Food Noise, Hunger Cues and Dried Prunes

The holy trifecta of digestion

I’m sorry (again) – there’s no audio to accompany this piece. My voice simply isn’t up for it. xo

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If you’re new to Anchor Baby, this is part of a series I’m writing on my experience taking compounded semaglutide (Ozempic or Wegovy, by another name). You’ll want to read part i first.

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I’ve just eaten three dried prunes, straight out of my hand, in case you’re wondering how my body’s reacting to this new “wonder drug”. Prunes are more delicious than they get credit for, something I discovered when I signed a lucrative sponsorship deal with Sunsweet, some years ago, to promote their product as more than just an old person’s laxative (I was not supposed to use those words).

As part of my Sunsweet content, I baked prune muffins and chopped prunes up into my breakfast; I added two prunes to a smoothie for sweetness; I took a small packet of prunes with me everywhere I went, in case I needed a snack. All of the above was, of course, shared on Instagram Stories.

Today, though I did consider going down the muffin route, I decided instead to eat my prunes as holy God intended them: er, dried, and possibly with added sweetener (I threw out the packaging so that I could decant them into Tupperwares because I’m that kind of American now). And I was, of course, only eating prunes because an online forum had convinced me that I was constipated when, as it happens, I wasn’t.

Online forums can be divils like that.

One of the first things I did when my doctor sent my prescription through for Ozempic (I’m going to refer to what I’m taking as Ozempic because that’s what people know the medication as; in my mind, Ozempic is to compounded semaglutide as hoover is to Dyson stick vacuum) was to look online for support groups.

There is a distinct lack of information – not opinion, there’s loads of that – online about how one’s body will actually react to Ozempic, and about what to expect from one week to the next on the drug, and I felt as though a support group might be a safe option.

What I found, though, was a liberal sprinkling of anti-fat bias (perhaps unsurprising), and a helluva lot of, frankly, very triggering eating disorder-adjacent discussion and praise.

“I can’t eat a thing past breakfast time since I started taking Ozempic,” wrote one poster. “Has this happened anyone else? If I eat anything I vomit.”

“That’s great!” came an immediate – and, frankly, unhinged – response.

I’m not quite sure what I was looking for: a play by play of how I’d feel in the seconds, minutes, hours and days after I took my first injection? Are there any foods I should be avoiding? How can I avoid the nausea and vomiting that so many people seem to say come part and parcel with their Ozempic use?

As it happens, I needn’t have worried – too much. Since taking my first, and then second, dose, I’ve had very minor side effects, although I should disclose that I vomited on Wednesday, the day after my second injection. Is this related? I’m not sure. I didn’t feel any nausea after my first, and two of our children were also vomiting this week, so it seems more likely that bacteria, rather than Ozempic, is the culprit.

The biggest change, though, has been in terms of my food cravings, which have gone from being almost overpowering in their frequency and urgency levels to just a minor noise in the background of my everyday.

Let me explain.

I am a very hungry person, and, as a result, I think about food a lot. I start thinking about food the minute I wake up, wondering what it is I’m going to have for breakfast, do I have the time to make myself waffles, will I have white chocolate chips on my waffles, is it a bacon day or not a bacon day? Did I remember to buy more maple syrup? Maybe I feel like eggs. A slice of toast is never a bad idea. Oh! I bought Frosties (Frosted Flakes, to the Americans) yesterday – I’ll have a bowl of Frosties.

All of this will have gone through my head before I’ve even made it to the bathroom, before I’ve pulled my pyjama top over my head and put it in the dirty clothes hamper, before I’ve found a hair bobbin with which to tie my hair up, before I’ve opened the curtains and seen what kind of day it is outside.

Once I’m finished eating breakfast, I start to have the same series of thoughts about my next meal, whether that’s lunch, or a mid-morning snack… and heaven forbid I let myself get truly hungry in between meals, because when I’m really hungry – you know, starving, I can’t go another second without eating something, I lose the ability to sift through any food choices at all.

When I’m hungry, those are the moments I’ll stand at the toaster and make myself four slices of toast, which are then lathered with butter and eaten at warp speed. Those are the moments I’ll look in the fridge and truly feel so overwhelmed and frustrated at the contents of said fridge that I’ll slam the door closed and order a takeaway that I know will arrive within 30 minutes (and, more than likely, be quite tasty).

Since taking my first Ozempic shot, I haven’t experienced that ravenous feeling even once. And while I’ve been thinking about food, I’ve been thinking about it more from a place of curiosity: am I hungry? What am I hungry for? Should I have some protein, or some carbs? Would a bowl of cereal satisfy me? Probably not. Why not scramble some eggs?

I am not exaggerating when I say: in my, oh, 10 days on Ozempic, I have suddenly discovered a way to be almost entirely objective about what I’m eating (and when, and how much…) in a way that I would hardly have believed possible, two weeks ago.

