How to hide the Bodies:

A Forensic Guide to Food Noise

The bodies were scattered everywhere:  half-eaten promises, abandoned meal plans, late-night negotiations that never quite made it to trial.  I buried them carefully, one snack at a time, beneath layers of food noise and clever justifications. "It's fine," I would tell myself. "They'll never be found."

But food has a funny way of leaving evidence.  Every bite reveals a clue.  Every denial is like a fingerprint.  In the end, the truth always comes out, not seeking punishment but an honest confession.

Eventually, every investigation reaches the same place: the ground where the evidence is buried. They say you can tell a person's truth by their roots.  If that's true, mine have been hiding a few secrets.

Beneath the soil of my well-meaning life lies a quiet graveyard of forgotten goals and half-eaten promises.  I didn't intend to bury them.  It happened gradually.  One skipped breakfast here.  A thoughtless evening snack there.  A moment when I knew I wasn't hungry but ate anyway because something else within me felt empty. Standing in the kitchen with the refrigerator door open, searching the shelves as if the answer might be hiding there. I notice a quiet restlessness I couldn't quite name.

Without quite realizing when it started, I was digging shallow graves beneath my own tree.

The tree, in my mind, always symbolized health, something grounded and steady, nourished and aligned with what truly matters.  Its roots aimed to extend toward the good things: solid protein, complex carbohydrates that move slowly through the body, and the kind of fats that quietly sustain rather than overwhelm.

For a while, it did.

My tree hummed with energy.  Its branches reached upward, green and alive.  The leaves felt light in the sun.

But over time, I began slipping things into the soil that didn't belong there.

Choices driven by stress rather than care. Convenience replacing nourishment. Anxiety quietly dresses itself up as appetite. 

Small lies whispered just above the neck. "You've earned this." "You've had a rough day." "Just one more won't make a difference."

At first, those whispers seem harmless, almost soothing.  But over time, they start to drown out the quieter voice of the body itself. That's when the food noise shifts from a soft murmur to a full symphony of distraction.

Above the neck, the noise is smooth and convincing.  It tells compelling stories, constructs arguments, and negotiates like a skilled lawyer defending late-night snacking as an act of emotional survival.  If I'm honest, it often wins the case.

Below the neck, the noise is different.  It is quieter, simpler, and more honest.  It arises from the body itself, a slow hum of genuine hunger and soft fatigue that whispers, "Hey... I actually need fuel." There's a subtle emptiness in the stomach, a dip in energy, as the body gently and patiently asks to be cared for.

When the noise above the neck gets loud enough, it becomes hard to tell the difference between truth and temptation.

My roots, however, never argue.  They simply absorb whatever I feed them:  processed thoughts, emotional residue, anxious thoughts, and habits repeated without much awareness. Everything eventually sinks into the soil. As the roots take it in, the tree begins to change from the inside out.

The branches dull.  The leaves droop.  What was once a symbol of growth gradually transforms into something else.  A silent monument to confusion and excess.

When I notice those drooping leaves, I know it's time to begin the excavation. That's the moment the investigation changes. Up until then, I've been trying to hide the evidence. But real healing begins the moment I'm willing to start uncovering it.

Not the kind with shovels, but the kind with honesty.  I begin clearing out the bodies buried beneath years of food noise: the guilt, the mindless habits, the old belief that eating well meant being perfect. When I examine them closely, most of these aren't failures at all. They are simply moments when I was tired, overwhelmed, or trying to comfort myself in the best way I knew. I believed that if perfection slipped, the entire effort was somehow ruined.

Each time I uncover one of those buried pieces, something interesting happens.  The soil grows lighter.  The air around the roots begins to move again.  Slowly, I begin to hear the difference between the frantic chatter of my mind and the simple hum of my body.

It turns out that when I stop lying to my roots, they start sending clearer signals back.

Now, when I feel that restless pull, the one that says, "Snack your feelings and ask questions later," I pause.  I surf the urge...

I ask a simple question.  Which voice is speaking?  If it's coming from above the neck, it's usually noise: stress, boredom, habit, or the quiet longing for comfort disguised as hunger.  But if it's coming from below the neck, it feels different:  slower, steadier, a quiet request for nourishment.

When I listen there, I can hear wisely.  Not to silence the noise, but to strengthen what is real.

Gradually, I believe the tree will recover.  The soil will clear.  The old burden will break down into something useful:  lessons instead of secrets, wisdom instead of shame.

Growth unfolds gradually, not in a straight line but through seasons. Each season teaches that integrity doesn't mean faltering. It means noticing when I do, and choosing again.

So yes, I've buried a few bodies beneath my tree.  But I'm learning how to dig them up, study them, and return them to the earth as lessons rather than secrets.

The food noise still murmurs sometimes.  It probably always will.  But the volume is lower now.  These days, when I hear it, I think less about hiding evidence and more about understanding what it reveals. Because once I began listening below the neck, I wasn't just feeding my body anymore.  I was feeding my truth.

I wonder:  if you paused long enough to listen, what might the roots beneath your own tree be trying to tell you?