I saw a post the other day from a dietitian who’s on a GLP-1 (Ozempic, Wegovy, Zepbound, and the like) and works with clients on them. The headline was something like: what to do when your food noise comes back on day 5 after the shot.
I clicked, curious. The answer? Build a balanced plate. Protein, fiber, fat, carbs. Eat at regular intervals. Pay attention to what your body is telling you.
I’m not joking. That was the fix.
Reader, it might not be obvious to you why I was like “is this a joke” but this is a foundation I teach — the same foundation that, when practiced consistently, becomes the soil intuitive eating skills and personalized nutrition guidance grow out of. It was available before the shot, during the shot, and would still be available without the shot.
I’m not writing this to dunk on the dietitian. I’m writing it because the post is a perfect snapshot of where the cultural conversation about GLP-1s is right now — and what we keep missing.
Hunger Is Not a Malfunction
That dietitian’s post framed hunger and food thoughts as a problem to be managed — as if the return of any awareness of food, on day 5, was something “bad” to fear (instead of a compensatory mechanism).
A client of mine had to delay her shot by a week recently. She felt hunger. The genuine “my body needs energy and nutrients” hunger. She panicked.
That panic is not her fault and there’s zero judgment for her having it. It’s what happens when we’re taught (by the diet industry, by wellness culture, and now increasingly by the way GLP-1s are being discussed) — that the body’s signals are the enemy. That the goal is silence.
Hunger isn’t supposed to be a distracting noise. It’s a useful signal from the body. It’s information and a request. Just like when you need to pee. The question isn’t how do I ignore it. It’s what it is telling me, and what would actually meet that request. (btw, this is why consistent balanced meals help — they are meeting the body’s actual request and you can feel satiated for hours)
I’ve lived on both sides of this
I spent years with very loud food noise. What I would have called, at the time, an addiction to food. Near-daily compulsive binges. I couldn’t think or willpower my way out of it, regardless of how much I knew about nutrition… AND I was even eating balanced meals regularly.
I am also, now, someone who doesn’t have food noise. I have thoughts about what I’ll buy at the grocery store, or calm mental responses to my body’s cues but not the “I know this food isn’t beneficial, but I can’t stop thinking about it” kind. Not the constant mental chatter about what I should or shouldn’t eat, or the stress and pressure that comes with it.
I am very familiar with what it’s like to have it.
And I am very familiar with what it’s like to not.
For me, the way it was re-wired was through foundation-level work of learning what hunger actually was, what satiation actually was, learning how to understand the cues, properly fueling myself, working on some underlying ‘dysfunction’, and doing brain “training” to literally re-condition the reward centers that had the ingrained cue-reactivity reactions and compulsive urges.
So when I say hunger is information, not a malfunction, I’m not speaking theoretically, from textbook knowledge, or because I published research on this very topic. I’m speaking from having lived on both sides of it.
And it’s not just me. I’ve had clients where eliminating food noise was honestly pretty simple — the noise quieted quickly. For others it was more complicated and took more skill development — but that’s true of learning anything. They stuck with it, and they became someone who doesn’t have food noise, too.
The conversation we’re actually having
Around the same time, I saw a headline — I think the Times — something like researchers are trying to figure out food noise now that it’s emerged as a by-product of GLP-1s.
What was interesting to me is that, in a lot of ways, we somewhat already know. We have had decades of data on mindfulness and the addictions and mindfulness and eating disorders, and on what balanced meals do for blood sugar and neurologically (among other things) when eaten consistently.
Then I read a young journalist’s first-person piece about taking a GLP-1. She wasn’t taking it for a medical issue and she was not overweight. She wanted to lose eight pounds. She admitted she didn’t “need” them but what she liked was not having the dieting thoughts distract her anymore.
When I was in my 20s I also struggled, as many women do, with food, body and dieting and how much mental load it takes up. The persistent hum of should I eat that, will I have to make up for it later is so normalized that an otherwise healthy twenty-something journalist would describe taking a metabolic drug to escape it as relief. Which honestly, made me kinda sad. (Also, I desperately wanted to be able to tell her: there IS another way).
It can be the residue of years or decades of dieting, of media that equated thinness with moral worth, of an industry that profited every time they made us believe we needed them to be worthy or loveable or “good”.
That conditioned voice (aka “diet mentality”) can be re-programmed. There are tools and strategies for examining and ultimately re-wiring new default beliefs and stories about our body, food and worth. Also, the shot didn’t “fix” this woman’s hunger. There was probably nothing wrong with her hunger (she may not have ever learned how to work with hunger or understood its genuine signals).
