253. Why Food Noise Is REAL + Why It’s Keeping You Stuck

If you've ever felt like food is constantly on your mind, you're NOT alone.

Food noise is definitely a buzzword these days - it’s literally EVERYWHERE. It’s also one of the most overlooked parts of a health journey!

Food noise can feel overwhelming. I’ve had my own experience with food noise, from restrictive dieting and all-or-nothing thinking, to finally understanding how nutrition can set me free (instead of hold me back).

Ultimately, food isn't supposed to control your thoughts, mood, or entire day. When you learn how to fuel your body (not punish it), you’ll experience one of THE most powerful mindset shifts. 

If you're exhausted by constantly negotiating with yourself around food, feeling guilty after meals, or believing you have to earn what you eat, this conversation is for YOU. Healing doesn't happen overnight, but it can happen for you, one intentional choice at a time!

Episode recap:

• What food noise actually is (and what it isn't)
• Recognizing the common signs of food noise in your daily life
• My personal journey w/food noise + how I’ve found food freedom
• Why quick fixes don't solve food noise
• How diet culture & past experiences really shape your relationship w/food
• Viewing food as FUEL + how you to start fueling your body
• How tracking macros can create freedom (not restriction)
• Why healing your relationship w/food takes time
• Why lasting food freedom IS possible

Links/Resources:

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• Connect with me on Instagram @kristycastillofit and @unfuckyourfitnesspodcast
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• Click HERE for my favorite fitness & life things!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to the Unfuck Your Fitness podcast. I am your host, Christy Castillo, and I'm here to give you real talk and cut the BS so you can actually enjoy building a body you love. I'm a personal trainer obsessed with giving you simple action steps to take you from feeling stuck to feeling sexy. Let's go.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

Welcome to today's episode. I'm really excited to be recording this episode for you guys. I hope I do this episode justice. I put the pressure on myself, but I hope that I do myself proud in recording this. We're going to be talking about food noise today. And this is such a complicated topic. For so many different reasons, I think social media has become something that is just over-amplified nutrition and fitness in general that's just honestly making my job more complicated. The more people that say things that aren't true or just overcomplicate things in the fitness world, I mean, it keeps my podcast in business. It keeps me in business because I have to then go in and unfuck it for you guys. And that's what we're going to be doing today with food noise, but it's a really complicated subject. And the more that I was going through my notes and really figuring out, you know, what I wanted to talk about exactly in this episode, because honestly, trying to sum up food noise in like 40 minutes is it was really hard for me to kind of do that in my notes as I was talking through it because it's a really loaded conversation. And it's honestly, it's heavy. Like food noise is something that can take over our lives, whether we know it or not. And yeah, I think talking about my own, you know, struggles with food noise and how what that looked like for me, and then overcoming it. Yes, I still have noise about food. Yes, I still have some times where I fall into old patterns or old mindsets, but it's very rare. And I think, you know, we're never gonna be 100% healed from something. Something's not ever going to 100% go away. Like it's always there. When you go through something, it's always a part of you. And this food noise, it just can become really heavy. I think people they just kind of sometimes oversimplify it or talk about food noise as if it's a joke or just kind of throw the word around, like healing your food noise. And I don't know, just make it really basic. And I guess it can be for some people. But again, as I was going through creating these notes, and when I go back through and think about my own journey, and when I'm coaching women, so many women, the food noise is real, you guys, and it's really fucked up and it's heavy. So I'm excited to dive into this episode, but I will just be honest like going through it made me realize food noise sucks. And so I want to start off talking about what food noise is. So food noise, again, is something that I hear thrown around a lot on social media. It's constant food noise. If you struggle with food noise, and then that can be leading into you need this supplement or you need my coaching, or you I've heard a lot of people say that they've gotten on a GLP one and it's helped with their quote unquote food noise or different things that have helped with their food noise, right? It's controlled their hunger. They no longer go all day thinking about food. A lot of that is because if you are suppressing your hunger with a GLP1 or with a supplement or with a pill that literally suppresses your hunger, then yeah, you're not hungry. So you're not thinking about food noise because when you're hungry, that's when it comes into play is oh no, I'm hungry. What do I eat? When do I eat? Does it fit my macros? Is it healthy? All these questions that I am just about to dive into. And there's a ton