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The conversation surrounding GLP-1 medications has become increasingly polarized. On one side are those who view these medications as an important medical advancement capable of improving metabolic health and reducing the burden of obesity-related disease. On the other are critics who worry about side effects, overprescription, and the social implications of their widespread use. While these debates are important, I find myself interested in a different question altogether. What does it say about our culture that one of the most celebrated effects of these medications is the suppression of hunger itself?
As both a psychologist and registered dietitian, I have spent much of my career helping people rebuild a relationship with food and their bodies after years of dieting, restriction, and self-criticism. One of the most common themes I encounter is a profound distrust of the body. People arrive in my office convinced that their hunger is the problem. They describe their appetite as something that has betrayed them, sabotaged them, or prevented them from becoming the person they want to be. Many have spent years trying to eat less, want less, and need less. They often believe that if they could simply silence their hunger, everything else would fall into place.
This belief did not emerge naturally. It is the product of decades of cultural messaging that has framed hunger as an obstacle rather than a biological signal. Diet culture has long depended on the assumption that the body cannot be trusted. If people trusted their hunger, trusted their fullness, and trusted their bodies’ ability to communicate their needs, much of the diet industry would lose its influence. The success of that industry has depended in large part on convincing people that external rules are more reliable than internal wisdom.
For this reason, I think it is important to understand that the current fascination with appetite suppression is not occurring in a cultural vacuum. GLP-1 medications entered a society that was already primed to celebrate the reduction of hunger. Long before these medications existed, people were applauded for skipping meals, ignoring cravings, eating as little as possible, and demonstrating extraordinary control around food. The methods may have changed, but the values often remain surprisingly familiar. What was once accomplished through willpower is now increasingly accomplished through pharmacology, yet the cultural admiration for diminished appetite remains largely intact.
This is where the conversation becomes psychologically interesting. Hunger is not simply a physiological experience. It is also a symbolic one. In a culture that equates self-control with virtue, hunger can come to represent vulnerability, need, and dependence. The ability to suppress hunger is therefore interpreted as evidence of discipline and strength. When people describe appetite suppression as empowering, they are often speaking about more than food. They are describing relief from years of conflict with themselves.
That relief deserves compassion. Many individuals have spent decades cycling between restriction and overeating, shame and self-punishment, hope and disappointment. It is understandable that the quieting of appetite would feel liberating. What concerns me, however, is the possibility that we mistake the absence of conflict for the presence of healing. These are not always the same thing.
Healing requires a relationship with the body. It requires the capacity to notice internal experiences and respond to them with awareness rather than fear. It involves learning to tolerate hunger without panic, fullness without guilt, and imperfection without shame. It is fundamentally a process of building trust. Appetite suppression may reduce distress for some individuals, but it does not automatically repair the underlying relationship a person has with their body. In fact, if we are not careful, it can be incorporated into the very same belief system that created the distress in the first place: the belief that the body is a problem that must be controlled.
What worries me most is not that people are using GLP-1 medications. What worries me is that our culture continues to define health in ways that reward disconnection from ourselves. We praise people for overriding exhaustion, pushing through stress, ignoring emotional needs, and remaining productive regardless of circumstance. Hunger is only one of many signals that modern life encourages us to suppress. When viewed in this broader context, the celebration of appetite suppression begins to look less like an isolated phenomenon and more like part of a larger cultural pattern.
The theme of my TEDx Talk, Rethinking Our Relationship with Food in the GLP-1 Era, is that our relationship with food cannot be separated from our relationship with ourselves. The current conversation about GLP-1 medications often focuses on weight loss outcomes, health markers, and side effects. Those discussions matter. Yet they leave unanswered a deeper question about the kind of relationship we are cultivating with our bodies. Are we becoming more attuned to ourselves, or less? Are we developing greater trust in our internal experiences, or are we becoming increasingly dependent on external systems to regulate them for us?
These questions are unlikely to produce simple answers, but they may ultimately be more important than the number on the scale. Health is not merely the absence of disease, nor is it the suppression of appetite. It is the ability to live in one’s body with a sense of connection, respect, and trust. As new medical technologies continue to emerge, we would do well to ensure that our pursuit of health does not inadvertently deepen the very disconnection that so many people are trying to heal.
The future of this conversation should not be about whether hunger is good or bad. Hunger is neither. It is information. The more relevant question is whether we still know how to listen.
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