy habits easier to maintain for the long term

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JOIN THE WAITLIST FOR THE FOOD NOISE BOOTCAMP! 

Coming Fall 2026: https://laurabhealthy.myflodesk.com/foodnoisebootcamp 

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💌 Connect With Laura:

1. Website: Health Coach for Teachers & Busy, Working Women
2. Instagram: LAURA B. | Teacher turned Health Coach | Podcaster🎙️ (@laura.b.healthy) • Instagram photos and videos
3. TikTok: Laura B. | Health Coach (@laura.b.healthy) | TikTok

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If this episode encouraged you, I'd love for you to leave a review and share it with a friend who's tired of feeling like they're constantly fighting with food.

Topics covered in this episode: food noise, sustainable weight loss, weight loss, sugar cravings, food obsession, relationship with food, emotional eating, binge eating, healthy habits, nutrition, protein, fiber, blood sugar balance, decision fatigue, mindset, long-term weight loss

Transcript

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I could say this until I am blue in the face. There are physical, biological things happening inside of your body that are causing you to always be thinking about food, to always feel hungry, and to never feel satisfied. And until those biological things are taken care of, you are never going to be able to lose weight and keep it off. Welcome to the Isn't She Powerful Podcast. I'm your host, Laura B, health coach, educator, and founder of the Be Healthy Lifestyle. I'm here to bring you all the health education and motivation so that you can sign off each week feeling equipped and empowered to tackle all of your health goals. Come along with me as I teach you the basics of healthy living so that you can have everyone in your life say, Isn't she powerful? Hey everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Isn't She Powerful Podcast. I am very excited to talk with you today about the relationship between food noise and weight loss. Because so many times we believe if I could just have more willpower, just be stronger, just lose this weight, then everything will be solved. All my problems will go away. But I want you to think back to previous diets that you've been on. You started, let's say that you started, I don't know, 75 days hard. Let's go with that one. You were on track for 75 days. You were restrictive. You you held on as tight as you could. You did all the things, you did all the things exactly right. And then as soon as the 75 days were over, you were like, cool, now I can go back to living my life, to actually enjoying my life. And what happens at that point? Any of the weight loss that you had, any of the progress that you've made, it starts to slowly regress because your habits started to slowly regress. Because as long as that noise is still there in your head, as long as you choose to address other issues instead of the one at the root of it all, which is the food noise and the sugar cravings. Until that is addressed, none of this other stuff is ever going to be sustainable. You aren't going to keep the weight off until you stop thinking about food all the time, until it no longer controls every move that you make. I just recently interviewed one of my past clients, and her episode will be on the podcast in a week or so. And she was saying that prior to working with me, she was really in that all or nothing diet mindset where she would start a diet, it would all consume her, she'd go really hard, she'd do all the things, and then as soon as it was over, she would fall back into her old habits because she was like, Cool, now I can start eating again, I can start enjoying my life again. And I know that you guys have been there too. And it wasn't until she worked with me and understood why do I always think about food? Why won't this noise stop in my brain? It wasn't until she made those shifts and had that knowledge that finally she was able to say, Okay, I can sustain this long term. She messaged me recently and she stopped, she and I stopped working together at the beginning of the year in like February, and she messaged me in July letting me know, hey, I'm on vacation and I am feeling really good. I'm able to do some healthy habits while also enjoying my life. And I've been maintaining this for months now. And this is the first time in my life that I've actually maintained healthy habits for more than the period of the diet. So you'll get to hear from her and some of the big shifts that she made and some of the things that she started to implement in the next episode of the podcast. But in this one, I want to talk about why it is so crucially important that you get rid of that food noise so that you can start maintaining your weight loss. It's not one or the other. You can both lose weight and heal your relationship with food and get rid of the food noise all at the same time. Those things can happen together. But if you don't get rid of the food noise at all, if you completely ignore that and just think, oh, as long as I get skinny, everything will be better. If you choose to ignore the food noise, it will get louder. Because the reason it's there is because your body is trying to tell you something. It's like alarm bells going off. The food noise is not just a problem. It's not some pest that lives inside of you that you just can ignore. It is an alarm bell. It is your body trying to communicate with you, trying to let you know that something is not aligned inside of your body and it needs you to listen. So the more that you ignore it, the louder it gets. So, with all of that said, let's get into this episode. If you've ever lost weight before, some of you are listening to this, you may have had a successful weight loss journey in the past. Some of you may have never had that. You've been trying for like your whole life and never really seen any true success with weight loss. I have worked