of them that I've gotten from my clients, and I wrote them all down. And that's, I think, when it became really clear to me that this is fucking serious. And I know it's fucking serious because I get really heated when I talk about certain situations where people are suppressing their hunger or taking certain things to suppress their hunger. We're just trying not to eat, or the food struggles that people have, which just reminds me, I've had two conversations in the last week with new clients signing up for Fit Club that are really struggling with food, really have had an eating disorder, diagnosed or not, but just really, really struggling with it. And they know it. And, you know, they will not get on the scale. They will not eat more than 1200 calories, they will not eat certain foods. Like it is real. And I know that. And so I'm not surprised that I got worked up creating this episode, but man, it is just really, it's a really complicated subject. So I don't know what all I'm gonna get through in this episode, to be honest with you, because there's a lot here. My goal with this episode, I will be honest, is to define food noise, to let you know that I've been there to validate you. To I want you to really feel in this episode. I I'm giving you permission to feel like this is me, and this sucks. And this is why I'm so tired, and this is why I'm exhausted and I'm fucking over it, and I want to do things differently. Then you can go back and kind of listen to the last few episodes again if you need to, to kind of get in the groove of macros and why it's freeing. And then depending on where I stop with this episode, I'll continue to go into, you know, why tracking macros really works. And I do have previous episodes on that, but I never, I never mind diving into it again. So let's talk about food noise. Food noise is the constant mental chatter around food. It's not hunger. It's not like, oh, I love food. I'm a foodie, and I just love eating food all day. That's not food noise. It's not just looking forward to dinner or, you know, being someone who really likes food. I know people that are my daughter actually loves food. I would say she's a foodie. When we go out to eat, she wants something very specific. She wants it to be good quality. Like she really appreciates food. But that's not food noise. She's not overconsumed with it. She just loves food. And it's so funny to me because I'm not, I mean, I love food, don't get me wrong. But when we're out somewhere, like I'm not paying attention to the flavors and the quality, you know, like she is. So that's been a different world that I've been really, you know, had to dive into because obviously she's my child. But if you are someone who loves food and you love going out to eat and you love restaurants and you, that type of thing, that's not food noise. Food noise is when food takes up too much, too much space in your mind. It's the mental chatter that's constantly there around food. And it's more in the sense of all or nothing. Is this healthy? Is this gonna help me lose weight? Is this gonna help me be skinny? Is this food good, bad? I'm gonna dive into a list here in a second. But that's what food noise is. It's the constant chatter around food. So if you're hearing things online talking about, if you struggle with food noise, if you know, X, Y, and Z, that's what they should be talking about. If they're talking about it in a different way or saying this supplement will help you with food noise, it's not going to because your food noise is your mentality. It's in your brain. Yes, if you're not hungry, then no, you don't have to think about food and that will help. But that's only that's a band-aid. That's a that's a quick fix. And once you get off of that supplement, it's going to come right back. So I want to give you a lot of examples here, and I'm just gonna kind of rapid fire them. And if any of this sounds familiar, you struggle with food noise. And I think some of you will be kind of surprised here. And if you are surprised here, I want to just let you know that there's hope for you. So if I get through the middle of this list and you're like, holy shit, don't worry. I probably struggled with all of these. So you're gonna be fine. Okay, so do any of these sound familiar to you? If you are thinking about what you're going to eat before you even get out of bed, if you're planning your entire day around food, if you're wondering if you deserve dessert, treating yourself, you know, doing good all day, and then I deserve some dessert, I deserve a treat, feeling guilty after eating something, labeling foods as good or bad, thinking I'll just start over on Monday, feeling like one cookie ruined the whole day, eating everything in sight because tomorrow you'll be good, saving calories all day for dinner, skipping breakfast to make up for last night, looking up restaurant menus before you go, feeling anxious when someone suggests going out to eat, wondering if you should work out because of what you ate. Feeling like you have to earn your food, wondering if you are hungry or just bored, standing in front of the pantry negotiating with yourself, constantly asking, is this healthy? Worrying about eating too many carbs, feeling guilty for being hungry, feeling afraid to increase your calories, thinking that eating less is always better, but obsessing over the scale after one meal, letting the morning weigh in determine your mood, feeling like you have to burn off what you