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Savannah Mendoza spent most of her paycheck on food delivery apps and fast food drive-thru to satisfy her compulsive cravings.
After she started taking a popular drug used for weight loss and diabetes, she saw it as something else: the voice of food.
“It's very obsessive, and it's not a good feeling. It's a horrible feeling, because you're so locked into that single thought that you want to eat,” she said.
It is the sound of food Constant internal chatter About diet Some people experience food, which leads them to make healthier decisions about their diet. The discussion around it grew up Especially online, many people who take popular weight loss and diabetes medications seem to drown out the hype.
Semaglutide and tirzepatide are both known glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists. GLP-1s, That works by telling your body that you've just eaten, causing it to release more insulin and slowing the movement of food through your stomach. The drugs are prescribed to treat type 2 diabetes under the brand names Ozympic and Munjaro, while the twin versions, Wegovi and Zipbo, help. Millions of people Weight loss.
Mendoza, 27, began thinking about food incessantly in her early 20s. She says she has to work, but instead she drives her car and eats in the car. Some mornings she grabs a bite of ice cream straight from her tub as she packs her son's lunch.
“I thought I was obsessed with food,” says Mendoza, who lives in Huntington Beach, California.
Now that she's on tirzepatide, she feels at peace without food cravings, and says that the thing that stopped her was a side effect of the drug: physically, she feels “always stomach cramps, not hunger.”
Summer Kessel, who has been using tirzepatide for more than two years, says she was a “bottomless pit” of feeling hungry all the time.
“I'm still thinking, planning, trying to figure out how to eat something else,” says Kessel, 37. I would eat breakfast at home, then breakfast at work, then lunch at work, then snack. Before I leave work, and a quick meal on the way home and then dinner when I get home.
A week after taking the weight-loss drug for the first time, the Tampa, Florida native said it was a “relief.”
“What can I eat, where can I eat, how much can I eat, I like it, how many calories is this, how many calories is this?” That sounds like all the noise in my mind. 'It was like all the smells in my head finally quieted down, and I was able to live my life without thinking about food and without being hungry all the time,' Kessel said.
A registered dietitian with 20 years of experience in health care, Kessel now provides nutritional advice for Sized social media Following. However, she says it wasn't until she was on tirzepatide that she was able to practice what she preached and eat three balanced meals a day.
“I feel reasonably hungry at mealtimes. … I'm not just hungry in my head, and I don't think about food in terms of what tastes best or what I want. It's just like, eating and what I need to do to feel satisfied and make my body feel good,” she says.
There are various theories about the root cause of food cravings, and there is no clear number for how many people experience them. But many experts believe that it is true, even though awareness of it is only recently emerging.
About 15 years ago Dr. Michael LoweProfessor of Psychology and Brain Sciences at Drexel University in Philadelphia, developed a theory called hedonic hunger, He describes it as “a strong desire for food-based pleasure for reasons other than physical hunger.” Lowe said that this theory is related Food scale power They are used in weight loss clinical trials in both adults and children to measure what he describes as the “desire to eat sweet foods without hunger.”
“This previously established concept of hedonic hunger appears to be very similar to the concept of food cravings reported in many GLP-1 drugs,” Lowe said. “I've studied appetite, or how people experience and try to control their appetite, my whole career. Researchers have studied our body's built-in system to let us know, or pre-notify, when we need to fill up on calories. What this doesn't take into account is why many of us have gained weight over the past 45 years by eating more than our bodies need to stay healthy.
The rumbling in your stomach around dinnertime is homeostatic or “normal” hunger — “your body's reminder that the calories you ate at lunch were mostly used for fuel,” says Lowe.
Hedonic hunger, on the other hand, continues to crave and eat more calories than your body needs, even after you've finished eating.
“I say happiness 'comes along for the ride' when we eat because we need calories. But when we have a strong drive to eat when we're not physically hungry, pleasure is the journey, the real reason we still want to eat,” he said.
Some hedonic hunger is expected because of American food culture, says Lowe. Fast food restaurants populate every main street and the lack of some supermarkets that offer fresh food areas“It's very easy to get food, and it's very easy to overeat,” he said.
Jackson LeMay, who lives in Lilburn, Georgia, has experienced food cravings — a “constant insatiable itch” — for a decade, dating back to high school.
At that time, food fussing was “hiding lots of food, lots of going and taking food from the pantry or fridge, and hiding wrappers.” When I'm not at home or asking for extra money, saying I need lunch money and going to a vending machine and eating something of that nature.”
As an adult, he said, targeted social media ads and the constant availability of food made it easier to overeat and harder to stop.
The 27-year-old lost 155 pounds through diet, exercise and Monjaro, which he uses to maintain his weight, and says he didn't realize how much food cravings affected him until he started the drug.
“You don't realize how fragile your relationship with food is or how busy your mind is with food and making decisions around food,” says LeMay, who has a part-time role. Content creator For a telehealth company that prescribes weight loss drugs.
Dr. Nejaf Asrar, An endocrinologist and obesity treatment specialist at Advocare North Brunswick Medical Associates in North Brunswick, New Jersey, works next door to the cookie store. As for the number in the window, he thinks about buying a box for the family.
“Food noise is very much fueled by our environment and things that push us. I think there's a psychological element. We didn't have a store that was devoted entirely to sweets,” he said. “Food noise becomes an example in our environment.”
Asrer works with his patients using weight loss medications along with lifestyle changes.
“I tell my patients that obesity is a lifelong disease, but medicine doesn't have to be lifelong,” he says. After some of his patients reach their goal weight, they seem to be able to rewire their brains and the food noise doesn't seem to affect them as much.
Although GLP-1 drugs may be a solution for some people who are obese and have food cravings, they are not the only option—and may not even be an option for people with food cravings. BMI
“What we begin to learn and come around to the idea is to think that it is the experience. [of food noise] “You can be driven by signals from your gut or your body that we didn't fully appreciate before,” he said. Dr. Tom HildebrandtDirector of Eating and Weight Disorders at the Center of Excellence at Mount Sinai Health System in New York.
He describes food cravings as a set of peripheral symptoms that lead to overthinking and food-related symptoms, which society attributes to a lack of control.
“Maybe they have a metabolic disorder that alters the human brain's sense of hunger, satiety and how you feel on your skin, not just personal responsibility, when we think of body image issues as eating disorders,” Hildebrandt said. With an abundance of food choices in such an inspiring environment, it can be challenging to choose just right.
According to Hildebrandt at the Eating and Weight Disorders Center of Excellence, his team treats food cravings with 12 to 20 cognitive behavioral therapy interventions, which do two things: “Inoculate the toxic food environment and learn how to self-regulate the system.” It may be disturbed by attempts to control or limit the food noise.
“It doesn't work in everyone, but it works very well,” he said. “For most people, what you see in that context is that the noise of food becomes less, and they're able to approach their lives in a more practical and productive way.”
Doctors at the Hildebrandt Center may prescribe an antidepressant or Vyvanse, which is used to treat binge eating disorder, before turning to GLP-1 medications.
“We're waiting for the science to tell us that it's very effective at reducing food cravings before we go into the labeling, because there are other things that we know are effective, both pharmacological and psychotherapy-wise. He said.
In people with food cravings, GLP-1 drugs modulate metabolic signals and reduce brain chatter, but they create another problem, says Hildebrandt: a new fear that food might hurt or make you sad.
“And if you talk to people who have used GLP-1s, it's not uncommon for you to eat a certain food or a certain amount of food and have physical discomfort. It feels bad, and that's part of what makes it work. But that sign, as you have learned from your own experience, is the case, you start to fear food…