Yes, it is well known that the more people diet, or starve, the more they think about food. There was an experiment carried on the effects of starvation which clearly showed this.
If I have the freedom to let my mind wander a bit (i.e., I’m not deeply preoccupied with a work problem, or some such thing) I think about food constantly, because I adore cooking. Cooking is stress relief for me, more so than the actual eating. So for example, while I’m in the shower I’m thinking “I’d like to make pesto but we have no basil, I wonder if rugula would be a good substitute - maybe I could add some dried tomatoes to cut the bite a little. Then I could get that teff bread out of the freezer, slice it thin, and toast it to go along with it, which is good because then we’d have some space in the freezer I could use if I bake cookies and need to store them…”
By some utterly miraculous combination of luck and genetics, I’m rather thin.
Oh, and rugula makes EXCELLENT pesto with snips of dried tomato added.
That does sound good
Risha, I believe you have in fact bugged my apartment.
All you left out was the debate about who’s going to go pick up dinner, once it’s FINALLY decided upon.
Sometimes we resort to rock/scissors/paper. Which is foolish of him, because I am freakishly good at it.
Re: the OP…I am a horribly indecisive person when it comes to deciding what I want to eat, so I think about food more often than I’d like. To the point that I’m like, “I DON’T EVEN CARE ANYMORE, I’LL EAT THE ANCIENT FREEZER-BURNED WAFFLES! I’M TIRED OF TRYING TO DECIDE!”
So basically I think about food when I’m hungry. Or if there’s something I’ve been craving. If I see an ad for Dairy Queen I’ll think about their chicken-fried-steak sandwiches for a week or so until I eventually get around to picking one up.
In-between these times, food is not very frequently on my mind. It’s more of an annoyance half the time than it is a pleasure.
Excluding people who have eating disorders, i wonder if there is a relation between how much you think about food and your weight?
Thirded (or whatever).
Do you not begin to get fed up with thinking about it all the time though?
My SO, who is quite thin, thinks about food all the time.
We can be eating lunch and he will ask, “what do you want for dinner?”
I am not thin,
Yet, I almost never think about food, and sometimes, if it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t eat. Two days a week I work from noon until 11:30 PM and don’t eat anything and don’t even notice.
A couple of weeks ago, I made a pesto with the dill-like fronds stripped from fennel stalks. It was delicious. Basically, you can make pesto with any soft herb or green; the word “pesto” comes from the Italian root meaning “crushed” (same as “pestle” as in “mortar and”), so if you go back to basics, it doesn’t require basil, the way we have come to think about it.
I don’t, because there’s just so much possibility.
I’ll admit, this isn’t true for everyone. I know people who regard food as merely fuel, who take no real pleasure or interest in it, and who eat more or less the same half-dozen foodstuffs over and over again. Those people, I expect, would be fatigued by constant consideration of the subject. (“What’s there to think about? It’s Thursday, the day I get a turkey sandwich from Subway. I have more important things to devote my brain cycles to.”)
Me, though, I look at food as a creative outlet: I’ve made a beef tartare; can I do the same with duck? I’ve made miso soup from scratch; can I take the same base broth and make risotto out of it? Similarly, when making polenta or pasta or rice, can I cook the starch in another liquid besides water? (The answer to all three questions, by the way, is yes.) And even when I’m not cooking, when I’m planning to go out, I’m browsing the restaurant listings, looking for new things to try, and drooling at the potential wonderfulness just waiting to be discovered. “Ooo, there’s a new French-Korean fusion place! Got to check that out! Wonder what their menu looks like…” Or, “Hey, I heard that this other place managed to get a hold of some monkfish liver! That’ll be a new taste for me…” Or, “Man, the fiddleheads are in early this year. Got to see what my favorite chef is doing with them this season…”
Make sense?
I am a formerly obese person - after 20 years of weight issues, I lost 70 lbs over 3 years ago and have successfully maintained that weight loss.
I think about food all the time. For me, the only way to stay slim is to obsessively plan my meals and have healthy meals/snacks on hand at all time. I eat small meals about every 2-3 hours - pack my lunches/snacks for work, make dinner almost every night. If I’m not at the grocery store, I’m making little lists of what to pick up at the grocery store, if I’m not eating, I’m impatiently watching the clock until it’s time to eat.
I do sometimes wonder if I simply traded one disordered eating for another - but at least I am a slim, healthy person who eats a mostly plant-based, whole foods diet, instead of a 200 lb woman who thought about food all day and ate a lot of baked goods and nachos.
