Ozempic Ended the Food Fixation I Didn’t Realize I Had

Our writer lived her life constantly thinking about her next meal—until she didn’t.

Growing up in an Italian household, food wasn’t just sustenance: It was love, tradition, and a form of connection. My Nana never lived more than a yard’s length away from our house in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia; my memories of her involve a hot stove, some combination of carb, meat, and sauce, and encouragement that I should always eat. The daughter of Italian immigrants, she’d grown up watching her mother prepare food for nine children and a husband. My Nana lived to feed the people around her. As she cooked, she’d turn on the fan in the stove’s hood and say, “You’ll see, now the whole neighborhood will come running.” 

My father has carried on the tradition of feeding people as a way of connecting and showing affection. He is a skilled cook, but his real proficiency lies in bringing people together around a table. When my siblings and my father get together, it’s often over dinner at a restaurant where he’ll settle in with a martini or an old fashioned, delegate someone to be in charge of ordering appetizers, and declare to the table at large, “Everybody eat! Everyone’s got to eat!”

Throughout my life, well into my adult years, I learned to associate food with joy, care, and connection. But I have also, for most of my life, been varying degrees of overweight, and have carried a longstanding and relentless undercurrent of shame that has seeped into every aspect of my being.

Earlier this year, when my primary care doctor asked if I’d ever considered a GLP-1 to help with weight loss, I admitted that I had. It’s almost impossible not to be bombarded with the widespread Ozempic coverage across all media, from celebrity transformations to TikTok videos breaking down the risks and urging people not to give into the unrealistic expectations society has for human bodies. 

While I had certainly thought about it, I was afraid that taking a medication for weight loss would be conceding some kind of defeat. Over the last decade, I’ve learned to value my physical self. I prioritize hygiene, rest, hydration, and good posture. I eat well, purchasing most of our groceries at the local farmers market and limiting meat and processed foods. I take our dog for a walk three times a day, strength train, and do yoga, but still my weight wouldn’t dip lower than 335 pounds. At 37 years old, carrying so much weight, even on my 6’3” frame, was beginning to take its toll on my body. 

I started to ache in places I’d never had pain before. My back would catch after sitting at my desk for too long and I couldn’t push myself into the upside-down V of downward dog during yoga class as smoothly as I had in my early 30s. I felt the toll my weight was taking on my body and it made me anxious. I’m the only parent to two children, and I want to be around for them as much time as I’m allowed.

I stayed in pain for almost a year, wondering what I was doing wrong and internally berating myself for not being able to shed the pounds. The idea of weight loss medications lingered in the back of my mind, but I was too afraid to ask—then my doctor brought it up. As soon as the words came out of his mouth, I felt a sense of relief wash over me. My only cause for hesitation was the external judgment I expected to receive if I ever told anyone I was taking it, but still, my answer was an immediate yes. 

At first, Ozempic felt like cheating. I’d seen so many of my body-positivity role models expounding on how weight loss medications were fueling unhealthy expectations around body image. I was afraid of being one of those people who took the easy way out and contributed to a toxic industry. But I was also in pain and exhausted, worried about what the next 30 years would be like for me as I tried to move through the world in a body that couldn’t support the weight I was carrying.

I started weekly injections over the summer, alternating between my thighs and wincing each time the tiny needle poked into my skin. The effects were immediate—not in terms of pounds lost, but mentally. I felt fuller faster, but more noticeably my mind quieted. The TV static of food anxiety that had crowded into my brain for most of my life suddenly ceased. I didn’t dwell on the dishes I’d eaten once I’d gotten up from the table. I didn’t immediately think about what I wanted to have next. A mental roster of all my meals was no longer running through my head.

I hadn’t realized how much space food was taking up in my brain. I grew up in an environment where it was encouraged to always be thinking about food, so as an adult it seemed perfectly normal that I’d go to bed pondering whether I would have oatmeal or yogurt the next morning; or that as I stirred freeze-dried blueberries into the steel cut oats I opted for, to be considering the sourdough in the bread box and whether I would make it into tartines or tear off hunks to dip in soup for lunch. 

When I went out to dinner with my family, I felt anxious about ordering because there was a compulsion to always pick the entree that was the most decadently delicious. Even when I was craving a salad, it felt wrong to waste a meal out on dressed lettuce.

I also overspent on food. I was on food stamps when my children were toddlers—trying to stretch $383 into a month’s worth of groceries—and I worried constantly about how much food we had in the house. The trauma of food insecurity remained with me; I would get anxious if I looked in the fridge and saw an empty drawer or opened the cupboard to find a bare shelf. A part of my focus was always on whatever I was planning to eat or when I’d go to the store next.

Without that persistent, continuous whine, my mind is able to relax. A fog cleared; my thoughts now feel sharper, unburdened. I’ve been able to shift my focus to other areas of my life: I’m more present with my kids. I can take the dog for a walk and not feel compelled to stop by a coffee shop. I can sit down with a book at 5 p.m. and not feel my attention split between what I’m reading and what we’ll have for dinner. And when I go out to eat with my family, I don’t feel the pressure to pick the perfect, most delicious menu item for my meal. My entree selection is no longer the end-all, be-all for nights out with the people I care most about, it’s actually the people I care most about—and more often than not, I end up ordering a salad.

After six weeks of taking Ozempic, I’d lost ten pounds—not enough to be immediately noticeable, but my back feels better. My body moves without aching, and I feel lighter—not just physically, but mentally, too. Ozempic helped me extract myself from patterns of disordered thinking around food and eating. Eating has become a source of nourishment for me, and food is still a vehicle for connection, but it isn’t the centerpiece of my experiences anymore.

My journey is full of underlying complexities. My experience with Ozempic has been one of empowerment, but weight loss medications are not a one-size-fits-all solution. Societal pressures around body image and food impact billions of people on a daily basis, and often lead to disordered eating patterns and mental health struggles. I am learning to release the pressure I feel to justify my choice in taking Ozempic and recognizing that my relationship with food is uniquely my own.

I don’t know how much weight I’ll lose—I’m not focused on the numbers on the scale. My attention is turned inward, to my mental state and my relationship with my body and the food that fuels it. Eating well is a vital part of any human’s existence, but I’ve realized it doesn’t have to consume my time and mental energy. I’ve learned to enjoy food for the ways it can connect me to the people I love, which is, I believe, what my Nana wanted all along.

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