ate, thinking about your next meal while you're still sitting at the current one, feeling out of control around your favorite foods, feeling like you can't trust yourself around food, believing you'll never be normal around food, thinking that you need more willpower, and then constantly waiting until Monday or next month or after the vacation to really start, quote unquote. So that's food noise, okay? And I'm not saying that you need to struggle with every single one of these, and I'm not saying that every single one of these is terrible. I'm just saying that this is what food noise is. Okay. It's not just thinking about food. Sometimes, like, I wonder what we're gonna have for dinner tonight in a good way, like excited. It's the mental load that you're carrying around all day. What am I gonna have for breakfast? And then if you have something for breakfast and then it was maybe too sweet or too much carbs or something, right? Where you've now thrown off your entire day. This happens a lot before you start tracking macros. Like for me, most of these things happened before I started tracking macros and understanding food and you know, all of that. And then a lot of it also happened in the beginning of my fitness journey when I was still trying to understand it all, still trying to be perfect at that journey, I guess. And honestly, some of it still happens now where I stand standing at the pantry negotiating with myself. I still do that. So, food noise, again, is never going to be something you are 100% fixed or cured or it's gone. It will always be there in some way. I think it's just really understanding that, understanding food noise itself, understanding the toll that it takes on your body, on your mind, on you know, the stress of it, and really just like your day-to-day living, what that means, like how it changes because of the food noise. If you are someone who struggles with food noise, if you're always like, if someone is like, Hey, do you want to stop? Let's say you're out with a friend and they're like, Hey, do you want to stop at Starbucks real quick, or do you want to stop and get lunch really quick? And you instantly are like, What do you mean? I have my whole day planned out macro-wise, and now you just want to stop. How do you do that? Like, I feel like that's how people would be around me sometimes. Because now I don't struggle with it in a negative way, in a constant negative way. Yeah, if I'm out somewhere and I didn't plan on eating and I'm really hungry and I'm gonna stop and eat and I'm gonna get the best option that's available to me. But I feel like if I did that to certain people, they would say, like, what do you mean? How are how are you, you know, someone who tracks macros and does all these things, quote unquote, perfectly? Like, how are you, Christy? I'm just gonna stop and grab something to eat. And and then there, you know, if you're someone who in that situation would be thinking that about me, then you're thinking, what am I gonna have? Or is she judging me? Should I know what to do in this situation? I'm freaking out. There's nothing quote unquote healthy here. There's nothing clean, there's no whole foods, these are really high in calorie. Again, I wasn't planning on it. Like it's just the constant stress of it, whether I should eat it, whether I shouldn't. And so I think I just want to give you that list so that you understand that it's those little tiny things. Even standing in front of a and standing in front of the pantry, asking myself, what should I have? Did I was I good today? Did I eat right? I've done that constantly with myself. Was I good today? Do I deserve a little snack? Should I have these two Oreos? Will it make me go over my macros? Is that good or bad? Did I work out hard? You know, did I run? All of those things, they definitely come into play. And you can take those, all the things that I listed and you can really elaborate on them because sometimes they get deep and they're really long and it can drag out all day, right? If you saw yourself in this list, and I almost guarantee you that you did, because I have some clients even who are really, really making fantastic progress, doing so fucking good. And there's a couple of those things in that list that I named off that they struggle with. And I don't want you all listening to this thinking, oh God, now she's saying I'm not doing good. You are, because maybe you used to struggle with every single one of the things that I listed, and maybe now you're struggling with only 10 or only five. You'll always struggle with some of them. There are a couple things, even now, that I struggle with. I'm trying to look at the list right now and go back and let you know exactly what they are. One of the things is honestly the pantry. I don't know if there's anything else that I struggle with right now, honestly, in in this category, but either way, there's always going to be something that we're struggling with. And going through your journey with macros, nutrition, there will be different times that you struggle with different types of food noise. And that's normal. Okay. You are never going to be at a place where you are completely perfect, where you're like, oh, I've got it all figured out. Just when I'm working with a one-on-one client and they think, okay, I got this part of the food noise figured out, something else will come up. A wedding will come up, a uh parent will be around, your significant other will suggest something to