Food Grief: What Your Doctor Didn't Tell You About Ozempic

So you finally got the medication that kills your appetite. The food noise is gone. You're losing weight, and you should be thrilled. But somehow you're sadder than you were before because here's what your doctor is not telling you about GLP-1s. They don't just reduce your hunger. They can fundamentally change your relationship with one of life's greatest pleasures. And if you don't deal with the grief that comes along with that, you're either going to quit the medication because you miss food so much and gain it all back, or you'll stay on it and feel like you're living life in grayscale. I'm Jennifer Dan Brown. This is Stop Dieting Forever. Let's talk about GLP-1s and food grief.

Girl, if you're tired of losing the same 20 pounds over and over and over again, listen up. For years, I thought something was wrong with me. I kept promising this time would be different, only to find myself stress eating at the kitchen counter after a long stressful day. I thought the problem was my body. I thought the problem was the diet I was on or my lack of discipline.

But the truth?

The real problem wasn't what I was doing. It was who I was being. When I finally stopped trying to fix my weight and started transforming my identity, everything changed. No more starting over on Monday. No more food guilt. No more feeling like I was fighting against myself. And now that's exactly what I help my clients do. Welcome to Stop Dieting Forever, the podcast that helps you break free from self-sabotage, rewire your mindset, and reinvent yourself into the healthy, confident woman that you crave to be. I'm your host, Jennifer Dent-Brown, certified life and weight loss coach, and I'm here to show you how to finally stop dieting forever.

You ready?

Let's dive in.

