The Hidden Hunger and What Weight Loss Drugs Are Teaching Us About How We Really Eat
- May 28, 2025
- 8 min read
Updated: May 30, 2025
Will Kimmins is an expert in trauma and the effects of chronic stress on mental health. Following a decades long career in Special Operations for the US military, Will founded and owns Overwatch Counseling Services in multiple states in the USA.
A brief initial disclaimer to this article: I see clients frequently in my private practice who are doing the exact type of mindset work I discuss here. No one should be made to feel shame or self-loathing because of how they look, which includes being mistreated based on weight or size. My purpose here is to discuss an aspect that many people don’t consider when receiving a prescription for weight loss medications, which when medically justified are a useful tool.
Over the past few years, medications like Ozempic, Wegovy, and Zepbound have reshaped the conversation around weight loss. These GLP-1 receptor agonists were originally developed to treat type 2 diabetes, but it wasn’t long before clinicians noticed a dramatic “side effect”: significant weight loss (there is an interesting and very lengthy conversation about the correlation between insulin sensitivity, sugar intake, and body weight in there but we’re not doing that today). What followed was a wave of interest, scrutiny, and hype, especially as celebrities and everyday users alike began to share their results. It’s gotten to the point where I saw an article the other day discussing the increase in “Ozempic face” in Hollywood.
This, of course, gave way to regular folks “asking their doctor about Ozempic.” Suddenly, the medical-industrial complex had a treatment to market that would allow people to select the weight they wanted to be and the achieve it without the years of dietary changes and exercise that had previously been required for such change. No, I’m not in the “that’s cheating” camp when it comes to these drugs. Personally I’m a man who has struggled with weight loss and gain throughout my adult life so I have tons of empathy for the person who has tried the classic route and seen mediocre or no results. And looking at the obesity rates in society, frankly I think medical intervention is more than justified. We talk about all the comorbidities where obesity is a factor, and the death rates connected to that constellation of health conditions and is it any wonder the medical community is grabbing onto a treatment that can help or eliminate the issue (from a biomechanical perspective anyway)? What we don’t talk about often though is the mental aspect of this type of change. There is a reason gastric bypass or lap-band patients have always undergone required mental health care as part of the transition they are making. I think there is something to that practice, and I think if you are one of the people taking this route to changing your body and health then I have something to offer to magnify the lasting nature of this change and effect when you are able to cycle down or off those meds.
As these drugs become more widely available, another, quieter conversation is beginning to take place—one that has less to do with the scale, and more to do with the mind.
Many people using GLP-1 agonists report a range of uncomfortable symptoms early in their treatment: persistent nausea, bloating, an almost painful sense of fullness. For some, this discomfort is a deterrent; for others, it’s a revelation. It’s not that these sensations are entirely new—but that they’re being noticed for the first time and in a different way.
When Nausea tells the truth
GLP-1 agonists work in several ways. They slow gastric emptying, increase insulin secretion, and reduce hunger signals sent to the brain. But perhaps most profoundly, they change how the body feels in response to food—especially when we eat past the point of physical need. In this way, the nausea many users experience isn’t a random side effect—it’s a physiological message.
The message is this: “You’ve eaten more than your body wants to handle right now.”
That bloated, heavy feeling isn’t caused by the drug alone. It’s the delayed processing of food that exposes how disconnected many of us have become from our satiety signals. In short, the medication is revealing—not creating—a problem. This insight challenges the traditional narrative that overeating is purely a matter of poor willpower or indulgence. Instead, it suggests something far more subtle and psychologically complex: much of what we call “eating” is actually habitual behavior, not a conscious response to hunger.
Consider this: how many people after a major famine event in their country (say the American Great Depression, the Ukrainian Xolodomor, or for a more modern example the famines in Somalia and South Sudan) insist on their children eating every morsel put in front of them? Now, how many of those children pass on similar habits to their children because that’s how they were raised? These are extreme examples but they have something in common: a major incentivizing of people ignoring when they feel full. Now, imagine people who grew up ignoring satiety signals who suddenly start taking medication that slows digestion and is meant to make them remain full longer. That person isn’t accustomed to stopping when the body says stop, they are used to stopping when they are done. Might that add up to eating until you’re physically uncomfortable? That seems like something a person should address.
Mindless eating: The original clue
This idea isn’t new. In his landmark book Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think, Dr. Brian Wansink details decades of research into how our eating decisions are shaped by invisible forces. People eat more when food is served in larger containers. They eat longer when music is playing. They underestimate how many calories they consume when foods are labeled “low fat.” And perhaps most importantly, they rarely eat because of true physical hunger.
Instead, Wansink found that people eat for reasons they’re not even aware of: boredom, sadness, celebration, habit, nostalgia, or just because the food is there. The average person makes over 200 food-related decisions each day, and most of them happen without conscious awareness.