do, and you're like, oh, I don't know how to navigate that, right? Or a body issue comes up where something on the scale is a little bit different, or body dysmorphia starts to happen in the mirror where now you're gaining muscle, so you look different. Your relationship with food is good, but your body now looks a little bit different, you're feeling a little bit different, thinking, is this normal? Is this right? And then you start to question everything. There are so many stages that you will go through in this journey where you will struggle with food noise. It doesn't mean that you're doing anything wrong or that it's bad. It just means that it's there. So I want your takeaway from this list to be I'm freaking tired. I'm so tired of food noise. I want you to be so tired of food noise because it's exhausting. It's not because you're like eating all day. You could be someone who's eating a thousand calories. So you're not eating all day, clearly, but you're thinking about food all day. You're thinking about your next meal, whether you did good or bad, whether that food's healthy or not healthy, clean or not clean, processed or not processed. And then maybe you eat some food, you get on the scale, and you see that you gained three pounds on the scale. And then you think, oh my God, I now I can't eat for the rest of the day. Now I have to go for a walk. That can be very, very constant food noise. Whereas sometimes it's just me opening the pantry, like, hmm, am I hungry? Am I not hungry? Do I do I need to fuel my body right now? Or am I just do I need to just go sit down? Do I need to go take a walk? Do I need to drink some water? Do I need a protein bar? Do I need Oreos? You know, like just kind of like not even negotiating with myself, just doing a little dance of like what is actually going on here. That's food noise to a degree that I wouldn't say that's negative food noise. That's just food noise of what do I want here? And those are questions that I've learned to ask myself. So I have, before I get into that part of it, I have struggled with food noise. Like I just said, I have struggled with when I was doing beach body, I struggled with food noise a ton. And then coming out of Beach Body, I struggled with food noise in between figuring out, you know, going from Beach Body into I'm so sick of this, I'm gonna figure this out. In between there, and even in the beginning of I'm so sick of this, I'm gonna figure this out. When I was trying to figure it out, I struggled with food noise. It was the containers for beach body, it was the good and bad foods, it was the foods on this list that you can eat and nothing else. It was the good or bad, starting over every Monday, the constant negotiating with myself, where if I didn't eat something that was on the list, then I fucked up and then I had to, I start, I had to start over tomorrow. I already fucked up this whole day, or maybe even this whole week. So I have to start over tomorrow, or I have to start over Monday. Every meal felt like an absolute test, which is why I've talked about in previous episodes, way in the beginning of this podcast, where I would sneak donuts out of my son's bag when he was really, really little. He still loves the chocolate little Debbie donuts that are in the purple bag now. He's obsessed with them. Even when he was younger, he was obsessed with them. And I would sneak a couple of those. I would take pizza crust from the trash. When my son would be done with his pizza, he'd dump it or we'd dump it out or whatever. And I could not stop thinking about there being pizza crust, carbs, bread in the trash can, sitting right on top, not dirty, you know. So I'd go eat them. That was crazy food noise. And a lot of you are probably there, like, oh, if I see some scraps, I'll eat my kids' leftovers, but I'm gonna hide in the kitchen and do it. I'm not just gonna grab the carbs in front of other people and let them see me eating it. That's crazy because I just said I started a diet on Monday. I can't eat these carbs if I started a diet on Monday. What would people think? That's insane. I'm trying to lose weight. Carbs aren't gonna help me lose weight. When in reality, none of that is true. None of that is true. So I definitely struggled with that, and now I don't. So I want you to know that it doesn't have to be that way. You don't have to earn your food. You don't have to be afraid of carbs. I eat so many carbs now, and I look and feel better than I ever did back then when I was struggling and eating off of a fucking food list. You don't have to start over every Monday. You don't have to think about food every minute of your day of your life. And you don't have to be perfect to make progress. You can eat things and not feel guilty and move on. You can eat things and not get on the scale to see how much weight you gained. And it takes knowledge to do that. Okay. So the turning point, like I said, when there was an in-between point of when I, and I just want to give you my example, my life, because I feel like it's important for you to know. It's it's one thing for me to get on here and say, This is how you do it. You start tracking macros and you think of yourself differently and you body recomp. But what does that even mean? Okay. And I'm my experience, if you hear someone on the internet saying, This is how I did it, and I don't have any certifications or anything like that to help you, that's not what I'm trying to do here. Okay. I walked through this