On Food Noise, Trust, and the Stories We’re Telling

Over the past few years, GLP-1 medications have gone from a quiet clinical tool to full cultural volume. They are everywhere — in doctors’ offices, social media feeds, dinner conversations, and whispered confessions. The dial has been turned up so high that it’s become hard to hear anything else.  With the volume turned up, a single story has taken hold. GLP-1s are framed as the long-awaited solution: a reset button, a wonder drug, proof that willpower was never the issue. For many people, there is real relief in that story. But when one narrative dominates, complexity gets flattened.

I understand the appeal of a shortcut. After decades of struggle, shame, and blame, the idea that something might finally work is deeply comforting. And to be clear, GLP-1 medications were not created as a weight-loss trend. They were developed for people with type 2 diabetes because they worked — improving blood sugar regulation and reducing risk. There is growing evidence that they may also reduce inflammation and support broader cardiometabolic health, with emerging research and anecdotal reports suggesting possible benefits for conditions like sleep apnea. Much of this is still being studied.

And yet, beneath all of that, the story quietly centers on weight.

I came to Ozempic quietly. About six months ago, my A1C had crept up to 6.7 — not alarming, but moving in a direction that mattered. I started the medication for blood sugar regulation, with the understanding — and the unspoken expectation — that weight loss would likely follow. Six months later, my A1C is 6.1. My weight has not changed. Not by a pound. Not by an ounce.

I’m an eating-disorder therapist and a body-image specialist. I also live in a body, and I have my own history with food and restriction. So when I hear people describe GLP-1s as finally “getting rid of the food noise,” I feel both recognition and unease.  Because relief is real. And so is the question: what are we calling food noise? And what happens when we silence a signal without understanding why it was there in the first place?

Many people describe profound relief when GLP-1 medications quiet what they call “food noise.” And I believe them. Relief is real. Wanting peace with food is real.  But I want to slow this moment down and ask a different question: what if some of what we’re calling food noise is not pathology at all, but survival?  When the body is restricted — physically, metabolically, or psychologically — it adapts. Preoccupation with food, planning, fantasizing, urgency, difficulty stopping once eating begins: these are not moral failures or signs of broken willpower. They are signals of a system responding to perceived scarcity.

Trying to “eat normally” in the midst of chronic restriction is like asking someone to stroll calmly out of a burning building. The intensity, the urgency, the narrowing of focus — those are not the problem. They are the alarm.  And alarms are loud for a reason.  In that context, quieting food thoughts can feel like freedom. But quiet is not the same as safety. When a medication dampens the signal without addressing why it was sounding in the first place, we risk mistaking suppression for healing.

I understand the longing for relief. I share it. But I also wonder what becomes possible if, instead of silencing a survival response, we work toward rebuilding trust — trust that the body will be fed, trust that hunger will be answered, trust that eating does not require punishment or control.  When trust is restored, the alarm doesn’t need to scream. It quiets on its own.

This is not a manifesto against GLP-1 medications or against medical support. For many people, these drugs are helpful, life-saving, and worthy of serious respect. Relief is real, and wanting a better relationship with food is deeply human. I’m not interested in taking that away.  What I am interested in questioning is the story we’re telling — one that too easily equates health with weight loss and quiet with healing. Hunger, desire, and appetite are not enemies to be subdued; they are communications to be understood. When we rebuild trust with our bodies — not perfectly, but consistently — the alarm doesn’t need to scream. It settles because it has been answered.

There’s a reason trusting our bodies feels radical. Entire industries depend on us believing we can’t — that our signals are suspect and our forms are problems to be fixed. Diet culture, wellness culture, even productivity culture thrive on disconnection. If we trusted ourselves to eat when hungry, to stop when satisfied, and to see our bodies as already worthy of care, much of that machinery would grind to a halt.

If this is a manifesto at all, it is a quiet one: this body is good. Not once optimized, not once silenced, not once made smaller — but now. And any version of health that asks us to abandon that truth is worth examining carefully.