We often associate eating disorders with certain behaviors around food: eating too much, not eating enough, purging after eating. But thoughts about food are an equally significant, if less discussed, part of these illnesses. Food-related thoughts may look different from person to person, but it’s quite common for those struggling with eating disorders to be abnormally preoccupied with food and eating. In this article, we’ll take a close look at food obsession in eating disorders, including why it occurs, what conditions it’s associated with, how it’s addressed, and more.

What does food obsession look like?

Food obsession can be defined as persistent, intrusive thoughts about food that impair daily living. If you’re experiencing it, it’s likely that your brain space is taken over with food- and eating-related thoughts and rumination about what, when, how much, and with whom to eat. Research shows that it’s common for people with eating disorders to become preoccupied with food, experiencing constant and excessive food thoughts (sometimes called “food noise”) to the extent that it disrupts daily functioning. Food obsession can also affect memory and cognition, with one study showing that people with anorexia are more likely to remember food-related words than those without anorexia. Food obsession increases cognitive load, with constant food thoughts and monitoring of food intake taking up considerable brain space.

Constantly thinking about food can also have behavioral ramifications. People with eating disorders tend to want to be around food, even if they’re not eating it. That might look like making food for others without having any, reading cookbooks or constantly viewing recipes, watching food shows on TV, being excessively interested in what other people are eating, rigidly tracking food intake, or adhering to harmful diet culture beliefs about needing to earn or burn off food.

“The experience of food obsession can be nuanced and vary from person to person,” says Jonathan Levine, LCSW, therapy lead at Equip. “But constant thoughts of food, such as what (not) to eat, when (not) to eat, where (not) to eat and around whom, and what’s ‘safe’ to eat are all examples of how obsessive thinking can show up. These obsessive thoughts can also lead to obsessive behaviors, like only eating certain foods, in certain places, around certain people, at certain times of day.”

Why it happens: restriction, coping, and “sticky” attention

So why is it so common for people with eating disorders to become preoccupied with food? There are a few possible explanations, but at its core, food obsession is a result of the eating disorder hijacking a person’s mind. “Food becomes the focal point of one’s life when an eating disorder is loud and in control,” explains Levine.

To dive deeper into how this works, let’s unpack some of the main drivers of food obsession in eating disorders:

Restriction

It’s a simple fact that restricting food makes you think about food more. From an evolutionary perspective, this makes sense: when you don’t let yourself eat, your body believes you’re starving and kicks into survival mode. It will do whatever it takes to get the energy it needs—and one way it does this is by sounding an alarm bell in the form of constant thoughts about food. These thoughts are a survival mechanism, meant to motivate you to find the fuel necessary to stay alive. “If you spend all of your time thinking of what to eat without letting yourself eat and receive adequate nutrition and pleasure, your brain will enter a state of vigilance around food and continue that mindset of avoidance and restriction while the body fights back to get the energy it needs,” says Levine. “Indeed, your body will fight to get the nutrients it needs by increasing thoughts of food to maintain homeostasis and safety.”

There’s a significant body of research backing up this idea. Perhaps most well-known is the Minnesota Starvation Experiment, a study in the 1940s in which hundreds of healthy men were put on a semi-starvation diet in order to measure and monitor how it affected their physical and psychological health. One key takeaway was that their restrictive diet led to extreme preoccupation with food. The men talked about food with one another, dreamt about food, began reading cookbooks and collecting recipes, and reported excessive thoughts about food and eating.

Since then, there have been multiple other studies confirming these findings. Research has shown that both starvation and self-imposed diets result in preoccupation with food and eating and that dieting can lead to increased responsiveness to food signals and a heightened desire for food. One study looking at both dieters and binge eaters found that among both groups, higher levels of dietary restraint were associated with greater preoccupation with food and eating.

Coping and avoidance

With or without being in a state of restriction, people may turn to food obsession as a coping mechanism. Thoughts about food—whether it’s planning a binge hours in advance, obsessing over what you just ate, or painstakingly tracking macros—can be a way to escape or numb distressing emotions, or to feel a sense of control over a chaotic situation. “I noticed a significant rise in issues with food during the pandemic and during lock-down,” shares therapist Amanda Marks, LPC, CPCS. “Many of us felt out of control during that time and were scared and overwhelmed, and the focus and obsession with food gave us a sense of control and distraction that we were needing.”

Attention or memory bias

People struggling with eating disorders tend to have what are called attention or memory biases toward eating-related cues and words, which can make obsessive food thoughts feel intrusive, persistent, and even sticky. Attention biases in eating disorders are when you focus on information that’s consistent with your eating disorder (e.g. you focus on the calories in the food instead of the flavor), while memory biases in eating disorders are when you remember information aligned with your eating disorder better than other information (e.g. you remember how much your friend ate at lunch instead of a story they told you).