and then I became certified. I have a nutrition cert, I have a personal training cert, I have a glute cert, I have a behavioral transformation specialist cert. Not that half of that shit matters, but and I've helped tons of people because of the science behind it, because I had to go back and learn what I did transformationally to be able to change my life. Because, yes, improving your relationship with food and food noise will benefit your life. It will change your life. And I used to say, just before I knew anything about any of this, before I really became certified and you know, learned, I would say, like, I used to struggle with this. I thought I was in shape. I thought doing beach body was really the best thing. That's why I tried to sell the products. That's why I was a coach until I realized this isn't helping anyone with anything. I'm helping people go backwards. We're getting worse, me included. And so that's when I had had to say, enough is enough. I need to understand my body and I need to be done. I need to draw a line in the stand and say, I'm not doing anything in the past that I have previously done. I'm done with containers. I'm done with beach body workouts. I'm done trying to be so freaking skinny and sweat my ass off and check my burned calories after every workout. Like I am so done with all of those things. I have to learn macros. I have to learn nutrition. I have to understand food instead of being afraid of it because food is going to be around me for the rest of my life. I have to understand it. I have to stop chasing perfection and trying to be all or nothing. There has to be some gray space. There has to be a middle ground, and I'm happy living there. And if I can My best body while living there, after I understand it. Bonus, right? And I started fueling my body. I was talking to my client about this recently, my client May, shout out, May. She had came to me and said that she had heard something that really helped her a couple of weeks ago. And it was fueling your body, uh looking at food as fuel instead of just food, instead of just something that you have instead of something that you fear. And so when you view food as fuel and you think, will this option, will this choice uh fuel my body, right? Or am I just eating it to uh feel good? Does is it just yummy? And I just want that really quick hit, right? If you start thinking long term and like, will this decision, if I eat this apple or if I eat this ice cream, two wildly different foods? First of all, maybe not the best example, but they're there, right? You have an apple and you have ice cream. If you start to think, I really want to fuel my body. So what's gonna help me feel my best? What's gonna help me, yeah, just feel good and satiated and not want to just keep going and going and going. And if I had to do a workout right after that, would I feel better after the apple or would I feel better after the ice cream? It's gonna be the apple in that situation. And there's different times where the ice cream obviously comes into play. But I started looking at food as fuel that also took out the relationship with food that I didn't really need to view it as. It took out the fun part. And I'm not saying that food can't be fun. It can be and it should be every once in a while. But on a daily basis, food is there to fuel your body. Food is calories, calories are fuel. If you want to build a well-oiled, functioning, strong, badass body, a machine, if you will, you need to fuel it. And you need to feel it enough and you need to feel it good quality, not right in the beginning. That all doesn't happen overnight, but eventually that should be your goal. So if I I started just looking at food as not optional and fuel, then it took out the guesswork. I no longer had options that were not serving me. It was like Oreos, yeah. Well, I wanted them. If I just thought I need to fuel my body, what's the best option right now to fuel my body and make me stronger, feel good, optimized? It's always going to be the healthier option. And it just took out the emotional part of it, like, oh, that would be really good. That would taste so good and it would help me feel better and it would call me down and I'm so stressed. None of that shit mattered anymore. It was just fuel. And that really helped. So those are some of the turning points of where it really helped me to start to view food differently. It took the emotions out of it, it took the all or nothing out of it. It just helped me to make a better choice. So, this is the part that I think I guess maybe hearing the list that I previously mentioned in this episode, all of those things that I talked about, it takes up your entire day. And I know that. And I, if I wasn't thinking about workouts, which when I was doing even beach body workouts or bodybuilding.com workouts or any kind of workout, I always had a plan. So I never really struggled with what workout am I gonna do today? What does that look like? But I was thinking about when am I gonna do my workout? I have to make sure that I fit it in. Am I going to be sweaty enough? Is this gonna challenge me? And they sucked. Those workouts sucked really bad because they weren't really lifting, they weren't really muscle focused. They were just cardio, cardio, cardio. It was awful, it was terrible. I didn't look forward to them at all. And honestly, physically, I didn't see much change in my body, but I didn't know that that was really how it was supposed to be. So