Unleash your skinny self! Get ‘Naturally Thin’

Your food noise, your food voice
Balancing your account is crucial to becoming naturally thin, but it isn’t the only factor. You’ve got other things going on inside your head, I know. So let’s talk about those things because they can become hurdles or tools, getting in your way or helping you succeed. Let’s talk about your food noise, and your food voice.

Food noise is your negative inner food dialogue, commenting on and criticizing everything you eat, or think about eating, or don’t eat. Food noise yammers at you about how you screwed up when you ate that pasta. Food noise berates you for eyeing that cheesecake or for not going to the gym today. Food noise reminds you what that number on the scale said this morning, and yells it in your ear all day long, making you feel bad — or good, if you lost a few pounds, as if a two-pound water-weight loss makes you a better person. Food noise makes you focus on the body parts you hate, and makes you feel powerless to change anything. Food noise is mean. Food noise makes you feel bad.

Food noise is a product of the past, as well as of current stress and anxiety. Did you grow up learning that food equals love? Do you use food to comfort yourself or calm yourself down when you are stressed? Does a bad day mean you deserve to eat the whole pizza? Do you think you won’t ever be thin, so why even try? Food noise tells each person something different, but you need to recognize your food noise for what it is, so that you can stop dignifying it with a response.

There is an antidote for food noise. If your food noise is the little devil on your left shoulder that tells you to eat a cheeseburger just because you saw one on a television commercial, your food voice is the little angel on your right shoulder that has the real information about whether you actually want a cheeseburger or not. Your food noise is based on the past, but your food voice always looks to the future. Your food voice tells you what you really, truly want and need. It isn’t just the voice that reminds you that you haven’t had any protein yet today and you really need some (although your food voice will do this for you). It’s also the voice that says: Wait a minute. I don’t really like these fat-free cookies. I want a real cookie. Is that so wrong? (Of course it isn’t.) That is your food voice.

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Your food voice is your body’s organic sense of itself. Right inside you, you have all the information you need to be naturally thin. Your food voice might be hoarse by now, yelling at you because you aren’t listening, giving you all kinds of signals, showing you that you are making choices that aren’t right for you; but if your food voice is getting drowned out by your food noise, you may suffer from indigestion, hunger pains, sore joints, headache, feeling tired, or feeling low on energy. Hello! This is your food voice talking! It’s trying to get your attention.

If you can just start to listen, you will quickly learn that your food voice has wonderful things to tell you. It makes you feel great when you make smart food investments. It tells you what to eat based on what your body really wants, and it tells you when you’ve had enough, too. Your food voice is nice to you. It makes you feel good.

Especially for those of us who have trouble distinguishing between our food noise and our food voice — and for those whose food noise drowns out the food voice completely — treating your diet like a bank account is an absolutely essential step to helping sort out the confusion.

Naturally thin thought: Have you ever noticed that sometimes you’ll eat something decadent and indulgent and feel really awful, bloated, and guilty; but at other times you’ll eat something decadent and indulgent and you’ll feel great, practically buzzing with happiness? That’s your food voice. It tells you when you are eating because you really need or want something, rather than just eating for the sake of eating. And (this is important), it also tells you when to stop eating.

All bodies seek balance, so when you purposefully and systematically integrate a balancing mechanism into your life — balancing your diet like a bank account and following the other rules in this book — your food voice will automatically get stronger and more confident. Your food noise, taken aback, might just learn to shut up a little. Balancing your diet like a bank account is a training exercise, and although it might sound a bit difficult at first, it quickly becomes second nature. Your body wants you to do this, so everything will start to fall in place when you do.

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