Your brain has this funny way of circling back to the same thoughts over and over. Food becomes the main character in your mental movie, and suddenly you’re planning dinner while eating breakfast, or replaying what you ate yesterday while brushing your teeth tonight.
But here’s something interesting. Your mind can hold so many other things. Beautiful things. Complicated things. Things that make you feel alive in ways that have nothing to do with your next meal.
What if you could redirect that mental energy somewhere else? Not because food is bad or wrong to think about, but because there’s a whole universe of thoughts waiting for your attention. Let’s explore some of them.
Things to Think about Other Than Food
These aren’t distractions or tricks. They’re genuine invitations to notice what else deserves space in your mind. Some might resonate deeply, others might feel like a passing breeze, and that’s perfectly fine.
1. The Texture of Everything Around You Right Now
Run your fingertips along the edge of your desk. Feel that? Maybe it’s smooth wood that’s been worn down by years of hands resting there, or cold metal with a slight ridge where two pieces join together. Your clothes have texture too—that soft cotton against your skin, the slight scratch of a tag you keep meaning to cut off, the way your socks bunch just a little in your shoes.
Most of us move through our days touching a thousand things without really feeling them. We’re on autopilot. But textures tell stories. That rough patch on your favorite mug happened because you’ve held it so many times. The smoothness of your phone screen comes from countless swipes. When your mind starts fixating on food, ground yourself in texture. Press your palm flat against the wall. Squeeze a pillow. Touch the leaves of a plant if you have one nearby.
This practice pulls you into the present moment through your sense of touch. It’s immediate and real, and it reminds you that your body experiences more than just taste.
2. Someone You Haven’t Talked to in Ages
There’s probably a person floating around in your memory who you used to know well. Maybe a friend from school who moved away, a coworker from your old job, or that cousin you were close with during family reunions when you were kids. What are they doing right now? Where did their life take them?
You could reach out. Send a text that says “Hey, I was thinking about you.” Or you could just sit with the memories for a while. Remember that inside joke only the two of you understood, or the way they laughed at their own stories before getting to the punchline. People leave imprints on us even when they’re no longer in our daily lives, and sometimes it feels good to acknowledge that.
3. Your Breathing (And How Weird It Is That You’re Doing It Right Now)
You’re breathing. You’ve been doing it this whole time without thinking about it, but now that I’ve mentioned it, you’re suddenly aware of each inhale and exhale. Your chest rises and falls. Air moves in through your nose or mouth, fills your lungs, and then leaves your body. And you’ll do this thousands more times today without giving it a second thought.
Breathing is wild when you really pay attention to it. Is yours shallow right now, quick little sips of air? Or are you taking deep, slow breaths that fill your whole chest? Try changing the rhythm. Breathe in for four counts, hold for four, out for four. Your heartbeat will actually slow down when you do this.
When food thoughts crowd in, your breath is always there as an anchor. It costs nothing, requires no special equipment, and works every single time. You can’t control everything happening around you or inside your head, but you can always choose how you breathe in this exact moment.
4. That Thing You’re Looking Forward To
You have something coming up. Maybe it’s this weekend, next month, or next year, but there’s an event or moment you’ve been anticipating. A concert. A trip to visit family. A Saturday morning when you’ve cleared your calendar and can sleep in as long as you want. Even small things count—trying that new coffee shop, watching the season finale of your show, getting your hair cut the way you’ve been wanting to try.
Let yourself feel excited about it. Play it out in your mind. What will you wear? Who will be there? What’s the first thing you’ll do when you arrive? Anticipation is a gift. It gives you something to lean toward when today feels flat or hard.
The best part is that this mental rehearsal actually makes the real experience better when it happens. Your brain starts associating positive emotions with the upcoming event, building momentum. So spend time here. Linger in these future moments. They belong to you.
5. A Problem That Needs Solving (Any Problem)
Your brain loves a good puzzle. Give it one. That squeaky door hinge you keep meaning to fix—what’s actually causing the sound? Could you solve it with some WD-40, or does the whole hinge need replacing? Or maybe there’s a bigger problem. How do you approach a difficult conversation with someone you care about? What’s the best route to take to avoid traffic during your morning commute?
