Courtesy Savannah Mendoza<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Summer Kessel, who has been using tirzepatide for over two years, said she was a \u201cbottomless pit\u201d who always felt hungry. <\/strong> <\/p>\n \u201cI would still be thinking about, planning for, trying to finagle how I could eat something else,\u201d said Kessel, 37. \u201cI would have breakfast at home, then breakfast at work, and then lunch at work, and then a snack before I left work, and then fast food on the way home and then dinner when I got home.\u201d <\/p>\n
A week after her first injection of the weight-loss medication, the Tampa, Florida, native said it was a \u201crelief.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cIt was like, suddenly, all of that noise in my brain about \u2018what can I eat, where can I eat, how much can I have, am I going to like it, how many calories is this, what\u2019s the portion size?\u2019 Like all of that sh*t in my head was finally quiet, and I was able to just go about my life without obsessing about food or being hungry all the time,\u201d Kessel said. <\/p>\n
Kessel, a registered dietitian who has worked in health care for 20 years, now also doles out nutrition advice to a sizeable social media following. Yet she says it wasn\u2019t until she got on tirzepatide that she was able to practice what she preached and actually eat three balanced meals a day. <\/p>\n
\u201cI feel appropriately hungry at mealtimes. \u2026 I\u2019m just not hungry in my head in between, and I\u2019m not thinking about food in terms of what\u2019s the tastiest or what do I want. It\u2019s more like, what do I need to feel nourished and satisfied, and is going to make my body feel good,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
There are varying theories about the root cause of food noise, and there isn\u2019t a clear number of how many people experience it. But most experts believe it\u2019s real, even if awareness of it is only recently emerging. <\/p>\n
About 15 years ago, Dr. Michael Lowe, a professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Drexel University in Philadelphia, developed a theory called hedonic hunger, which\u202fhe explains as \u201can intense desire for food-based\u202fpleasure\u202ffor reasons other than physical hunger.\u201d Lowe said this theory and its associated Power of Food Scale are being used in clinical trials of weight-loss medications in both adults and children to measure what he describes as the \u201cdesire for delicious foods when not hungry.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cThat is, the previously established concept of hedonic hunger appears to be very similar to the concept of food noise reported by many on GLP-1 medications,\u201d Lowe said. \u201cI also studied appetite,\u202for how people experience and attempt to\u202fcontrol their appetite, my whole career. Researchers have studied our\u202fbuilt-in system for letting us know, or giving us advance notice\u202fof, our bodies\u2019\u202fneed to be replenished with calories. What this doesn\u2019t take account\u202fof\u202f is why,\u202fin the past\u202f45\u202fyears, many of us\u202fhave gained weight by eating more than\u202fwhat our bodies need to stay healthy.\u201d <\/p>\n
The rumbling in your stomach near dinnertime is homeostatic or \u201cnormal\u201d hunger \u2014 \u201ca\u202freminder from your body that\u202fthe calories you consumed for lunch have been mostly utilized for fuel by your body,\u201d according to Lowe. <\/p>\n
Hedonic hunger, on the other hand, is continuing to desire and eat food beyond the calories that your body needs, even after you just finished a meal. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m saying that when we eat because we need calories, pleasure \u2018comes along for the ride.\u2019 But when we still have a powerful drive to eat when we\u2019re not physically hungry, pleasure\u202fis\u202fthe ride, the actual reason we still want to eat,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Some hedonic hunger is to be expected due to America\u2019s food culture, Lowe says. With fast-food restaurants studding every main road and a lack of supermarkets offering fresh food in some areas, \u201cit is so easy to get food, and it\u2019s so easy to eat too much of the wrong kind,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Jackson LeMay, who lives in Lilburn, Georgia, said his experience with food noise \u2013 \u201ca constant, insatiable itch\u201d \u2013 lasted over a decade and dates to high school. <\/p>\n
Back then, food noise \u201cwas a lot of hiding food, a lot of going and taking food from the pantry or from the fridge and hiding wrappers. It was a lot of eating food when I wasn\u2019t home or asking for extra money, saying I needed lunch money, and going to the vending machine, things of that nature.\u201d <\/p>\n
As an adult, he said, targeted social media ads and the constant availability of food delivery made it easy to binge and hard to stop. <\/p>\n
The 27-year-old lost 155 pounds through diet, exercise and Mounjaro, which he continues to use to maintain his weight, and said he didn\u2019t realize how much food noise affected him until he started the medication. <\/p>\n