with both groups of people, and for a long time I was that person who tried and tried and tried and tried to lose weight and it just wouldn't work. And now I understand why. It's because I was only trying and trying for like a week, and then I'd be like, this is not working fast enough. I completely give up. Screw it, it's way too hard because I was being so restrictive. And because I was being so restrictive, that food noise just kept getting louder. Whenever I was teaching in South Carolina, that was whenever I like was like, I'm seriously going to lose weight this time. Like, I really want to make this work, you know. What I started doing was skipping breakfast. That was like my first thing was like, I'm going to be strong and I'm not going to eat so much food every single day. So I started skipping breakfast because I thought if I can do that, then I can cut down on the amount of calories that I'm consuming during the day. And what that led to was me at lunch. I also ate a really tiny lunch because, you know, again, same, same, same reasoning. I wanted to eat as little as possible because I thought eat as little, be as little, right? Like I that's that was the train of thought that we've all been trained to believe for so long. So I ate a no breakfast, a really tiny lunch, and then after work, I would be so hungry and I would be overwhelmed. And the job that I taught at in South Carolina, it was really challenging. Like emotionally and mentally, it drained me to be in that building every day. And so by the afternoon, I was like, I don't care anymore. And so I would try so hard during the day, and then at 3 p.m. I would be found in my classroom eating Hershey's bars. I used to keep full-size Hershey bars in my classroom as treats for the students. Like if they did something really spectacular, they got a Hershey bar. And more often than not, Miss Banks was the person eating those Hershey bars because I could not make the voices stop. And now I understand why. Now I understand that because I wasn't eating, it was causing that. And I had been undereating again, so that I could eat as little as possible throughout the day, but oh, I made up for it in the evenings. I would then go out to a fast food restaurant because of course I just ate this Hershey bar. I ruined everything, anyways. Might as well go all out. Might as well eat Chick-fil-A or Zatsby's or some other fried chicken and french fries and salsas and sweet tea and all the things. And then I can start over again tomorrow. And I would. The next day I'd wake up, I'd step on the scale, I'd be like, You are so fat, you're so disgusting, you've got to do better than that. Today you're gonna be better. And then I would do the same thing day after day after day. It was a repeat cycle. And then eventually I would just give up because I was like, This is too hard, it's not working anyway. The scale's never moving. I'm stressing myself out. I'm working so hard for what reason? And you've either been in that situation or you've been in a situation where you've been really good and really strong, and you've held on as tight as you could for as long as you could, and you lost the weight. Pat yourself on the back, good job, we did it. And then you would finally get to the place where you're like, cool, I made it through. I did it. I can relax now. And what you mean is I can go and I can eat whatever I want whenever I want. I can do whatever I want whenever I want. I don't have to work out anymore. I don't have to worry about my fruits and vegetables anymore. I don't have to worry about protein, I don't have to worry about cutting out carbs, no more of any of those hard things. I just get to enjoy my life again. And what does that slowly do? Slowly the food noise starts to trickle back in, slowly the weight starts to come back on. Because as long as you are on that diet and you're in that restrictive place and you're not eating enough and you're not feeling your body properly, and you're not thinking about food differently, because at the end of the day, this comes back to having an unhealthy relationship with food. As long as you are still counting the calories and still speaking mean about yourself, still feeling deprived and relying on willpower every single day. Even if you lose weight, you are simply living in a smaller body with the same mindset. And we need to change the mindset so that when you get to that smaller body, you can maintain that smaller body. Isn't that what you actually want? Don't you actually want to lose the weight and keep it off? Aren't you tired of losing weight and losing weight and then losing weight and then gaining it all back every single time? Aren't you tired of that? If you want a different outcome, you have to take a different approach. It's as simple as that. It's as simple as saying, I am no longer going to white-knuckle my way through and rely on the willpower and continue to say no to the donuts and say no to going on dates and say no to hanging out with my friends. I choose not to live that life. I choose to enjoy my life while losing weight. And I choose to do that through getting rid of my food noise, getting rid of my cravings, and having a healthier relationship with food. Quick pause from the episode. I'm not gonna take long, but I know that you struggle with food noise and sugar cravings and silencing those voices in your head that are constantly asking for food. I know you struggle with it because you listen to this podcast. In a few weeks, I'm going to be opening the doors to a brand new 45-day boot camp all about understanding your food noise, what triggers it for you specifically, and then adjusting your daily habits to get rid of it altogether. You can head straight on down to the show notes right now to get your name put on the wait list. I would absolutely love to serve you in this program and honestly just silence the voices in your dang head. The reason why it feels so impossible for you to