So here's a conversation that's not happening when you begin a GLP-1 medication like Ozempic or Wegovy or Mounjaro, that your appetite suppression is the thing that makes it work, right? It's the thing that causes you to eat less, but it's also the thing that can rob you of your joy. Most people think that losing your appetite is purely a blessing. It's like, finally, freedom from food obsession. But for real, for real, how many of y'all, especially those of you who are over 40, who have spent decades building your life around food— I'm talking about cooking for your family, connecting with your spouse, social gatherings, celebrating with meals, baking your annual Christmas cookies and the birthday cakes and all of those things that you have so many memories tied around. And then suddenly, those same things, those same foods, you don't really care much about them. And it can kind of feel like a death. And listen, I'm not being dramatic. It is really a kind of death. It's what I'm calling food grief. It is the death of an identity, the death of a role, a death of the source of pleasure and connection. Food. And if you don't know how to grieve it properly, you're going to struggle on these medications in ways that you have never, ever expected. So let's be real. I haven't heard anybody talking about food grief. And the way that I came up with this concept is because I was in Threads and someone had commented. She was like, I'm on this GLP-1. She was like, I'm losing weight, but I feel sad because she said, "I lost my zest for food." And I was like, "Oh, yeah." I was like, "I know exactly what you're dealing with." So here's what happens. Your doctor gives you the prescription, tells you about potential side effects like constipation, nausea, and they'll mention that you'll feel less hungry. And you're like, "OK, that's great." But what they don't tell you is that you might cry at your family dinner because your favorite meal tastes like cardboard or you just can't finish it. Have one or two bites of your favorite lasagna and then you're done. Or they don't tell you that you're going to feel guilty when your partner suggests that you all go out to your favorite restaurant that you used to love. And you go there and you're all excited and you're looking at the menu and you're just like, ugh, right? It doesn't do it for you anymore. You just don't care anymore. So what I want to do in this episode is teach you the Four Stage Grief Framework. Because understanding what's happening to you is the first step for you to get through it without sabotaging your progress. So let's jump into stage 1, which is the honeymoon phase, right? This is maybe weeks 1 through 6, your first month, month and a half when you're on a GLP-1. And here's the thing, my friend, at, at first, losing your appetite feels like a miracle. Like you're finally free from those constant food thoughts and Fun fact, you're losing weight and yes, you may feel a little nauseous, but who cares? You feel so much better because you can feel your body getting smaller and you're actually doing it. You're actually finally losing weight. Now here's what's really happening. Your brain is still running on the old reward pathways, but the medication is blocking those signals. So you are high on the results of like, oh, my waist is getting a little smaller. My clothes feel a little bit different. I see the number going down on the scale. So you're excited about those results, which temporarily masks the loss that you're experiencing with the food. Now, here is what people are unprepared for. You are not prepared for what comes next. So these folks, they think about it. As if like, oh, this is how I'm going to feel forever. So when stage 2 hits, they're completely blindsided. So here's what I want you to do now. I want you to start noticing what role food played in your life beyond just, I ate too much of it. Were you the one who cooked Sunday dinners for the family? Did you bond with your daughter or your granddaughters over baking once a month? Was trying new restaurants in your city like your main date night activity? I want you to write all of those things down because you're going to need to process it very soon. All right, let's go into stage 2. So we just talked about stage 1, which is a honeymoon phase. Now we're rolling into stage 2, which is the realization. And this might be like week 6 through 12. So now you're on a GLP-1, you're in your groove for about 90 days, and this is when it hits you. Food actually matters more to you for reasons beyond nutrition. And now it just doesn't. So you go to your church event and everyone is raving about the fried chicken and you are picking at it because it's in front of you. You're supposed to eat something. You're used to eating with these people and you're just like, eh, you don't have the same excitement about it. And people are looking at you like, girl, you're not going to eat your fried chicken. What's wrong? Or maybe it's your birthday and your family goes to your favorite bakery and they get your favorite cake and they give you a big slice after they sing happy birthday to you. And your kids are all excited. They're like, mom, we got your cake. And you take 2 bites and you're like, ugh, I'm done. And instead of celebrating, you're almost like fighting back these internal tears because your kids are so excited that they got your favorite cake. This is your favorite cake. It's your birthday. And it's not bringing you the joy that it once did. So let me explain to you what's really happening. Your identity is shifting, but you didn't agree to it yet, right? Because you didn't know that was going to happen. All you wanted to do was just lose some weight. You didn't agree to stop enjoying food. And this is the cognitive dissonance at its finest. You wanted this medication. You wanted relief from the weight that you were carrying and the symptoms that you were having. But you didn't want this. You didn't want to be like not excited with your favorite cake. You didn't want to be not excited about eating fried chicken. So here's a mistake that most people make. They either try to force themselves to care about foods. That means they're eating when they're not hungry and they're trying to manufacture enthusiasm. So that looks like you finishing that piece of fried chicken at the church event, because this is what you're— you've always done, even though you don't want it anymore, or this is you not wanting to disappoint your kids, so you keep shoveling pieces of cake into your mouth, even though your brain is like, yeah, we're finished here, lady. Will you stop putting this chocolate cake in my mouth? Right? So you're trying to force yourself to care about food again, or you feel guilty, or you feel sad about something that you should be happy with. So if this is you, this is what I want you to do instead. I want you to name it, name it and claim it. Say it out loud. Say, "I am grieving food." Not because you're ungrateful, not because you're doing something wrong, but because loss is loss, even when it comes from something positive. So you can be grateful for the medication. You can be grateful that you're losing weight. You can be grateful that you're breathing better and you have less achy joints and all of those wonderful benefits. But you can also be sad about what you've lost because both of those things can be true at the same time. I coached a client who was in tears because she was about 8 weeks into her GLP-1 and she had lost about 18 pounds. She felt incredible. She looked incredible, but she was crying during the coaching session because she'd always been the one to make the homemade pasta sauce for Sunday dinners. And suddenly, she couldn't, like, taste test it the same way that she used to, right? She would taste it and was like, mm, her stomach was a little bit like, ah, we don't like this anymore. And she said, I don't know who I am if I'm not the person who feeds everyone. That is food grief. She's used to making dinner for her family every single Sunday, and all of a sudden, Her body's like, no, we don't care. This, this is not agreeing with us. So let's roll into stage 3, which is the identity reconstruction. And this is when you're on a GLP-1, months 3 through 6. And so this is where the real work happens. And this is where most of you all get it wrong because you don't know that you're supposed to be doing this. You think the goal is like, let me just get back to enjoying food again, or let me just find some balance with food. But that's actually keeping you stuck in your old identity. You know, the old identity that you had when you started taking the GLP-1. What's really happening is that you have an opportunity that most people don't get. You have a clean slate with food. The GLP-1 has reduced the food noise in your head. It has reduced the cravings. It has reduced the emotional pull. And instead of mourning that loss, you get to use it to build your 2.0 identity from scratch. I've said this before, a GLP-1, the peace that you find while you're on a GLP-1, this is the time where you need to take that silence and work on your 2.0 identity and build your identity of the healthiest version of you. So most people, you will spend years trying to change your behavior while your brain is screaming at you to eat. Eat this, eat that. I saw this funny reel the other day, and it was a woman on the treadmill, and the caption or the quote on the page said, when your— excuse me— when your shot begins to fade, right? So when your GLP-1 medication starts to, quote unquote, fade, and all of a sudden you just hear all of the foods running through her head. She was like, ham hocks, cornbread, macaroni and cheese, fried chicken, Doritos, nachos, tacos, margaritas. Like, it was just— it was, it was, it was funny. Like, the food noise has returned. So the GLP-1 quiets that noise so you can finally do the identity work that actually sticks. But y'all don't know how to do the identity work. That's where the problem comes. So this is a philosophy-first transformation. So you're not just changing what you do, you are changing who you are. And so the mistake that most people make is they try to recreate their old relationship with food, but they're going to make it healthier. They're still giving food a job it was never meant to do. Food is not meant to entertain you. It is not meant to soothe you. It is not meant to celebrate for you. It is not meant to connect you to people, but that's what we use food for now. Food's job is actually just to fuel your body.

