HSOS #7: Quieting “Food Noise”: What GLP-1s Turn Down—and What You Must Turn Up

GLP-1s might be the hottest topic in health right now, with names like Ozempic, Wegovy, and Mounjaro splashed across the headlines. But what do they actually do—and what should you know before considering them? In this episode, I break it down in real-talk style, with simple analogies (think thermostats and traffic cops) to explain how these meds quiet food noise, steady blood sugar, and in some cases, deliver big weight loss results. 

We’ll talk about the wins, the “watch-outs,” and why your muscle and metabolism deserve center stage if you’re on one of these medications. I’ll also share my concerns about what happens after you stop and how to protect yourself from the “then what?” problem. Most of all, I want you to walk away informed, confident, and ready to have better conversations with your doctor—not overwhelmed by science speak. 

Let’s talk. 

Welcome to Her Season of Strength—where women over 40 reclaim their bodies, their energy, and their voices, without apologies. I'm Kim Duffy—registered dietitian, personal trainer, mom, and your biggest hype woman when it comes to aging like you mean it. 

This show isn’t about chasing skinny or counting wrinkles. It’s about building real strength—physical, emotional, and hormonal. Each week, I’ll share straight-talking nutrition tips, sustainable fitness strategies, and conversations that help you feel powerful in your skin once again. 

Menopause is not an ending, it is only the beginning. This is your season of strength. 

Here’s what I cover:  

• A little life update: I’ll be in Huntsville meeting my very first grandson! 
• Why I’m talking GLP-1s (Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, Zepbound) without the science overwhelm 
• The thermostat + traffic cop trick that makes blood sugar and appetite finally make sense 
• What happens when GLP-1 and GIP team up in the newer dual meds 
• The real-life wins: weight loss, steadier energy, even heart protection 
• The flip side: nausea, tummy troubles, gallbladder drama, and more you’ll want to know 
• Why “compounded” versions aren’t the same as FDA-approved ones 
• The biggie no one talks about—what happens after you stop 
• My dietitian’s take: how to protect your muscle and metabolism while you’re on these meds 
• The 5 Day Midlife Momentum Challenge starts September 15, 2025 and is for women age 50+ who are ready to get consistent with strength training and fueling their body for the long term. 

Links & resources for this episode:

Fit After 50 Plus Program: 8-Week Nutrition Coaching & Fitness Program for women 50+. Next session starts winter of 2026. Join the interest list today for the best bonuses and discounts offered.

Free cheat sheet: "20 Tips to Crushing Menopause"

Join my free weekly newsletter list and get a new high protein recipe sent to your inbox every Thursday.

Find me on social media: Instagram I Facebook I Tiktok

Transcript

 [00:00:00] Hi there, and welcome to her season of Strength, where women over 40 reclaim their bodies, their energy, and their voices, without apologies. I'm Kim Duffy, registered dietitian, personal trainer, mom, and your biggest hype woman. When it comes to aging like you mean it, this show isn't about chasing skinny or counting wrinkles. It's about building real strength, physical, emotional, and hormonal. Each week, I'll share straight talking, nutrition tips, sustainable fitness strategies. And conversations that help you feel powerful in your skin. Once again, menopause isn't an ending. It's only the beginning. This is your season of strength. 

Hello and welcome back to her season of Strength. I'm so happy you're here, and thank you for taking just a few minutes out of your busy days to tune in as you're listening when this drops on September 11th. A little personal update. I will be in Huntsville meeting my very first grandson to say I'm. Excited does not even begin to express how I [00:01:00] feel about becoming a grandma for the first time. 

And in just a few days, on September 15th, the 5 Day Midlife Momentum Challenge kicks off. This is the free combined exercise and nutrition coaching program where you get to. Five days of workouts on your own personalized phone app. You can do 'em whenever and wherever is most convenient for you. It's this challenge is it's the perfect reset for women over 50 to get consistent with quality nutrition and strength training for free. I'll drop the link in the show notes. 