lose the weight or maintain the weight while also living with food noise and sugar cravings and an unhealthy relationship with food is because every decision that you make requires mental energy. Not only the decisions that you make outside of the kitchen, right? Like at work, with your family, with your children, every decision that you're making in your personal life. You are making a million decisions a day. But then also factor in all of the decisions that you're making about food. No, I'm not allowed to have that. Oh, I've got to have this, I need to stay away from that. Don't even go near that food. I can't have this, I need to have this. It's like constantly thinking about food in that way. That just tacks on a million more decisions that you have to make every single day. So by 3 p.m., of course you're gonna give in to the food. You are tired of having to put mental energy into every single moment of the day. You just wanna be able to say, screw it. I wanna eat what I wanna eat. Why is it that hard? But most of the diets that you've been on in the past, the way that most of us were raised was to believe that having that willpower was the only way to make it work. Diets trained us to believe that willpower was the solution. I did 21 Day Fix. That was like my college diet that I really tried whenever I was like, I'm gonna get skinny in college. I tried 21 Day Fix, which, if you've not heard of that one, it's a beach body program, and they send you those color-coded containers, and you can have like two oranges a day and two blues a day, and four purples a day, and four greens a day, and three reds per day, and like they were all portioned out exactly what you were supposed to eat, depending on what your goals were, and all these things. And that to me felt so restrictive, there was no way. I was like, I don't want three purples a day, or four purples, or whatever it was. That was fruit. I was like, I don't want four fruits a day. I want four yellows, which was the carbs. I was like, I want four yellows per day, right? Like, but you only get two yellows per day, and it it just felt so silly. Like, I was like, why am I putting all of my food in these little bitty colored containers? Like, I'm tired of this. So then that's whenever I started doing the skipping meals, and I'm sure you've been there too. Let's not eat this meal so that we can save the calories, so that blah blah blah. You know, one thing leads to another. Next thing you know, you're binge eating because you're actually freaking hungry. You've probably tried the, well, I'm just gonna cut out all of the dessert food, or I'm gonna cut out all bread, or I'm gonna cut out XYZ food. This is the thing that I overeat on. Let's cut it out cold turkey. You've probably done that before. I know that that's honestly the way that I was raised. My dad always used to say, Well, if we're gonna get healthy, we can't have any more of this. It was usually soda or bread or sugar. So uh sometimes it was all those things. We gotta stop buying the sodas. We're only allowed to have sodas if we go out and buy one that day. So, of course, we were going up to the we called it it it's the pick and save, which is the name of the uh convenience store in the town that I grew up in, which was a very tiny town. But we would go up to the pick and save like literally every single day, and we would get a soda because that was the only way we were allowed to have one. We weren't allowed to keep them in the house, but if we bought them that day, we could have them. And then that turned into an everyday thing. Because as long as you are restricting, you are going to find ways to get this in. The restriction creates more of the food noise. The restriction, the under-eating, the skipping the meals, the having the unhealthy relationship with the foods, all of those things are making it more potent. It's making it to where it's saturating every single moment of your day. And I know how that feels. Man, oh my gosh, I know how that feels. I know that it feels so just like you feel confined in your own body. I remember so many times I was like, I just want to escape my own brain. If I could just get out of my own head and have some peace and freaking quiet, man, my life would be a million times better. But I'm telling you right now that when the food noise goes away, it's like this, it's like a domino effect. All these other things start to feel better in your life. Number one, you're able to go out and enjoy your time with your family and friends. You're able to just go out to eat with them, you're able to go on vacations with them, trips with them, and you're not overanalyzing every decision. And that feels so lovely to just enjoy your life. And because you are enjoying your life more, then you start to be more consistent with these healthy habits. You're like, it doesn't feel restrictive, it doesn't feel like I'm on a diet, it just feels like me. It feels like, oh, I choose vegetables at the restaurant because those are gonna make me feel good. But if everybody wants to order a slice of cheesecake to split, then yeah, I will order a slice of cheesecake too. I can live in in both worlds. And so you start to be more consistent with these habits because it actually doesn't feel hard to be consistent with them. And then that leads to you actually starting to see physical changes in your body. You start to notice, oh hey, I'm starting to realize that my tummy's leaning down and I'm actually getting stronger at the gym because I've been a little bit more consistent with it. And then the scale starts to go down, and then you start to say see that it stays down because you're not yo-yo dieting and going all in and then all out and then saying we got to be better, and then saying, screw it, this is too hard. It's like these dominoes fell in exactly the right order to get you to the place of sustainable weight loss. Getting rid of the food noise and the sugar cravings is the first