That is it.

Everything else, that is your old identity talking. So here's what you want to be focusing on: the identity shift process. And this process has 3 parts, and they have to happen in this order. So listen closely. Part 1, you see food is neutral. So your old identity, you used to put food on a pedestal. Everything was special. Food was pleasure. Food was comfort. Food was your best friend. Food was love. Food was a celebration. Food was everything. Everything. Your 2.0 identity, food is fuel, period. It's neutral. So before you roll your eyes and you think, well, if you think I'm just going to eat boiled chicken and broccoli for the rest of my life, no, that's not what I'm talking about. I do not want that for you. That sounds terrible. It means that food doesn't have an emotional job anymore. So you're not eating to feel better. You're not eating to celebrate. You're no longer eating because you're bored or you're stressed or because, oh, it's just there. Let me just eat that muffin on the counter because it's just there. Right? That's not how we're thinking anymore. So the GLP-1 is giving you a massive gift right now. It is showing you that you can live without food being the center of everything. And before the GLP-1, you know what it feels like to have to like use all your motivation and all your willpower to, to try to separate the emotional tug of food while you're trying to do the healthier thing, while you're trying to do the healthier habit. I spent decades on the weight loss struggle bus trying to make this work. And now with the GLP-1, you are getting it handed to you on a silver platter. So don't waste it trying to go back to your 1.0 identity and using food for fun. So that's part 2 of this identity shift process. So part 1, as you're seeing, food is neutral. Part 2 is now that you are no longer using food for entertainment, It is fire. So food became entertainment somewhere along the way, and you stopped entertaining yourself in other ways. So it's fun to go bar hopping. It's fun to go restaurant hopping. It's fun to try new recipes. It's fun to look at the Cooking Channel. It's fun to collect recipes on Pinterest. It's fun to look at food porn on Instagram. Food festivals, like, let's go to a food festival for vacation. Food became the thing that you did. Here in Philadelphia, I think we have more street festivals throughout the year than like any other city in the country. And with every street festival, there is a plethora of food. In fact, there is one in my neighborhood— well, in the neighborhood next to me, it's literally called the Street Eat Festival. It's all food, all food, all food vendors, food trucks, everything, all in this one area in Manayunk. So your 2.0 identity, the person you're becoming, the identity that you are stepping into, she doesn't need to be entertained with food. She doesn't need food to be entertained. And here's the thing. When you stop using food for entertainment, you suddenly have so much more mental and physical energy for the things that actually light you up. Listen, I'm not saying you can never enjoy another meal again. I'm saying enjoying a meal isn't the point anymore. It's actually who you're enjoying the meal with. That's more important. The point is fueling your body so well that you can do the things that actually matter to you. Case in point, this holiday, we went to a— one of my best friends, her and her husband do this this big holiday party every year. And I'm just kind of in this season where I'm losing my taste for alcohol. Just doesn't do it for me anymore. Doesn't excite me. It gives me heart palpitations, which, which I hate. It disrupts my sleep, which I hate even more because, you know, I finally got my sleep in order. So I am protecting it at every cost. So they have a huge house and they've got this huge, you know, beautiful bar downstairs and they had like specialty drinks. They had professional bartenders, like it's a whole thing. And normally I would have been drinking it up, clinking glasses with my friends. But this year, in addition to me having this, what I call Christmas crud, I got a little bit of a cold. I was like, what am I going to do about alcohol? And I was like, you know what? I'm going to see some of my friends who I haven't seen in over a year. There are people there I only see once a year. Let's focus on them. Let's have conversations. I can drink sparkling water. I think I had a half a glass of Prosecco. I didn't even finish it. I was more intent on meeting new people, connecting with the people that I haven't seen, and focusing on the conversation and the people that were there. It was a much more gratifying experience because I was making personal connections. And I feel like sometimes when you have too much to drink, you lose some of that. That is taken away from you. So the last part of this identity shift is that I want you to begin to redirect your desire. So this is, this is the key. So this is what I tell all of my clients. You will lose a desire to eat all of your junky processed foods, all of your comfort foods, all of the food, the foods that keep you inflamed, all of the foods that make you feel like garbage the day after. And when you, your desire when your desire to feel good in your body becomes greater than the Cheetos, greater than the Reese's Cups, when your desire to feel good in your body becomes greater than the margarita, that's when you know your identity has shifted. When your desire for a flat belly and for waking up without joint pain and for sleeping through the night and for having energy at 3:00 PM, when your desire to look in the mirror