once I got my workouts figured out and I knew these were the workouts that I was going to be doing that day or that week or whatever it is, like this is the plan that I'm following, that opened up a little bit of space in my brain, but it was very quickly taken over by food noise. I spent all day thinking about food. I never enjoyed a meal because it was always judged. I always judged it. I always thought I shouldn't be having this. Or I thought, well, this is definitely healthy, you know, healthy, but I don't like it. So it was just, it was always on my mind. And if you think about all the things that I mentioned in that list above, it is constantly on your mind. You can't fully enjoy your time with your family, your friends. You know, you're constantly just stressed out about food, whether it be the calories, it's too much, all the things that I mentioned, that takes up so much time in your day. And I was ruining vacations, I was ruining plans. I remember one Thanksgiving, I sat, I think it was after we ate. And I just remember sitting, playing games at the table, thinking, I ate so many carbs. I ate mashed potatoes, I ate stuffing, I had green casserole, I had rules, everything that you eat at Thanksgiving that you freaking should eat at Thanksgiving. I sat there. I remember exactly what the tablecloth looked like. I remember what room I was in. I remember people being around me. And I remember sitting there thinking, that was bad. I ate too much. I don't feel good. I just was consumed with food on Thanksgiving, surrounded by my family. And it was right around that time that I thought, this needs to stop. This is ruining so many things for me. Fast forward to now, I don't spend all day thinking about my food. I enjoy my meals, I move on, I know they're fueling my body. I have room to think about my workouts. I go outside and water my garden. I think about my family, my business, my clients. I go for walks, right? I have so much more capacity. Now, not a lot because my children are older. I'm married, I have a home, I have two cats, a dog, I have a business. I'm stressed out, right? But I wouldn't be able to do any of those things if I was constantly still thinking about food. Now, imagine for yourself waking up and eating breakfast without guilt. I do that and my clients do that because we know exactly what we're gonna eat. It's fuel, it's hitting our macros, and we're moving on. Imagine going out to dinner and enjoying it instead of just planning how to make up for it the next day. Well, you know, I have to, I'm going out to eat tonight, but I promise myself that I won't eat much tomorrow and I'll work out twice and I'll go for a run. Imagine having dessert, enjoying it, and just moving the fuck on with your day. Well, your evening, probably if it's dessert. Imagine spending your energy thinking about your family, your hobbies, yourself, your self-care, your health, your career instead of just calories. Because let's be real, we are not meant to be stressed out this much over calories. So imagine those things for you and just know that they are there for you. Okay. You don't have to be so stressed out about food. Calories are always gonna be there. You need calories, you need food for fuel to build your body, which I know most of you listening to this, hopefully, all of you listening to this, care about your health, you care about your body, you care about muscle growth for longevity, right? We also want to look good, and there's nothing wrong with that. But part of that being the body recomp side of things that I've been talking about lately, even for quite a while on this on this podcast, we've been talking about body recomp. And if you care about your health and you want to be the strongest, best looking, healthiest version of yourself, you can't be chasing skinny and you can't be stressed out about food all the time. And as long as you are chasing skinny, as long as you are chasing a number on the scale, you will be stressed out about food because food is directly correlated to the scale when you are in that mode, right? If you eat something and the scale goes up, then you think I don't want to eat anything because the scale goes up. That is not a healthy mindset. That is not healthy for your body, mentally, physically, emotionally. That is not good. So we have to shift into a different way of thinking. And I'm not gonna get into the full details in this episode because that's not really the point of this episode. In order to, I want to drive home the seriousness of food noise. I want you to know that it's very normal, that it's very serious, that it's taking up a lot of your life. I remember also thinking as a mom, this is going to bleed into my children, especially my daughter, because we already, you know, we're growing up comparing ourselves. And I I did anyway. I assume every person is, but I can only speak, you know, to girls, to women, to females, because that's what I am. But I know that growing up, I compared myself all the time. Are my legs too thick? Am I tall enough? Am I skinny enough? Are my boobs big enough? Is my nose too big? Are my eyes too close together? Like all the things that we're already comparing ourselves to other people growing up. And then I remembered that food noise starting very, very early on in my life. And I want you to, I want you to hear this from me because it's happening to everyone. I remember a friend of mine, my best friend growing up. This was probably fifth grade, because