domino that has to fall so that all of these other things can fall into place. Instead of having cookies in your house and saying, God, I hope I'm strong enough to stay away from these cookies. I just hope that I don't eat the cookies, stay away from the cookies. You're not allowed to have the cookies, pretend like they aren't there. Instead of having those that conversation with yourself a million times a day, you're gonna you're gonna be like, Wow, I actually forgot those cookies were there. We had some cookies that were brought to our house not too long ago from one of my husband's clients that he works with, and she brought him uh like a ton of these beautiful homemade cookies. Oh my gosh, they were delicious. But then we ended up having like six of them left over because we kind of just forgot that they were there and then they went bad, and we were like, oh well, like that that's okay. They were good while they lasted and we enjoyed them while they were here, but they didn't, it wasn't an all-consuming thing. Instead of feeling like you're gonna need this incredible amount of self-control to stay away from all of the foods, you'll be able to say, you know, I I actually feel satisfied. You'll be able to finish a meal and instead of being like, God, I need I want something sweet, but I want to stay away from the sweets, I shouldn't have that, and and like it's this mental ping-pong inside of your head. Instead of that, you get to sit back for a second and you're gonna say, actually, I think I feel satisfied. I could eat that, but I don't feel like I actually need that right now. So since it's not a need, I'm I'm good. I don't really need it, right? Like I'm gonna stay away today. I'm and I'm I'm and it's not because you're making that decision out of restrictiveness, it's just like I'm I'm good. Like I don't really feel like I need that today. If I did need that or really wanted it, I'd have it, but I don't feel that right now. And most importantly, instead of constantly feeling like you're hungry, always feeling like God, why is why do I always want something to eat? Like instead of that, you're gonna be like, yeah, I feel hungry throughout the day at breakfast, lunch, and dinner time, and then I have a snack in the afternoons and I'm good. Like, I actually don't feel the need to eat all day, every single day anymore. I am telling you that this is the reality when you get rid of your food noise, when you understand what causes them, and then shift your habits to make those things be your reality. That doesn't just happen from, oh yeah, I'm gonna get rid of my food noise. You are going to have to put in work to do it. You're gonna have to make some changes to your habits. But the habits that I help you build are truly so simple and sustainable. And that's something that I mentioned previously that I had an interview with a past client, and you guys are gonna hear her episode soon. It's with my client named Allison. That's something that she was talking about. She was like, Yeah, I it was like the most simple things and like the easiest habits to build, but I never was doing those things. And once I started doing them, it was like everything just clicked, and my brain was quiet for the first time. I was able to be at peace, I was able to eat and enjoy the food that I was eating and then move on with my life. And if that is what you desire, I desire to help you get those outcomes. I'm going to be hosting a six-week, 45-day food noise boot camp where I teach you what is causing all of the food noise in your brain. I'm gonna, it's gonna be a small group. I'm only letting a certain amount of people into this group because I want to be able to have individual conversations with you guys to say, this is what is causing your food noise, this is the issue that I'm seeing for you, this is what you need to work on first. I want to be able to have those individual conversations with each of you, and there's also going to be individual one-on-one calls. So there's a small group calls, six of those, and then there's also going to be four one-on-one calls for every single person in the group so that I can truly address what is specifically your challenge when it comes to the food noise and the sugar cravings and why you're always hungry. And once you understand the why behind it, we are going to start shifting your daily habits so that we can make it go away. And I am telling you that by the end of the six weeks, you are going to feel dramatically better. You are going to feel so much more in control around food by the end of these six weeks. And you're gonna walk away with real life application. We're gonna talk about how to maintain these habits, not just in this bubble of the boot camp, but in the real world, so that you can maintain this the same way that my previous client Allison did. So that you can send me messages while you're on vacation six months later and you can say, Wow, I'm actually enjoying my life. I feel so good. Thank you so much. That is going to be your reality when you join the six-week food noise boot camp. So the doors will be open to the food noise boot camp in just a couple of weeks, but I'm going to leave the wait list link down in the show notes below. If you're listening to this and you're like, she might be right. Maybe I do need to have this first domino in in place so that it can fall over and lead to all of these other dominoes falling into place so that I really actually can lose the weight and keep it off. Head on down into the show notes, put your name on the wait list. I am so excited to get to share the information with you very soon. And even more excited to bring you a life of genuine peace and quiet in your brain. Thank you so much for being a part of another episode of the Isn't She Powerful podcast. And I can't wait to see you again next time. Thank you so much. I can't wait to see you again next week. And always remember the more you know, the more you grow up.