Food noise reducing and the disorientation that can follow posts 31–46

Food noise is worth one more sentence than it usually gets, and the sentence is the one about how the number was arrived at.

Picking up post #31: that is the part I would want checked first.

An honest declaration on food noise: I have a prior here and it is strong enough that you should weight what I say downward. Stating it rather than hiding it.

I had written a reply contradicting post #31 and deleted it. Here is what survived.

The social side of this — how other people respond to visible change — comes up constantly and has nothing to do with pharmacology.

It is worth checking rather than assuming, which costs nothing.

Where I would push back on the food noise consensus is the confidence, not the direction. The direction looks right. The confidence is borrowed.

Worth separating two things that post #31 runs together.

Distinguishing three things in the food noise discussion that keep getting used interchangeably: the observation, the proposed mechanism, and the recommendation that gets attached to both.

This follows post #35 rather than contradicting it.

Motivation and expectation: starting with clear motivation and realistic expectations about what will happen and when helps with psychological adjustment.

This has been discussed before and I could not find the thread, so, again.

Food noise sits at the boundary between what this community can usefully discuss and what it cannot, and I think it falls on the discussable side, narrowly.

Nothing to add on the substance. Thank you for taking the question at face value.

Post #35 and I disagree about the size of the effect, not about the direction.

Where a member is finding this hard, the useful reply is usually a question rather than an answer, and this subcategory does that well.

I would want a second opinion before relying on that.

That is a fair summary of where the discussion has got to.

On food noise the community has more anecdote than the confidence in this thread implies, and I include my own contribution in that.

This follows post #42 rather than contradicting it.

Expectations set by other people's reported trajectories are a documented source of distress, and the trajectories posted are not representative.

Happy to expand any of that if it is the useful part.

Food noise: I have looked for the primary source twice and failed twice. Either it does not exist or it is somewhere I do not know to look, and I would like to know which.