I don't think she was my best friend, you know, going into middle school and like further into middle school. So this was probably fifth grade. I remember she would cut her lunch up into really small pieces, tiny, tiny pieces. And it was because she she told me she thought that if she ate smaller pieces, she wouldn't get fat. She would stay skinny. And I don't know if I believed that necessarily, but there was definitely a part of me that thought, well, that makes sense. If you eat smaller pieces, you don't get fat. You know, we're in fifth grade. Apparently, we're really concerned about getting fat, which is insane. But I remember that happening. I remember boob comparisons and boys, you know, making fun of the girls that didn't have big boobs or, you know, bigger girls. Like I remember body things happening early. And so when I thought about that, it was another reason that I thought I'm done with this because I don't want to pass this on to my daughter. I don't always want to be comparing myself to other women, my hair, my boobs, my nose, my lips. Are they too big? Are they not big enough? My legs have always been bigger. I was a runner, maybe that's why. Maybe just genetically, my quads are bigger. And I always thought, man, I would really love to have some skinny long legs. I'm five, three. Not gonna have long legs. And I like to work out and run, not gonna have small legs either. And so it's just, it's always there. We're always comparing. And then if you throw food noise on top of it, starting at fifth grade or younger, for a lot of my clients, it happened younger, whether they were the bigger sister. And so they were given less food at dinner than their sister because they didn't quote unquote need as much or they needed to watch their weight, or they would have to go for a walk after dinner and their siblings wouldn't have to because they were bigger. Or if their mom just always said, Well, you girls will just be bigger because we're a we're a big girl family, right? Whatever it is, like there's so many different reasons. Whether it was just growing up thinking you had to clean your plate before you got up from the table. So now in your 40s, you're still cleaning your plate because that's something that was instilled in your brain. And now you're eating more food than you need because you don't want to waste it, because we worked really hard for this, because me and your dad go to work all day, you know, and slave for this money. And so you have to eat every morsel of food on your plate. There's so many things, there's so much fuckery that goes into food noise that I haven't even mentioned here. Okay. But I just wanted to touch on that too, because it happened to me too. And I wasn't gonna pass that on to my daughter. So we have comparison growing up. We have food noise growing up where you starved yourself. Maybe you threw up after meals, maybe you just worked out a lot growing up because you didn't want to be big because your family said that was bad. If you grew up with a bad relationship with food or a bad relationship with your body or movement, this carries into your life. And now you have food noise and now you have body noise. It's a really big fucking issue. And I don't like when people diminish it and just say, here's a supplement to help you with food noise. I'm gonna take this supplement to help me with my food noise. That's not the fucking point. We're missing the whole fucking point. The point is you have some shit you need to deal with and you need to get educated around food. You need to get educated around your body. And that's the only way to fix this. So we all deal with it, right? I didn't want to pass it on to my daughter. I didn't want my daughter seeing me eating out of containers, saying, I can't have ice cream with you guys tonight because why? Because it's bad, because what am I gonna tell her? I wanted to fix my relationship with food so she wouldn't have the problems that I had. Now, will she have problems 100%, but they won't be because of me in that sense, right? So the way that we kind of go about this is first, I think you have to commit to change. You have to commit to saying, this is something that I struggle with. All of those things, Christy, I've struggled with them at one time or another, a few of them still now. And I really want to fucking change it. And you have to really want to change it because those habits are hard. The second thing that you need to do is really become educated on macros, why they're not obsessive. If I set macros for you, it's because I want you to fuel your body properly. It's because you get to eat 1600 calories, 2,000 calories. It's not because you have to only eat 1,200. I'm giving you more. Very rarely does someone come into my fit club or my app and I give them calories that are too little or not too little, too, whatever. You know what I'm trying to say? Less than what they think. And if that happens, it's usually because it's my best guess and they're like, oh no, I've already reversed up to like 2000. So you can go ahead and put those up. Fantastic. Most of the time, it's more like, uh, I don't know how I'm gonna eat this much. I've never eaten this much in my life. I'm a little bit nervous. You get to eat more, and you get to do that because you get to fuel your body and you have a good relationship with your body and you want your body to function properly. You want energy, you want to be strong, you want to be fed. We can't just walk