and actually like what you see, when that desire is stronger than the donut and the, the chocolate cake, like that's when you know you have made it to the other side. And all of my clients get there at different rates. As long as you keep doing the work and be the identity work every single day and becoming that person and beginning to think like her, Eventually, you will be presented with chips and guac at your favorite Mexican restaurant. You will have one and be like, thank you, I'm done. And that is going to blow your mind. You're going to be like, oh, wait a second, what just happened? And that's not about willpower. That's not about restriction. That is about genuinely wanting something more. And so when you have that full identity shift, you're no longer grieving food because you are more excited about who you're becoming. You're more excited about your 2.0 self. So the GLP-1 is again quieting the food noise so you can actually hear your real desires. Most people spend decades drowning out their real desires with food because they think that they can't do it. They think they can't achieve it. They think they can't ever have a flat belly anymore. They think that they're never going to be able to lose a double They think that they're never going to be able to be anything other than a 2XL. Now that the food noise is quieted, you can do that identity work and you can slow walk your way to belief and possibility and knowing that, hey, it is possible for me to be in a size 10 from a 2XL. It is possible for me to lose 80 pounds. It is possible for me to have a flat belly over the age of 50. So what do you actually want? While your food noise is quiet, what do you actually want? Not what your old identity wants, but what is this 2.0 version of you? What does she want? Because the grief that you're feeling isn't about losing food. It's about losing the old version of you, the version of you who needed food to cope, the version of you who needed food to celebrate, the version of you that needed food to connect and to feel alive, and that version of you needed to die, literally, for you to become who you are meant to be. Okay, so let's jump back out to the stages of grief, the Four Stage Food Grief framework. And real quick, we've got Stage 1, which is the honeymoon phase. Stage 2 is the realization. Stage 3 is the identity reconstruction. When we talked about the identity shift and 3 phases of where you do that. And now stage 4 is the integration. So you've been on a GLP-1 6 or more months, and this is where you land in your new normal. So food has a place in your life, but it is no longer the center of your life. Your identity has evolved. You genuinely processed the loss of food, and you may still have moments of sadness, right? The holidays can be hard. Certain events where it's always been centered around you may have a little bit of a, like, feeling not part of the crowd anymore, but those are just moments. It is not your everyday state. So I don't want you to think that you failed if you still feel twinges of grief occasionally, or I don't want you to get so comfortable with food being less important that you don't notice when you're actually isolating yourself and losing quality of life. So this is what I want you to do instead. I want you to check in with yourself honestly every couple of weeks, right? Just ask, am I still finding joy in my daily life? Write these questions down in your journal. Am I still finding joy in my daily life? Are my relationships healthy and connected? Do I feel like myself? Not who I used to be, but a version of myself that I actually like. And if I'm still on this medication a year from now, will I be okay with that? And if your answer to any of these is no, it's time to reevaluate because maybe you need a dose adjustment. Maybe you need to just add back some food rituals that you dropped. Maybe you need coaching to help you process the deeper stuff that's coming up for you around food. Now, the goal isn't to stay on the medication at all costs because you are afraid of the food noise coming back. The goal is for you to live a life that you actually want to be living. So the 4-stage framework that I just walked you through, most people will try to do this alone. And here's what's going to happen. You get to stage 3 and you know you need to shift your identity. You're like, wait a second, Jennifer said something about, oh, this is the part where I got to shift my identity, but you don't know exactly how to do that. So you either stay stuck in grief in your version 1.0 of yourself, or you go back to what what you're used to doing, which is depending on motivation and willpower. And then one of two things happen. Either you can't tolerate the grief and you stop the medication early because you're like, I just— I just— I miss the connection with food, and you end up gaining everything back that you lost. Or you stay on it, you lose the weight, you don't shift your identity, and then life happens, right? Insurance stops covering it, or you hit your goal weight and you decide, okay, I'm ready to come off, whatever the reason, and 6 months the food noise comes back. You don't know how to deal with it because your identity is still stuck in your 1.0 self. And then so what happens is your 1.0 habits, they come right back, and you end up with the rebound weight because you never shifted your identity. So this is the work that I do with my private clients. We're not just managing the medication, we're not just tracking your symptoms and your side effects and how you're feeling in your body, We're using the window that the GLP-1 gives you when the