There was a stretch of about four years where I knew the exits off the interstate by which drive-thru was easiest to pull into. Not because I planned to stop. I just always stopped.
If you had asked me at the time whether I liked the food I was eating, I would have said yes. I would have been lying. I would not have known I was lying.
I’m a few months into GLP-1 now and the relationship I have with what I eat is so different that, honestly, I’m still adjusting to it. It’s not that I’m on a diet. I’m not. It’s that the entire architecture of what I want, when I want it, and what feels good in my body afterward — that whole architecture got rearranged when I wasn’t paying attention.
The craving was never really about the food
I think about this a lot now. What was I actually wanting, when I wanted that bag of fries.
Wasn’t fries. It was the relief of the wanting being over. The bag in my lap, the heat through the paper, the brief quiet that comes from giving something to a body that’s been asking for something all day. Anything would have worked, probably. The fries were just convenient.
GLP-1 has changed the wanting, not just the eating. That’s the part I underestimated going in. I thought I’d still want everything I used to want and I’d just somehow have more discipline about it. That’s not what’s happening. The wanting itself has gotten quieter. I don’t want the fries. So there’s nothing to be disciplined about.
Something shifted, and I can’t quite explain it
I’m not going to tell you I became a different person overnight. I didn’t. What happened was more like the volume on the want got turned down a little. And then a little more. And then I started noticing what I was actually hungry for.
Turns out I was hungry for, like, a real lunch. With vegetables. Sitting down. Which sounds like the plot of a wellness magazine but in my actual life it was a small miracle that took everyone in my family approximately three weeks to comment on.
My sister noticed it before I really did. She came to visit and said, you’re eating differently. I wasn’t trying to eat differently. I was just eating what sounded good. What sounded good had changed.
Greasy food started to feel like wearing a wool coat in July
I had a chicken sandwich from a place I used to drive twenty minutes for. I took two bites and felt like I’d swallowed a candle. Heavy. Sitting in my chest. Not in a dramatic way. Just in a, oh, this is what my whole digestion has been doing for years, kind of way.
I didn’t finish it. I didn’t even take it home for later. I just put the wrapper in the trash and felt something close to relief.
The science part of this, as best I understand it, is that GLP-1 slows down how quickly food moves through your stomach. Which means that a meal that’s heavy or fatty or greasy sits with you longer. Which means your body has time to tell you, hey, this doesn’t feel great, instead of you having already eaten two more bites by the time the message arrives. The feedback loop got faster. The feedback was honest. The honesty changed my behavior more than any diet rule ever did.
I cook now. Mostly.
I want to be careful here because I don’t want to make this sound like a glow-up. It isn’t one. I still order pizza on Friday nights. I still eat ice cream from the carton standing at the counter.
What changed is the default. The default used to be drive-thru, takeout, gas station snack. The default now is whatever’s in the fridge, because the fridge feels like enough. Most days. Not all days. Most.
The grocery cart looks different now too. I noticed because I posted a photo to my sister and she said, who is this. There are more whole things in it. Less stuff in boxes. Not because I made a rule about it. Because I started, slowly, wanting different things, and the cart caught up with the wanting.
The thing I didn’t expect
I sleep different. My stomach is quieter in the evenings. I don’t have that weird burning feeling at 11pm that I used to take an antacid for and assume was just my new normal as a person over forty.
None of that was the point. The point was something else, I think. But it’s the part that surprised me, so I figured I’d mention it.
If you’re starting GLP-1 or thinking about it and you’re worried about giving up the foods you love — I’d gently suggest that you might end up surprised by which foods you actually love when the noise quiets down. For me, the answer turned out to be very different from what I’d been telling myself I loved. Which has been, in its own quiet way, a little bit liberating.