Food insecurity

Finally, research shows a link between food insecurity and binge eating, which (as you’ll read soon), is one of the primary eating disorders that has food obsession as a main characteristic. Other research shows that food insecurity is associated with general eating disorder pathology, which almost always includes food obsession. Additionally, food insecurity might cause someone to undereat or live in a calorie deficit, which (as discussed earlier) can lead to obsessive food thoughts.

What eating disorders are associated with food obsession?

While people with any eating disorder diagnosis could have excessive thoughts about food, Levine says that food obsession tends to be associated with binge eating disorder (BED), bulimia nervosa, and anorexia nervosa. In one study, those with anorexia and bulimia had higher levels of food preoccupation than those with BED, but people with all three eating disorders had more thoughts about food than people without eating disorders. Typically, when food restriction is at its highest, so are obsessive food thoughts, so there may be some variation in intensity levels for people with bulimia or BED depending on where they are in the restrict-binge-purge or binge-restrict cycles.

Could it be something besides an eating disorder?

Constantly thinking about food isn’t always a sign of an eating disorder. People could also experience food obsession for other reasons, such as:

• Food insecurity, which (as mentioned above) has been linked to binge eating and eating disorder pathology, both which often include food obsession.
• Dieting or other disordered eating habits that fall outside of a diagnosable eating disorder can also lead to food obsession. ‌
• Research has also shown that both ADHD and OCD can lead to food obsession. Marks explains that those with ADHD may become preoccupied with highly palatable food (aka “fun” foods like ice cream, pizza, french fries), or may unintentionally forget to eat, putting them into a state of restriction that then leads to food obsession. People with OCD, she says, may develop obsessions around food, which may manifest as counting calories, creating complex food rituals, or being fixated on the cleanliness of food, for example. It’s best to seek a professional evaluation to determine if OCD or ADHD is present.

Negative consequences and risks of food obsession

Excessive food-related thoughts can have a significant negative impact on your cognition and mood, daily functioning, and overall well-being.

In the Minnesota Starvation experiment, for example, the subjects showed impaired cognitive abilities and depressed mood across the board. In fact, several subjects were forced to withdraw from university because they became unable to concentrate and lacked the motivation to attend class. A different study found that “successful” dieters (i.e., people who restricted their eating in the presence of food) performed badly on a simple task, whereas “unsuccessful” dieters (those who ate their fill) performed very well. When the “successful” dieters let go of their diets, they did a good job on the task, suggesting that thoughts about dieting and food were taking up too much space to allow them to function to the best of their ability.

And according to still more research, if you have restrictive rules around eating, it can lead to worse cognitive performance even after you’ve eaten: in one study, dieters performed worse on a memory task than non-dieters both before and after eating. The researchers theorize that this is because before eating food they were experiencing obsession due to food restriction, and after eating, they were distracted by guilt and stress about what they’d eaten.

Beyond the toll it takes on mental performance, constantly thinking about food can have other negative impacts on your life. “If you’re cutting out activities, people, or plans, or changing your lifestyle to ensure that you’re able to meet the eating disorder’s desires related to food obsession, then you’re losing parts of yourself and parts of your life to that obsession,” says Levine. “We want to make sure we have balance in our life to get all of our needs met, and maintaining an obsession makes that extremely difficult, if not impossible.” Marks also points out that if you don’t already have an eating disorder, obsessing over food and using it as a form of control can increase your likelihood of developing one.

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How is food obsession addressed in eating disorder treatment?

There are several ways food obsession is healed during treatment, including:

Renourishment and regular eating

One of the first steps to healing food obsession is to eat regular meals and snacks, so the body and brain can feel a sense of safety again and live in energy equilibrium. Specific interventions can vary from person to person, but it may include following a meal plan, or relying on mechanical eating for a period of time. “It depends on the diagnosis, a person’s age, and if they need to restore weight to nourish their brain,” Levine says.

Exposure work

If food obsession includes certain foods, planned and supported exposure work is a necessity in treatment. “For example, if someone is obsessed with either never eating cake or eating cake in what feels like an uncontrollable manner, we’ll work to normalize the food by asking them to eat cake regularly,” Levine explains. “It’s hard to obsess over the normal, the routine, the baseline, so if we make something feel normal by experiencing it regularly, that will decrease the obsession in time.”

Evidence-based therapies

There are several therapeutic techniques effective at healing food obsession, including CBT-E (which targets food rules), DBT (which helps you develop skills to use during urges), and FBT (which helps young people restore health and reduce avoidance). “Eating disorder counseling helps to identify the underlying reasons and concerns about the food obsession,” Marks explains “There’s a saying in treatment, ‘it's about the food, but it's not about the food,’ and therapy can help to identify what’s going on internally that is causing the fixation on food.”

In many cases, food obsession goes away on its own during eating disorder treatment. That’s because as you become renourished and adopt regular eating habits, the restriction and other disordered eating patterns that were fueling the food obsession go away. You also learn healthy coping strategies to use instead of turning to thoughts about food to manage emotions.