Problems engage your analytical mind in useful ways. They require focus and creativity. When you’re actively working through a challenge, even a small one, food thoughts have less room to take over. Your mental energy flows toward the solution instead of circling around meals.
Pick any problem, big or small. Sketch out possible solutions. What resources would you need? What’s the first step? Sometimes the answer comes easily. Other times, just engaging with the question is enough to shift your mental state. Either way, you’re thinking, creating, building something new inside your head.
6. The Soundtrack Playing Around You
Stop reading for a second and just listen. What do you hear? Maybe there’s a hum from your refrigerator or laptop fan. Cars passing outside. Someone’s footsteps above you. Birds if you’re near a window. Or maybe it’s silence, that full quiet that’s actually pretty rare.
Music lives in everyday sounds if you pay attention. Your fingers on a keyboard create rhythm. Rain has its own tempo. Even silence has a quality to it—thick or thin, comfortable or tense. What would the soundtrack to your current moment sound like if someone scored it for a film? Mysterious strings? Upbeat jazz? Ambient electronic?
If actual music is playing, let yourself get lost in it. Follow one instrument through the whole song. Notice when the bass drops out or comes back in. Try to hear the lyrics as poetry instead of just words. Music has this magical ability to shift your emotional state, and directing your attention fully toward it can pull you out of repetitive thought patterns.
7. The Specific Sensations Happening in Your Body
Your body is talking to you constantly, sending signals you usually ignore. Right now, how does your lower back feel? Is there tension in your shoulders? Are your toes relaxed or curled slightly? What about your jaw—are you clenching it without realizing?
This isn’t about judgment. You’re not trying to fix anything or make any sensation go away. You’re just noticing. Oh, there’s a tight spot behind my left shoulder blade. My right foot is slightly cold. My stomach feels settled and calm.
Body awareness grounds you in physical reality beyond hunger cues and fullness levels. Your body experiences so much more than food-related sensations. Warmth. Coolness. Tension. Release. Energy. Fatigue. When you tune in to these physical experiences with curiosity rather than criticism, you develop a richer relationship with the body you live in. It becomes a place of information and sensation, not just a thing that needs feeding.
8. Your Next Creative Project (Even If You’re Not Creative)
Everyone creates something, whether they call themselves creative or not. Maybe you want to rearrange your bedroom furniture, try a new recipe (okay, that one’s food-related, but stay with me—it’s about the creative process), write in a journal, take photos, build something with your hands, or organize your closet in a way that actually makes sense.
Creative thinking takes you outside yourself. It asks, “What if?” and “How could this be different?” You’re not just consuming or maintaining anymore. You’re making something that didn’t exist before, even if that something is just a better system for storing your shoes.
What’s been tugging at your creative brain lately? Maybe you’ve been meaning to learn how to draw, or you want to paint that blank wall in your hallway. Perhaps there’s a photo album you’ve been planning to put together. Give yourself permission to think through the steps. What materials would you need? What’s stopping you from starting? Sometimes planning the project is just as satisfying as doing it, and it definitely keeps your mind engaged in forward motion.
9. Someone You’re Deeply Grateful For
Think about a person who changed something for you. Maybe they don’t even know how much they helped. A teacher who believed in you when you didn’t believe in yourself. A friend who showed up during your worst week. A stranger who smiled at exactly the right moment.
Gratitude is powerful medicine for your brain. When you actively recall specific things someone did for you—not just “I’m grateful for Mom” but “I’m grateful Mom drove four hours to help me move and didn’t complain once about the stairs”—your neural pathways literally shift. You’re creating new patterns of thought.
Try to feel what that gratitude feels like in your body. Does your chest feel warmer? Do you smile slightly? These physical responses to emotional memories can interrupt anxious thought loops, including obsessive food thoughts. And if you want to take it further, maybe reach out to that person and tell them. “Hey, I was thinking about how you did [specific thing] and it really meant a lot to me.” The conversation that follows will definitely occupy your mind for a while.
10. Your Next Adventure
Where do you want to go that you’ve never been? This could be across the ocean or across town. A hiking trail you’ve heard about. A museum you keep meaning to visit. That bookstore in the neighborhood you always drive past. A city you’ve only seen in movies.
Let yourself plan it out, even if you’re not sure when it’ll happen. What would you pack? What’s the first thing you’d want to see when you got there? Who would you bring with you, or would you go alone? What time of year would be perfect?
