17d • Peptide Tips
First Thanksgiving in Years Where I'm Actually Present (Food Noise)
I'm home for the week leading up to Thanksgiving, and I'm realizing something that would have seemed impossible a couple years ago: I'm not white-knuckling it through every day. I'm not planning restriction cycles. I'm not obsessing over every bite or calculating when I'll lose control.
This is the first time in years I've been home for an extended visit where I'm not consumed by food noise.
Thanks to tirzepatide and reta, I'm over a year binge free. And the difference isn't just the scale or the mirror - it's that I finally feel like I have agency in my own life, even when I can't control what's around me.
The Food Environment Will Make or Break You
Here's what nobody talks about enough: your environment is more powerful than your willpower. Period.
When you're surrounded by hyperpalatable foods designed by food scientists to hijack your reward pathways, you're not fighting a fair battle. You're fighting against evolutionary biology that spent millions of years making sure you never passed up calorie-dense food. Your ancestors who said "nah, I'm good" during the feast didn't survive the famine. You're descended from the ones who ate everything available.
Being home is the perfect example. My family's house has different food than I keep at my place. The pantry is stocked differently. There are snacks I grew up with. There are emotional connections to certain foods. And with Thanksgiving coming up, there's already prep happening - dishes being planned, ingredients showing up, the energy building around the big meal.
For someone who's struggled with binge-restrict cycles, this environment is a minefield. You've got familiar trigger foods from childhood. You've got family members with their own relationships with food. You've got the disruption to your normal routine. And willpower? Willpower is a finite resource that gets depleted throughout the day. By the third or fourth time you're navigating the kitchen, your prefrontal cortex is exhausted.
The Psychology of Food Noise
Before tirzepatide and reta, being home was torture. My brain was constantly negotiating with food. Every moment was this internal dialogue:
"I should eat something." "No, wait, I already ate." "But what if I get hungry later?" "Just a small snack won't hurt." "Okay but now I've had the snack, might as well finish the bag." "I've already ruined today, might as well go all in." "Tomorrow I'll start fresh."
That's food noise. It's not hunger - it's your brain's reward system demanding stimulation. It's dopamine-seeking behavior that gets reinforced every time you give in because eating palatable food releases dopamine, which reinforces the craving loop.
In a challenging food environment like being home, that noise becomes deafening. You're making hundreds of micro-decisions about food, and each one depletes your willpower a little more. Eventually, you break. Not because you're weak, but because you're human.
The irony? I'd come home to see family, but I'd spend the whole visit mentally trapped with food. I wasn't present. I was either restricting (and miserable) or binging (and filled with shame). Either way, I missed out on actually connecting with the people I came to see.
How GLPs Change the Game
Here's where tirzepatide and reta are legitimately life-changing: they don't just reduce hunger, they quiet the noise.
GLP-1 and GIP agonists work on multiple levels:
They slow gastric emptying, so you stay fuller longer mechanically. They act on brain reward centers, reducing the dopamine response to food - literally making those hyperpalatable foods less exciting to your brain. They improve leptin sensitivity, helping your brain actually recognize that you have adequate energy stores. They reduce impulsivity around food by modulating areas of the brain involved in decision-making and reward.
The result? For the first time in my adult life, I can be in my family's house, walk past the pantry twenty times a day, and just... not care that much. It's not about willpower or discipline. The pull just isn't there.
I can be in the kitchen while someone's cooking, surrounded by every trigger food from my childhood, and I'm present with my family instead of present with the food. I can have what I want, enjoy it, and be done. No second-guessing. No mental gymnastics. No planning my redemption diet for when I get back home.
You Can't Control the Environment, But You Can Control Your Response
The reality is that we live in the most obesogenic environment in human history. You can't avoid it unless you move to a remote cabin and grow all your own food. Holiday gatherings, family visits, office parties, gas station checkouts, social events - everywhere you turn, there's easy access to hyperpalatable, calorie-dense food.
For those of us with certain family dynamics, going home can be especially challenging. There might be comments about your weight. There might be pressure to eat grandma's cooking. There might be old patterns and dynamics that trigger emotional eating. You're navigating not just the food environment, but the emotional environment too.
What GLPs do is give you back control over your response to that environment. They level the playing field. They make it possible to be in these situations without feeling like you're constantly fighting your own biology.
When the food noise is quiet, you have mental space for everything else. You can actually be present. You can handle the family dynamics with more grace because you're not also battling constant food thoughts. You can enjoy the holiday for what it's supposed to be - connection, gratitude, celebration - instead of making food the main character.
Looking Forward to Thursday
As I sit here a few days before Thanksgiving, I'm genuinely looking forward to it. Not with dread. Not with a detailed plan to compensate. Just... looking forward to a nice meal with family.
I'm not saying GLPs are magic or that everyone should use them. But for those of us who've spent years losing the same 50-70 pounds over and over, who've been trapped in binge-restrict cycles, who've felt like failures because we couldn't "just have discipline" - they can be genuinely transformative.
This week, I'm grateful for a lot of things. But I'm especially grateful to actually be present, to enjoy my family, and to not have food be the main character in my life anymore.
To everyone navigating the holidays while working on their health - you've got this. And if you're struggling with food noise in challenging environments, know that there are tools that can help. You're not broken. You're just human in an environment that's designed to make this hard.
Hope everyone has an amazing Thanksgiving week 🦃
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First Thanksgiving in Years Where I'm Actually Present (Food Noise)
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