What you can do now: a safe, two-tiered toolkit

Below are a few ways to help yourself if you’re facing food obsession. We’re including both quick tools to manage obsessive thoughts in the moment, and strategies to practice regularly that will help mitigate food obsession in the long-term.

In-the-moment skills

5-4-3-2-1 grounding. Name five things you can see, four you can touch, three you can hear, two you can smell, and one you can taste. “This is perfect for anyone that needs to come back to the present,” Marks says. “By engaging our senses, we are able to bring ourselves back to the present moment where we aren't fixated on or worried about our next meal.”

Urge surfing. Try sitting with an obsessive urge for about 10 minutes. “Urges and feelings don't last forever,” Marks explains. “By sitting with the urge and not acting on it, we can build resilience to these urges and pick safer options to manage our difficult emotions.” For food obsession, this might look like sitting with an urge to replay what you ate for your last meal, plan the calories for your next meal, or track macros in an app.

Cognitive defusion. Put some space between yourself and your obsessive food thoughts by placing the phrase “I’m noticing the thought” in front of the thought. From there, you can start to remember that you are not your thoughts—and that you have a choice over how you’ll respond to them.

Brief sensory task. Take a few minutes to engage at least one of your five senses to help ground you and interrupt obsessive thoughts. This might look like petting your dog, smelling an essential oil, drinking a warm beverage, or putting your feet in the grass.

Text a support person. “Having a support system is so incredibly important, and it can be used to encourage someone to eat when they feel like restricting, or provide comfort and connection when someone is feeling like they want to binge,” Marks says. Sometimes, just sharing your obsessive thoughts can help loosen their grip.

Foundational skills:

Consistent eating and pre-planned, balanced snacks. “Eating regularly and being nourished keeps us regulated, feeling safe, and at peace. If we aren't nourished, we won’t be able to manage the difficult emotions that we experience,” Marks shares. “Consistent food also helps us to gain awareness of our hunger and fullness cues again, which will help reduce disordered eating behaviors.” If your hunger and fullness cues are absent, lean on mechanical eating, or eating by the clock, until they return.

Scheduled screen breaks from food content. Constantly viewing food content on your phone or computer can reinforce obsession. “Fill up your social media accounts with things that you enjoy,” Marks encourages. “Just having a screen of difficulties only adds to the preoccupation and rumination.” She suggests following a variety of accounts with various topics that aren’t related to food.

Reduce tracking. If you’re tracking your food intake, it may be time to take a break for a while to help reduce obsessive tendencies. If you’re tracking your food intake as a part of eating disorder treatment, talk to your treatment team about your challenges with food obsession, and see if there is a different approach you could try.

Practice sleep hygiene and stress management. Just like food, sleep is a basic need, and it contributes significantly to your health and ability to heal from an eating disorder or food obsession. Work on managing stress in life-supportive ways (like joyful movement or spending time with friends) in therapy, which will help food obsession become a less appealing or useful as a way to cope.

Clinician-guided exposures and intentions. Work with your therapist and dietitian to implement any necessary exposures to help you heal from your food obsession. Your dietitian will guide the experience, while your therapist will help you manage any difficult emotions that arise. They’ll also help you implement coping skills, set intentions, and remove barriers that are keeping the obsessive thoughts in place.

If you’re struggling with food obsession, it could signal an eating disorder. Reach out to an eating disorder therapist or dietitian, or schedule a consultation with the Equip team to talk through your concerns and what treatment options are available.

FAQ

Why am I always thinking about food?

Always thinking about food is often a result of food restriction or living in an energy deficit, as reflected in the landmark study, The Minnesota Starvation Experiment. It can also be caused by emotional stress and used as a form of distraction or control.

What is “food noise”?

Food noise is a lay term for intrusive thoughts about food (whether it’s about eating the food, not eating the food, amounts of food, or other food-related topics) that negatively impact daily functioning and keep you from living in alignment with your values. Fortunately, food noise often lessens with renourishment and therapy.

How do I stop thinking about food all the time?

The most effective ways to stop thinking about food all the time include regular eating, reducing food rules, and developing coping skills. It’s best to get evaluated to determine the source of your obsessive thoughts, and to work with a dietitian and therapist to support your healing.

Is my food obsession OCD or ADHD—or an eating disorder?

Food obsession can be caused by eating disorders, OCD, ADHD, and other issues like food insecurity. Sometimes, there’s overlap between conditions. Seek a professional assessment to determine which one is driving your food obsession.

Why do I think about food when I’m not hungry?

If you can’t stop thinking about food when you’re not hungry, it could be a residual side effect leftover from previous food restriction (called restriction rebound), or a result of emotional or mental stress or food insecurity. Keep in mind that all humans need to think about food on a regular basis to help plan, prepare, and look forward to eating, but it becomes a problem when it’s constant, obsessive, and interferes with your ability to live a full life.