For many Americans, the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving bring extra pressure around what and how much people eat. The newer generation of obesity medications — including drugs marketed for diabetes and now used for weight loss — is changing that experience for some users, according to the Associated Press.
Claudia Stearns, 65, of Somerville, Massachusetts, described feeling anxious about Thanksgiving for much of her life because of what she said was chronic struggle with obesity and the guilt that followed overeating. Now, after losing nearly 100 pounds using medications including Wegovy, Stearns said her mental focus on food has eased. She told the AP that “Last year, it felt so lovely to just be able to enjoy my meal, to focus on being with friends and family, to focus on the joy of the day,” adding, “That was a whole new experience.” She also said the “food noise” in her head has gone “very, very quiet.”
Stearns’ experience was echoed by clinicians who treat patients with obesity and by others using the same drug class, who said the shift is not only physical but also behavioral. Dr. Daniel Bessesen, chief of endocrinology at Denver Health, said, “It’s something that really changes a lot of things in their life.” He added, “They go from food being a central focus to it’s just not.” In the holiday context, that can mean people either feel less pulled by typical feast foods or, for some, feel less pleasure in eating overall.
The AP reported that the medications commonly involved are semaglutide and tirzepatide, both delivered as weekly injections. Semaglutide is used in Ozempic and Wegovy, while tirzepatide is used in Mounjaro and recently approved as Zepbound. Medical experts said the drugs mimic hormones that regulate appetite and the feeling of fullness communicated between the gut and the brain, and that users can lose as much as 15% to 25% of their body weight, studies show.
Dr. Michael Schwartz, an expert in metabolism, diabetes and obesity at the University of Washington in Seattle, described the core mechanism in terms of reward. “That’s how it works — it reduces the rewarding aspects of food,” he explained. In Stearns’ case, the AP said she can take a few bites of favorite Thanksgiving pies and then stop; she said, “I would not feel full, but I would feel satisfied.”
Not everyone described the shift the same way. For some, the drugs bring greater selectivity during emotionally charged holidays, with one example being Tara Rothenhoefer, 48, of Trinity, Florida. She told the AP that she “may be more selective of the items I put on my plate” and added, “I don’t care about the bread as much. I still eat what I enjoy.” But the AP also reported that others on the drugs experience side effects such as nausea, vomiting and diarrhea, which can undercut the enjoyment of food.
Dr. Katherine Saunders, an obesity expert at Weill Cornell Medicine and co-founder of Intellihealth, said she has seen patients who were “really miserable because they didn’t enjoy food in the same way.” She added that many people who use weight-loss medications have spent years facing physical and mental burdens of chronic obesity and are relieved to discover a decreased desire for food while they shed pounds.
Beyond the holiday tables, doctors and researchers said the change to appetite raises questions that extend into culture and religion. The AP reported that Joe Sapone, 64, a retiree from Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey, said using the medications reduced what he called a “food orgy” at holidays, but he acknowledged the adjustment. “Part of succeeding at this is disconnecting a good time with what you eat,” he said, describing an internal question: “Am I still going to have fun if I don’t eat that much?”
In the long run, the AP reported that appetite can return when people stop taking the drugs, and weight can follow — often faster than what people lost. It cited studies suggesting that two-thirds of patients who started taking weight-loss drugs were no longer using them a year later, and it pointed to cost and supply shortages as part of the explanation.
Dr. Jens Juul Holst of the University of Copenhagen, one of the researchers associated with discovering the gut hormone GLP-1 that helped lead to the new class of obesity drugs, offered a philosophical critique at an international diabetes conference this fall. Holst told colleagues, “Why is it that you’ve lost weight? That’s because you’ve lost your appetite. That’s because you’ve lost the pleasure of eating and the reward of having a beautiful meal.” He added, “And how long can you stand that? That is the real, real question.”