The Loudest Voice Within Us
What the disappearance of food noise revealed about appetite, attention and the freedom to choose.
Welcome to Thursday’s reflection.
Each weekday, paid subscribers receive an exclusive reflection designed to offer a thoughtful pause amid ordinary life. My hope is that these brief pieces create a little space for curiosity, contemplation and wonder amid the noise of the day.
Some readers have told me they also enjoy having these reflections away from the screen, which is one reason I also collected them into a paperback: Sacred & Secular: Finding God in the Ordinary. Amazon UK or USA.
One of the problems with having reduced mobility is that I tend to put on weight. So recently, and with some trepidation, I decided to try a version of the GLP-1 tablet.
I understood that it would suppress my appetite, but I was unprepared for what that would actually feel like. Food did not suddenly become unpleasant, and I did not entirely lose my appetite. Instead, the running commentary around food began to fade. I was no longer thinking quite so often about what I might eat, when I might eat it, or whether something more interesting was hiding in the cupboard.
People often describe this as the disappearance of “food noise”. I had heard the phrase before, but I am not sure I properly understood it. Like many kinds of background noise, it is difficult to notice until it stops. Only then do you realise how much attention it had been taking.
For years, I had assumed that managing food was mainly a matter of discipline. You made good choices or bad ones. You demonstrated willpower or gave in. You stood in the kitchen late at night and either opened the cupboard or heroically walked away from it.
Then I took a tablet, and the argument became silent.
I am still making sense of the experience, and the tablets have brought plenty of unwanted side effects along with the silence. But what fascinated me was the sudden absence of a conversation I had not realised I was having so often.
It left me wondering what else I would switch off if I could.