around wanting to be skinny and wanting to turn off the food noise instantly. You have to want to work at it, and that's fine. The work is honestly part of the fun at this point. Like, what else are we gonna do? Just go buy a supplement or a shot all the time. You can't do that. You can't just ease your way out of these things. Okay. So making a decision that you're done and you really, really, really want this, and then you have to really understand macros, understand that you get to eat more. Your body needs more. Then once you understand macros, you start tracking, you understand food is fuel, then it gradually becomes less of an issue. Because if you come to me thinking, oh, I can only eat like 1200 calories, she's gonna tell me I can only eat 1200 calories because I'm trying to lose weight. I give you 1600 even. Girl, you get Oreos, you get some snacks then, right? You can now put the treats in your macros guilt-free a little bit anyway. Now, could you eat a whole row? No. But you can eat a couple and be okay with that. We can fit little snacks in every day. We can fit foods in that you've been ignoring and trying to not eat. We can fit them in a little bit every day or a few times a week. That helps with the food noise because you're gonna start seeing results. You're gonna start feeling really good and eating these foods that you thought you couldn't have. It takes away the all or nothing. It takes away the starting over every Monday. It takes away the negativity of food. It takes away the weight of food that you're feeling. So having that education is really important. That's exactly how I moved out of it. That's exactly how my clients move out of it. I set macros for them. They start to track their food and say, oh, I'm not anywhere near close to these macros or these calories, but I'll get there. What can I eat to get there? I give them some examples. I actually have a guide that I give out in Fit Club with some really simple food choices that you can add in on the go. They're really freaking simple, trust me. I don't eat anything complicated. They start to do that, they feel better. It's gonna take some time, but I think with, you know, really just acknowledging that this is something that's a problem. This is taking over my life. And I want my life back. I want my body back for myself and my kids and my family and their family and their kids, right? It just goes on and on and on. And so I think this is really something that is really powerful. And that was my goal of this episode, honestly, was just to communicate with you as your friend, as your coach, not to just make myself be a real person, but also that. So you know that we all struggle with this stuff. And it's really, really possible to dig yourself out of it. And I know I would have gotten through it a lot faster had I had some help. So I definitely encourage you to sign up for my fit club. It's $35 a month. The link is in my show notes. It's also at onfuckyourfitness.com. You can click on the club and go sign up. I will set your macros for you inside of there. We will chat back and forth inside of there. There's an amazing community inside of there. And I'm not saying not to push that on you. I'm just saying I created something to help and it's fantastic. But you got this. If you are struggling with food noise, if you were like, yeah, I constantly think about food. I'm definitely talking about it too much around my kids, my friends. It's consuming me. Please know that there is a way out of it. And I will be creating more resources here shortly to roll out more in the fall with Fit Club. That will be helping with this because I'm realizing that it's more of a problem than I even think. Because a lot of clients come to me in Fit Club and they're ready, they're really, really ready to change. But I have some that are like, I'm hoping I can change. But right now I'm really, really feeling overwhelmed and I'm really obsessed with food and I don't even know where to start. And online, it's very, very prevalent that people are really struggling. And the more we push these supplements and these shots and these easy ways to turn off the food noise, it's gonna get worse. And that's okay. I mean, we all, you know, do things that we think are helpful and then we realize that they're not. But we'll always struggle with food noise. But I just want you to be clear on what food noise is and that it is serious and that it's gonna take some work to get out of. But when you get rid of some of the food noise, let me just tell you, it is the best thing ever. Your mental capacity for other fun things, like life can be about more than macros and workouts. It really, really can. And it doesn't need to take that long if you have the right support. But even if it takes you years like it did me, it's totally worth it. So I hope you enjoyed this conversation. I am happy to elaborate on it. I'm happy to chat more about it. Please leave any questions, comments in Spotify. I read them all. And yeah, let's continue this conversation because if it's something you guys are struggling with, then I want to, you know, unfuck it for you, obviously. So I'll talk to you guys next week.

SPEAKER_00 42:10

Thanks for listening to today's show. Go ahead and leave a rating and a review, and of course, follow the podcast so you don't miss out on any future episodes. And I would love it so much if you came to connect with me over on Instagram at Christy Castillo Fit. I will see you next time.