I do this, too - I plan things obsessively and portion snacks out. If I have a box of crackers at my desk, I’ll absently eat them while I’m working until I’ve eaten a half box in one sitting. So, I cut vegetables and fruit up and take them to work as snacks and don’t keep snacks at my desk anymore. Consequently, it always looks like I’m bringing a HUGE volume of food every morning. And I frequently am because all the veggies and fruit tend to take up much more room than the chips and crackers did.
I don’t crave the action of eating like I used to when I was heavier. I’ve made a pretty big life change and have managed to stop wanting to eat so much when I’m not hungry. If I’m starving, though, I get that old craving for the mouthfeel of fattier foods. If I’m comfortable, when I’m thinking about what to eat, it’s usually just to plan out what I’ll have next or what’s for dinner. So I might be thinking to myself, hmmm, what do I have for a snack that has a little bit of fat and protein that I can combine with a lot of fiber so I’m satisfied until I get home for dinner and don’t fall asleep mid-afternoon? Carrots and cheese? Cucumbers and hummus? And what should I throw together for dinner?
This is me. I lost 50 pounds 6 years ago, and have kept it off. I always plan my meals/snacks. I love to cook, so enjoying my food is a bonus.
Unfortunately, I am also disordered to a high degree. Not in terms of anorexic/bulemic, which is the thing most people think of. It’s more along the lines of not wanting to go out to eat because I tend to eat more when I am at a restaurant. So less lunches out with coworkers.
Susan
I think about it every time I scroll past this thread title. Damn you.
Just a nitpick: Rugala is a very very tasty pastry that is sublime when made with cream cheese dough & raspberry filling.
Arugala is a delicious salad herb that I adore.
Previously, it wouldn’t have occurred to me to lust after them both simultaneously. 
Dang.
Sorry!!
Sometimes I go as long as twenty minutes without thinking about food or reading a cookbook. I love to cook, do pretty much all the cooking (four years of training to get Mr. Lissar to make grilled cheese), and all the food shopping. And I’ve done idiotic, obsessive things like render my own lard. Also I wander around in foreign grocery stores for fun. And buy random things.
Unfortunately right now I’m breastfeeding, which means it’s really, really not safe to let me do the food shopping. I still am doing it (see above comment about husband), which means we’re stocking an unusual number of sweet, gooey, buttery things.
I’d be surprised that some people barely think about food, except that I married one of them.
Cripes, I’m starving.
I doubt it, excluding hungry dieters. I’m quite fat, and I already said that I usually only think about food when I’m hungry. And everyone knows at least one skinny person who grazes all day. There are lots of reasons to be overweight.
It depends. On days like today food dominates my thoughts, but other times I will miss a meal or two and not notice because I am just not thinking about it.
Honestly? Seriously? I can take it or leave it.
It’s a piece of chicken, a bite of cake, a taste of wine. None of it will make you happy (long term) or a better person or open up vistas of loveliness or satisfaction for all eternity. (I feel the same way about sex, so bear with me).
I have to plan meals (roughly) since I have 3 kids, one of whom is a vegetarian. If it were up to me? I’d live on oatmeal, eggs, cheese and a few other staples (edamame, green beans, oranges, grapes, chocolate to name a few).
I find I don’t really think about food per se until my next meal comes around, that is, I don’t sit at this desk contemplating future shrimp scampi or caesar salad or the lasagne I had last night. I tend to not snack (and when I do, the weight goes on), as long as I have some idea of what I am going to eat that day. My bugaboo is/was portion size and exercise. When I control the portion size (on a plate, not out of the casserole dish) and get some mild regular exercise, I do great.
Not to be a PITA, but people who constantly talk about their calorie intake, their points, their fallings off the wagon foodwise etc are well, boring. (Not here, where it was asked for, but in RL.
I work with someone who spends every single lunch hour talking about how she shouldn’t have X or can’t have Y and how she loves Z salad and had it last week… I want to staple her mouth shut.) Another coworker (who has since moved on) used to feed all of us. She pushed food like nobody’s business. And if you said, “no thank you”, she’d ask why. Two hours later, she’d be back with “try this” or “you’ll like this” or “share this chocolate with me, so I won’t feel so guilty.” Her I wanted to smack soundly. And I won’t even start on those who feel free to comment on the contents of your lunch: “you’re eating that? How could you?” etc. Think what you like, but keep it to yourself, kay?
Sorry–these are my pet peeves! I wish you well during your recovery.