Before GLP-1s, before diabetes, my silence was already loud.
Lately, the internet has been buzzing about “food noise.” People talk about how GLP-1 medications like Ozempic or Wegovy finally quieted the constant urge to eat, that voice in their head always thinking about food.
I’ve read those stories. I’ve listened. I’ve sat with them.
And every time, I feel a kind of distance I can’t quite explain.
Because I’ve never had that voice in my head.
Not as a kid. Not as a teen. Not as an adult. Not even before the diabetes, the diagnoses, or the medications.
Appetite was never there to begin with.
The Quiet I Grew Up In
Other people talk about hunger like it’s a push, a drive, a need that rises and screams to be answered.
I never had that. Not even once.
I didn’t skip meals because I was rebellious or dieting. I skipped them because I didn’t feel hungry. I didn’t understand the urgency around eating. My parents had to remind me, prompt me, sometimes even bribe me to eat. I knew it mattered. But it never felt like something my body naturally asked for.
Food, to me, wasn’t emotional. It wasn’t comfort or pleasure. It was just… there. A task. A necessity I didn’t fully connect with.
I didn’t eat for fun. I ate because I was supposed to.
Appetite = Peace
When I first started hearing people talk about how GLP-1s gave them peace, I was confused. Not because I doubted their experience, but because I didn’t understand what had been so loud to begin with.
They talked about obsessive thoughts, cravings, intrusive urges to eat even when they weren’t hungry. And how the medication finally gave them stillness in their minds.
But for me? That’s always been the baseline.
GLP-1s didn’t take away “food noise” for me.
There was nothing to silence.
I’m on semaglutide for Type 1 diabetes. It’s helped stabilize my A1C. It’s done what it was supposed to do from a medical perspective.
But I didn’t get the appetite drop so many others describe, because I was already living in the quiet.
A Different Kind of Hunger
Sometimes, I wonder if I missed something. Not the noise, exactly, but the connection.
People bond over food. Families come together at dinner tables. Friends share snacks, go out to eat, connect through shared cravings and indulgence.
I’ve always felt a little outside of that.
When I was young, that looked like refusing birthday cake or forgetting to eat at a party. Later, it looked like not understanding how other people talked about food, with emotion, urgency, joy, obsession. I wanted to join in. I just didn’t know how.
I wasn’t denying myself.
There was just… nothing to deny.
The Medical Layer
It took decades, and multiple diagnoses, to begin understanding my body.
- I live with Type 1 diabetes.
- I have PCOS and severe insulin resistance.
- I was diagnosed with AIP (Acute Intermittent Porphyria) as a child.
- I’m hypo-unaware, I often don’t feel when my blood sugar drops dangerously low.
- And somewhere in all that, I’ve never once had what most people call “a normal appetite.”
Some of it might be neurological. Some hormonal. Some trauma, maybe. Some just… unexplained.
I can’t point to a single reason. I just know what’s always been true for me:
My body has never asked for food the way others describe.
The Whisper Beneath the Silence
And yet, my body isn’t completely silent.
Every so often, especially back when I still had a menstrual cycle, I’d get these… preferences. Not hunger. Not even a craving, exactly. But a soft pull toward something, usually liver and onions, or beef and broccoli. Always something mineral-rich. Iron-heavy.
I never felt urgency. I didn’t need to act on it. But if someone said, “What do you want to eat?” that’s what came to mind.
The same thing happened years later after gym sessions. Mom would give me money to grab dinner on the way home. I passed by a dozen fast food places and always ended up in a local corner store, picking up fresh pineapple, mandarin oranges, a meat stick. Never because I felt driven. Just because those were the things my body seemed to say “yes” to.
They weren’t cravings. They weren’t demands.
They were nudges.
Internal cues I only learned to notice by living in a body that rarely sent signals at all.
That’s a story for another post. But it matters here because silence isn’t the same as absence.
Sometimes, silence has layers.
And I’ve learned to listen.
I’m Not Riding a Trend. I’m Just Finally Seen.
GLP-1s are powerful tools. They’re changing lives. I’m glad people are finding peace, whatever that means for them.
But this isn’t a new chapter for me.
This is a story I’ve been living my whole life.
A story where appetite wasn’t a voice in my head, just an echo I never heard.
And maybe, finally, the world is starting to understand what that quiet actually means.
Coming Soon
Part 2: The Coke Diet and the Body That Wouldn’t Eat
Childhood hospitals, flat soda, and the strange medical rituals of a body that didn’t behave “normally.”