Travel planning, even imaginary travel planning, exercises your mind in expansive ways. You’re considering logistics, imagining sensory experiences, and anticipating emotions. Your brain gets to roam free across distances, and that’s liberating. The thoughts have somewhere to go besides your kitchen.
11. A Skill You’ve Always Wanted to Master
There’s something you’ve thought about learning but haven’t gotten around to yet. Playing guitar. Speaking Spanish. Fixing cars. Knitting. Coding. Juggling. Whatever it is, spend some time thinking about what the learning process would look like.
What’s the first step? If you wanted to learn guitar, you’d need to get a guitar (or borrow one). Then probably find some beginner videos or maybe take lessons. You’d have to practice chord shapes until your fingers hurt. But eventually, you’d be able to play an actual song.
The learning curve itself is worth thinking about. How do beginners become experts? What would it feel like to be bad at something and slowly get better? Most adults don’t put themselves in learning positions often enough. We stay comfortable with what we already know. But imagining yourself as a student of something new opens up mental space. Your brain starts problem-solving and planning instead of looping through the same old tracks.
12. How the Weather Keeps Changing
Look outside. What’s happening out there right now? Is the light bright and direct or filtered through clouds? Are shadows sharp or soft? If it’s evening, what color is the sky turning?
The weather is this massive, complex system that affects everything around us, and we usually just check an app and move on. But really watching it—that’s different. Clouds move and reshape themselves. Wind picks up and dies down. Temperature shifts as the sun moves across the sky.
If you’re inside, you can still sense the weather. Is the sun streaming through your window? Can you hear rain on the roof or wind against the walls? Seasonal changes bring their own qualities. Spring has that specific smell of wet earth. Summer heat sits heavily. Fall air goes crisp. Winter light looks almost blue.
Paying attention to the weather connects you to something bigger than yourself, bigger than your immediate concerns. It’s been happening long before you were born and will continue long after. There’s comfort in that.
13. A Memory That Still Makes You Smile
You have hundreds of these tucked away. Maybe thousands. That time you laughed so hard you couldn’t breathe. The afternoon you spent doing absolutely nothing with someone you loved and it was perfect. A small moment of unexpected kindness. Your dog greeting you like you’d been gone for years when you only ran to the mailbox.
Pick one memory and really live in it for a few minutes. What were you wearing? What did the air smell like? What time of day was it? Who else was there? What was said?
Happy memories aren’t just pleasant nostalgia. They’re proof that good things have happened to you and can happen again. When your brain is stuck in anxiety loops about food or anything else, happy memories remind you that your life contains more than this current struggle. You’ve experienced joy, connection, peace, excitement, love. You will again.
14. Your Goals for the Next Year
Not your whole life plan. Just the next year. What do you want to be different twelve months from now? Maybe you want to feel stronger physically. Or read twenty books. Or save enough money for something specific. Perhaps you want to be better at maintaining friendships or finally organize your digital photos.
Goals give your brain a target. They create direction, which feels good even before you’ve accomplished anything. You’re not just existing day to day. You’re moving toward something.
Break it down. If your goal is to read twenty books, that’s about two books per month. Totally doable. What would you read first? Where would you read—curled up on your couch, at a coffee shop, in bed before sleep? The more specific you get, the more real it becomes.
And here’s the thing about goals—they fill up mental space. While you’re thinking about what steps you need to take and imagining yourself achieving them, your brain is busy with purpose instead of being idle and anxious.
15. Something You Read or Watched That Stuck With You
There’s a book, article, show, or movie that changed how you see something. Maybe it introduced you to an idea you’d never considered, or it articulated something you’d always felt but couldn’t name. Or maybe it just moved you emotionally in a way you didn’t expect.
What was it? Why did it stay with you? Sometimes a single line from a book can echo in your head for years. Or a scene from a film can feel like it was made specifically for you. These pieces of art become part of how you understand yourself and your life.
Think about sharing it with someone. Who needs to read or watch this thing? What would you tell them about it? Articulating why something matters to you requires reflection, and that reflection pulls you deeper into meaningful thought instead of surface-level mental chatter.