food noise is quiet to do that deep identity work, to actually become version 2.0, to come up with those new thoughts about food, the new relationship with food while your brain is not screaming at you to eat 24/7. Because I know we see all of the success stories online. I mean, I was watching, I forget what channel I was watching. I think it was Hulu, and every commercial was Serena Williams with her 31-pound weight loss on row. I'm like, Serena, girl, you look good, but I don't need to see you every, you know, 10 minutes on the commercial. So we don't hear about the rebound rate, but here is the statistics as of right now when I'm recording this podcast: 50 to 70% of the people gain the weight back after they stop the GLP-1. Y'all heard me talk about in another podcast the guy I saw on TikTok who lost a bunch of weight, like 90 pounds, stopped taking the GLP-1, the food noise came back, he freaked out, didn't know how to handle it, and so now he's back on it. I want you to have an option to be on the medication or not. I don't want you to become dependent on the medication because you don't know how to handle the thoughts in your The people who gain the weight back is not because the medication stopped working. It's because they never changed their identity. They were still their 1.0 self, just on some medication. So of course, when the medication stops, they go right back to their old patterns. When you work with me, we are, we are replacing your 1.0 identity. We are getting you off the weight loss struggle bus. We are replacing your dieter's mindset, and we are building your 2.0 identity from the ground up. While you're on the medication, if that is something that you choose to do. So, I walk my clients the same process whether you're on medication or not. It works for both. But if you decide, if you opt for medication, this is the additional support that your doctor is not going to tell you that you need. When you titrate off that medication, whether it's in 6 months or 2 years or whenever, you don't have to worry about the food noise coming back. Back because it's not going to be noise anymore. Because at this point, your identity has shifted. You actually see food as neutral. You see food for what it is— fuel. You know how to generate emotions without using food to depend on it. You have fired food from that job, and you have zero desire to go back to the way that it used to be because now you feel so good in your body. Your desire to be healthier is stronger than the food. So here's what I want you to do now as we close out this episode. If you are on a GLP-1 now, or you are GLP-1 curious and you're thinking about starting one, I want you to ask yourself this question: Do I have a plan for what happens when I stop taking it? Do I know how to shift my identity, or am I just hoping that I'm going to figure it out along the cross your fingers, hope, pray everything works out. Because hope is not a strategy, my friend. Been there, done that. It don't work long term. The women who are successful in keeping their weight off with the GLP-1, they're not special. They're not more disciplined. They're not like special unicorns. They didn't get lucky. They have done the identity work while they had the window to do And listen, you can try to do it for yourself. You can take everything that I taught you today. You can print out the transcript and create your own plan and you can run with it. And I hope you— that's what you do. But if you're 3 months in and you're like, I think I need more help than listening to the transcript of a podcast. I need one more one-on-one help. Or if you're about to start a GLP-1 and you want to do this the right way from day one, That is what my Complete Transformation private coaching program is for. We're going to work together to build your 2.0 identity so that when you're done with me and you're done with coaching, whether you're still on the medication or not, you never have to worry about your weight coming back because you now have created certainty in this new identity that it's not— the medication is just a tool. It's not who you are. You're not going to be the same person anymore. So if that sounds like what you need, I want you to book a call with me, the link is in the show notes. We will hop on a Zoom session. We'll talk about where you are, where you want to be, what's been keeping you from becoming your 2.0 self, and whether this is a good fit or not. Because regardless of whether we work together or not, I don't want you to waste this opportunity. The GLP-1 is giving you a clean slate. Don't just lose the weight. I want you to become someone different. All right. Take care of yourself. Live luxe. And I will see you in the next episode.

Did you love today's episode? Are you loving this podcast? Then you are going to love Forever Well, which is my exclusive newsletter where I break down how to stop self-sabotaging your weight loss and reinvent yourself into the healthy, grown-ass, confident woman you know you want to be. Girl, each week I'm gonna send you bold insights, real talk— because you know I like to keep it real— and strategies that you can actually use to start your diet-free lifestyle straight to your inbox. Subscribe now at jenniferdent.com/emailclub or find the link in the show notes and start your reinvention today. Oh, and if you love this episode. Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review because it helps more women just like you find this life-changing work. All right, y'all, head on over to jenniferdent.com/emailclub to get Forever Well. All right, live luxe, and I'll see you in the next episode.