What the GLP-1 conversation keeps missing
I want to be careful here, because this is NOT an anti-GLP-1 post.
For people who genuinely need these medications, the results can be life-changing. If that’s you, none of what follows is a suggestion that you should be doing something different — the relationship work and the medical care are not in competition. The foundation belongs alongside whatever your care plan is, not instead of it.
But here’s what I keep noticing: many of the people who say GLP-1s are finally working for them are people who tried “everything” — and “everything” was: “follow diets and exercise” or conventional medicine.
They weren’t taught how to properly fuel themselves (even clients who come to me and believe they know how to do this, usually don’t). They weren’t taught that hunger is data, not danger, and how to understand it and respond to it.
They weren’t taught how to skillfully work with addictive urges and cravings so that eventually they subside and stop coming up altogether.
So when they go on a GLP-1 and they’re finally told to eat protein, fiber, healthy fats; eat consistently — and they don’t have food noise — of course it feels like a saving grace. But on day 5, it’s not only working because of the medication. It’s working because, often for the first time, they’ve been given access to the foundation.
One important caveat: it’s not usually JUST balancing meals: gut dysbiosis, dysregulated hormones, a nervous system stuck in dysregulation, conditioned patterns and the brain’s reward center cueing “pulls” towards problematic foods or behaviors because you unintentionally trained it to — can all be addressed. Also, what “balanced” looks like can be individual and personalized.
What GLP-1s and mindfulness actually have in common
These drugs CAN mute or suppress some of the same brain activity and reward circuitry that mindfulness-based strategies permanently rewire over time.
What you’re seeing in both is a recalibration of the brain’s prediction engine: fewer intrusive urges, less cue-reactivity, less internal bargaining, less of that sticky “I know I shouldn’t but I can’t stop thinking about it” loop.
That isn’t willpower coming out of the woodwork. It’s that threat/reward circuitry has quieted down enough that making a choice feels easy.
The medication does this pharmacologically, while the dose is active.
Mindfulness-based strategies can do this permanently.
However, GLP-1s aren’t selective with reward signaling. They don’t just single out the “problematic” urges and cravings and motivational “pulls” towards vices. They can also mute motivation and pleasure for “beneficial” behaviors and activities as well. Some people on them notice a sort of flatness, even toward things they used to enjoy.
Mindfulness, on the other hand, builds activity in the parts of the brain associated with more presence, focus, and pleasure, and decreases activity in areas associated with depression and anxiety. When mindfulness is developed, not only can you retrain addictive pathways so those addictions no longer show up as “strong pulls”, but you can also increase pleasure and satisfaction in normal everyday things.
The self-trust piece
A lot of people start GLP-1s (or are afraid to stop) because they don’t trust themselves around food anymore. They’ve been told for so long that their hunger is wrong and their bodies are unreliable that they’ve stopped believing they can be okay without external control. This is true with rigid dieting as well.
Then they take the drug. They modify their behaviors. And, quietly, sometimes without naming it, they prove to themselves that they CAN.
That’s huge. It’s also where the work isn’t over.
Because if the trust is borrowed from the medication, what happens when the medication changes, pauses, ends? What happens on day 5?
The relationship piece: to food, to your body, your mindset and beliefs, body trust and the unglamorous work of rebuilding how you experience hunger and fullness and food and yourself — are available as skills we learn and build, and once we have them, we HAVE them.
What I’d actually want you to take from this
If you’ve been quietly wondering whether you have to be on a GLP-1 to experience a calmer, less-noisy, more-trusting relationship with food — you don’t.
You can experience this by optimizing the foundation underneath, plus the personalized, often functional work underneath that. And conventional medicine, even many specialists, doesn’t routinely look there.
If you’ve spent years sensing that something else was going on, only to be told your labs are “normal” or to “just eat less and move more” — that was me, too. The good news is, we can take a deeper look.
Also:
- Hunger is information.
- Your brain can be re-wired.
- Root causes can be addressed.
- Self-trust is rebuildable.
- Mindsets, thought patterns and behavior patterns can be re-conditioned.
With the shot. Without it.
I know, because before GLP-1s I lived on both sides of it and have been free of the noise and compulsive urges for a decade and have a healthy relationship to food. The possibility of that was available before 2024, and is absolutely possible for you.
A note: if you’re on a GLP-1 for medical reasons, this piece isn’t a nudge toward stopping. It’s an invitation to add the foundation, the body work, the mindfulness-based training alongside it — because those layers are important whether the shot is part of your story or not. Always work with your prescribing provider on anything related to the medication itself.
Related: How mindfulness rewires food noise →