16. Your Pet’s Weird Little Personality
If you have a pet, you know they’re bizarre. Your cat has one specific spot on the couch where she refuses to sit. Your dog loses his mind over the doorbell but sleeps through thunderstorms. That goldfish always comes to the surface when you walk by, like he’s saying hello.
If you don’t have a pet, think about what kind you’d want. Would you want a dog who goes hiking with you or a cat who’s basically a warm, furry roommate? A bird that talks back? Maybe you’d want something unusual, like a lizard or a rabbit.
Pets are these whole beings with their own preferences and quirks, and moods. They experience their own version of existence that we can only partially understand. Something is humbling and beautiful about that. And thinking about them—their habits, their personalities, their needs—takes you completely outside yourself.
17. How You’ve Changed Over Time
You’re not who you were five years ago. You’re definitely not who you were ten years ago. What’s different? Maybe you’re more patient now, or less worried about what others think. Maybe you’ve gotten better at speaking up for yourself, or you’ve learned to sit with discomfort instead of running from it.
Change happens so gradually that we barely notice it while it’s occurring. But when you pause and actually compare your past self to your current self, the differences can be striking. You’ve survived hard things that once seemed impossible. You’ve learned lessons that changed your behavior. You’ve let go of beliefs that no longer serve you.
This reflection isn’t about judgment. Some changes you’re proud of, others maybe not so much. But all of it is evidence that you’re not static. You’re evolving. And if you’ve changed this much already, you can keep changing in whatever directions matter to you. That’s both humbling and empowering.
18. Something That Made You Laugh Recently
Laughter is its own form of medicine. What got you last? A ridiculous meme, something your friend said, a scene in a show where the timing was just perfect? Maybe you witnessed something absurd in public, like someone trying to carry way too many grocery bags at once and doing an awkward shuffle-dance to their car.
Replay that moment. Let yourself feel the amusement again. Humor breaks the tension in your body and mind. It’s nearly impossible to laugh and be anxious at the same time.
If nothing’s made you laugh recently, that’s information too. Maybe you need to seek out humor more intentionally. Watch a comedian you love. Text that friend who always makes you crack up. Look for the absurdity in everyday situations. Life is often ridiculous if you’re paying attention. Finding the humor in ordinary moments is a skill worth developing, and it definitely keeps your mind occupied with something other than food.
19. How You’d Redesign Your Living Space
Look around where you are. If you could change anything about this space without worrying about money or practicality, what would you do? Different paint colors? New furniture? Would you knock down a wall or add a window? Maybe you’d turn that corner into a reading nook, or finally get rid of that lamp you’ve never liked.
Interior spaces affect mood more than we realize. Even small changes, like moving your couch to face a different direction or clearing clutter from a countertop, can shift how you feel in a room. Thinking about these possibilities engages your spatial reasoning and aesthetic sense. You’re making decisions, weighing options, imagining outcomes.
And unlike some of the bigger things on this list, you might actually be able to act on these thoughts. Rearranging furniture is free. Painting a wall is relatively cheap. Sometimes your living space just needs a little refresh to help your mental space feel refreshed too.
20. Conversations You Want to Have in the Future
There are things you haven’t said yet to people in your life. Not necessarily heavy or difficult things, though maybe those too. Sometimes you just want to tell your friend about an idea you’ve been mulling over, or ask your sister about something from your childhood, or have a real talk with your dad about his life before you were born.
These future conversations exist in potential. They’re waiting for the right moment, the right courage, the right opening. Thinking about them—what you’d say, how they might respond, what might come from the exchange—is its own form of connection even before the conversation happens.
Maybe you’ve been wanting to tell someone you appreciate them. Or apologize for something old. Or share something vulnerable. Or just catch up properly instead of the usual surface-level “how are you, fine, you, fine” routine. These conversations matter. Letting yourself think about them reminds you that your relationships are living things that need tending. And that tending definitely occupies mental energy in positive ways.
Wrapping Up
Your mind is vast. It can hold so much more than meal plans and calorie counts, and whether you should or shouldn’t eat something. These twenty things are just a starting point, a reminder that your thoughts can travel in endless directions.
Food will always be part of your life, and that’s as it should be. But it doesn’t have to dominate your mental landscape. When you notice yourself caught in that familiar loop, choose one of these redirects. Not as punishment or avoidance, but as an invitation to experience the full range of what your brain can do. You deserve that spaciousness.