I remember being handed Wansink’s book by a registered dietician as I prepared for major surgery almost a decade ago. What she was trying to warn me of with that were two things: 1) you’re about to have A LOT of sedentary free time while you’re recovering. I was going to be on bed rest for weeks, and it took 2 months to get me back up, even walking with crutches. My activity levels got so low that muscle atrophy was a serious concern. 2) You can’t continue eating the way you have been or you will come out of this recovery overfed and under muscled and your physical therapy will increase 10x in difficulty. Almost like the brave folks who realize after years of disordered behavior around food that something has to change. In other times this created the flood of new gym-goers after the New Year holiday. These days it gives rise to those same folks asking their doctor about whatever drug they think will get them on the right track. It’s not because they hate themselves, it’s not that they have been shamed into it, for many it’s because after years of trying and failing or of ignoring their doctor’s cautions about bodyweight they hear about a solution they think they can pull off. One that will prolong their lives and often improve their health.
This is part of why diets often fail—not because they don’t work, but because they don’t teach. They don’t address the unseen scripts running in the background of our daily lives. That’s where GLP-1 drugs have a unique potential—not only to interrupt these patterns, but to bring them into conscious awareness.
A forced pause
If traditional dieting is like driving with one foot on the brake and one on the gas, GLP-1 medications are more like pulling the car into park. They interrupt the eating cycle in a way that creates space for reflection and deliberate cognitive work.
Patients often find that the foods they once craved now feel unpleasant. The sheer volume of food they used to consume now leaves them nauseated. This physiological resistance creates a moment of pause—a rare chance to ask, “Why was I eating that way to begin with?” Let’s be clear: this isn’t a time for the patient to beat themselves up because their food decisions didn’t support what they wanted. This is a chance for them to look at their relationship with food with some of the pressure taken out of the equation.
That question is crucial. While the drug can help reduce body weight, it doesn’t do the psychological work. It doesn’t resolve emotional eating, teach portion awareness, or help patients respond to boredom with anything other than food. And without that inner work, many will return to their old habits once the medication stops. Weight may come back, but more importantly, so does the unconscious eating behavior that created the weight gain in the first place. What’s the point of undertaking the treatment if you’re not going to do the work of making sure it sticks?
The cognitive work of losing weight
Here’s where psychology enters the frame. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), narrative therapy, and mindfulness-based approaches all recognize the role of automatic thoughts and behaviors in our lives. In the context of food, these disciplines offer powerful tools to understand and reshape the patterns that medications like Ozempic reveal.
The real opportunity lies in the intersection of biology and behavior. GLP-1 medications lower the body’s resistance to weight loss—but patients must lower their resistance to awareness. This means:
Learning to distinguish between emotional hunger and physical hunger
Identifying triggers that lead to mindless snacking or bingeing
Developing rituals that replace eating with more constructive responses
Reflecting on the stories we tell ourselves about food, fullness, and control
Therapy, coaching, or structured self-reflection during the use of GLP-1 drugs can be transformative. Patients are more receptive because the consequences of their old eating habits are now felt viscerally. The bloated, uncomfortable sensation that follows a mindless meal becomes a learning moment rather than just a setback.
Can we come off these drugs?
This is the million-dollar question: once a patient has reached their target weight, can they maintain it without the medication?
The answer, in part, depends on whether they’ve addressed the mindless eating patterns that led to weight gain in the first place. GLP-1 drugs are not a cure. They are a tool. And like any tool, their long-term effectiveness depends on whether we learn how to work alongside them.
Some patients will cycle on and off these medications repeatedly, frustrated by rebound weight gain and confused about why the drug “stopped working.” The truth is, the drug didn’t fail—the behavioral work was never done. The drug did exactly what it was designed to do, which is purely physical rather than cognitive.
Others will treat the medication as a temporary support system while they do the harder, deeper work of redefining their relationship with food. For these patients, the weight loss may be just one part of a larger transformation—one that includes self-awareness, emotional regulation, and a restored connection to the body’s natural signals.
Final thoughts: A wake-up call, not a lifelong prescription
The conversation around GLP-1 agonists often centers on rapid results. But perhaps their greatest power isn’t in how fast they work—it’s in what they reveal. They force us to reckon with the ways we’ve learned to ignore our bodies, suppress discomfort, and respond to everything from loneliness to celebration with food.
If Mindless Eating taught us that most eating is unconscious, then the GLP-1 drugs are turning a spotlight on that fact. They’re showing us what we’ve been doing all along—and giving us a rare opportunity to change it.
The challenge now is to match this medical intervention with mental intention. Because real transformation doesn’t come from what we suppress, but from what we understand.
William Kimmins, Licensed Mental Health Therapist
Will Kimmins is a leader in treating chronic stress and trauma, especially in people who have been exposed to traumatic events repeatedly over long periods. After his career as a special operator in the US military, Will saw the shortfalls of the mental health field when engaging with people like him and decided to do something about it. Will founded his private mental health practice to engage with people who had survived chronic trauma exposure differently, increasing their competence and agency so that their healing comes from within. Will is also credentialed for animal-assisted therapy and continues to find ways to help people like him connect more effectively with the care they need.