The science tells me this is because Ozempic not only slows down digestion, meaning I’m staying fuller for longer, but that it also reduces appetite. But can that be the extent of it? I truly feel as though this medicine has reached inside my brain and started to rewire the way I think about and look at food.

For the first time in as long as I can remember, I’m leaving food on my plate (a combination of the fact that I’ve genuinely always had a large appetite, and that my Mum was always adamant that there was no dessert until dinner was eaten, has meant that I’ve always been a proverbial plate-licker) after a meal. I’m not going back for seconds.

We went to a restaurant and we ordered beignets and, when there was one left, I said, “that’s fine, you have it”!!!!

WHO EVEN AM I?! I DO NOT FEEL LIKE MYSELF!

As a result of all of this… space, for want of a better word, that’s been freed up now that I’m not thinking about food all the time, I’ve found myself with, if not actual time (because thinking can be done while actually doing other things) then the sensation of time, and I swear to God I’ve been more productive as a result: mulching flowerbeds and reading more books and I’m imagining I would be getting more writing done if my cursed baby hadn’t been home sick from his babysitter all week long.

The other thing, which, as I put all of this together, probably isn’t all that surprising, is that while food has lost its ability to trigger those kinds of urgent, panicked thoughts in my head, it’s lost some of its joy, too.

I’ve always loved eating, and I take great satisfaction from eating a delicious meal. And since I started taking Ozempic, I’m finding that I’m having fewer and fewer – almost none? Maybe with the exception of ice-cream, which I am now eating by the scoop rather than by the pint, no one tell my sister, who was so judgmental about my ice-cream portion sizes, when honestly don’t most people eat ice-cream by the pint?! – moments of food-related bliss.

It’s just not giving me that kind of, mouth full “ohmahgawdthithithdelithuth” kind of thing that often came as a moment of relief after a period of intense hunger (and related panic-slash-anxiety). Sure, food is still tasty, and I’m definitely still enjoying it, but without the kind of intoxicating lure of what feels like the most delicious meal in history, I’m finding that I’m feeling more of a neutrality towards food than ever before.

Now, when I’m hungry, it’s less of a sensation of urgent starvation than it is an, oh, I guess I could eat, and when I go to the fridge to figure out what I’m going to eat, without the stampeding hordes within telling me that I need to eat right this very second, I’m able to put more care into preparing (or, let’s face it, assembling) whatever it is I feel like eating.

This week I’ve made: a home-made buffalo chicken wrap; pasta with bolognese sauce; a spinach, banana and peanut butter smoothie (about as nice as it sounds); a toasted sandwich with chicken, lettuce, and a little Dubliner cheese; scrambled eggs on toast; strawberry chia jam; porridge with fresh strawberries and a little heavy cream (look, I still like what I like, okay?).

I’m not looking for praise when I list a very normal amount of home cooking, but I am pointing out the fact that, three weeks ago, a lot of these moments, moments where I looked in the fridge and thought, what can I have for my next meal? would have been tinged with a frenetic energy that simply isn’t there any more.

It makes sense though, right? If I’m feeling less acutely starving, and the food that I am eating is tasting not quite as delicious as usual, wouldn’t it stand to reason that I’m feeling a bit more, well, neutral about the whole thing?

Now, let’s be real: I am very aware of the power of the brain in all of this, and I am on the lowest possible dose (0.125mg, in most cases people seem to start at 0.25mg, going up to 2mg or 2.5mg eventually) of a drug I have been told, over and over again, will eliminate food noise once and for all. I have no reason not to believe this (and my brain has no reason not to follow suit).

Time will surely tell whether or not the food noise will disappear entirely, and whether this flush of relaxed thinking I’m having around food will last, or even increase, as the dosage does.

I can’t even imagine what that will be like when; will I respond to thoughts of food the way the robots in Westworld respond to questions about the outside world? Will I see a plate of chicken tikka masala and, with empty eyes, say, “Looks like nothing at all to me” before proceeding to munch on some raw broccoli?!

To address the other elephant in the room: I’m trying not to weigh myself. Yes, I’m doing this because I want to lose weight. But I really do not want to become obsessive about my weight in the process. That being said, I also try not to read Tattle, and we all know how that goes. So I have weighed myself and yes, I have lost a small amount of weight – but it’s the same amount I might gain during my period, or lose after a busy few days when I have less easy access to the fridge. Nothing worth writing home about.

Like I said, time will tell.

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If you have any questions, comments, observations that you’d like to share, feel free to leave a comment on this post or to reply directly to this email! You can also join the dedicated Ozempic chat on the Substack app.

One thing I will say: I have got, honestly, hundreds of messages from people who are also taking weight loss injections, and who have told absolutely no one in their lives because of fear of judgment. So do bear in mind how you talk about this topic to friends and family; you never know who’s struggling, and with what.