So today I wanna chat about a class of medications that are on fire right now and making headlines under names like Ozempic, Wegovy, and Rybelsus. Before we go further, let me be clear. I am not a doctor and nothing in this podcast is medical advice. I am not recommending or prescribing medications to you. My goal is to give you clear research, back information in a way that makes sense. To you so that you can have more informed [00:02:00] conversations with your own healthcare provider. If you're wondering whether a GLP one is right for you, please reach out to your primary care provider or another qualified medical professional to discuss. So how do these medications actually work? Let's start with the basics. So think of your blood sugar, like the temperature in your house. Two hormones act like the thermostat. One is insulin, which is the air conditioner that cools things down. When your blood sugar runs high after a meal and glucagon is that furnace that kicks in when sugar dips too low, keeping you from crashing. Together, these two hormones keep the system balanced. Now, here's where GLP one and GIP come in. After you eat these gut hormones, which are naturally made in your body are like the traffic cops that show up at the busiest of the intersections. GLP one slows things down so that food leaves your stomach more [00:03:00] gradually. You feel fuller longer, and it signals the thermostat to cool things off by helping insulin work better while also turning down glucagon so that your liver isn't pushing out extra sugar that you do not need. So GIP is that other hormone and it is short for glucose dependent. Insulinotropic. Polypeptide, Ooh, say that five times really fast. It's that partner officer down the street on his own. He is not as powerful for appetite, but he helps to signal insulin to do its job even better and smooths out fat metabolism. So when we combine GLP one and GIP. They work together like in the newer dual medications like Tirzepatide, sold as Mounjaro for type two diabetes and Zep Bound for weight management. They're basically coordinating traffic flow and keeping that thermostat steady. [00:04:00] The result, it's less food noise, more stable blood sugar, and often bigger weight loss results. 

As a dietitian and trainer with over 30 years of experience, I wanna give you the whole picture, the benefits, the risks, what we don't know yet about long-term use and how to protect your muscle and metabolism while you're taking these medications. So let's dive in. 

First of all, how do these medications work? First of all, they're said to turn down the food noise. This has gotten a lot of controversy out there, but they act in your brain to reduced appetite and cravings and to cue those fullness signals. They affect your blood sugar in that they increase insulin when your blood sugar is high. They decrease the glucagon like we were talking about, which slows that stomach emptying and causes steadier energy and less grazing and snacking. Tirzepatide adds that second signal in [00:05:00] there called the GIP that can actually amplify your weight and your A1C decrease or changes. All right, so what does research show when it comes to the benefits of these medications? Weight loss averages on Semaglutide 2.4 milligrams. They're actually showing a double digit percentage body weight decrease in 68 weeks. And that was a study from the New England Journal of Medicine. Now Tirzepatide, that's that one that has both of those hormones in it, they say that the studies have shown about a 20% weight loss at 72 weeks. Now that's, it's a significant amount of time, right? In obese patients without diabetes. And sometimes the head to head shows larger losses than semaglutide in some studies. Next when it comes to heart protection, [00:06:00] wegovy can lower major cardiovascular events like heart attacks in people with established cardiovascular disease and overweight or obesity, and it's actually FDA approved for that cardiovascular indication. And then lastly, we see metabolic improvements. Obviously we see a lower A1C. So hemoglobin A1C, and if you didn't listen to last week's episode on blood sugar and hormones, you can go back to that and I can put the link in the show notes. But your hemoglobin A1C just tells us what are your blood sugars doing over the previous three months? And especially after menopause or post menopause, we can see that A1C going up. And we know that, as it goes up. It makes us at higher risk of type two diabetes. So we do see that it lowers hemoglobin A1C and we also see a decrease in visceral fat. And what that means is that's that fat that surrounds our organs. And when we do have more fat around our organs, we are gonna see that we [00:07:00] are at higher risk of diabetes, of cardiovascular disease, of just chronic illness in general, as well as cancers. 

So we talked about benefits. What are some of the risks and cautions? Sometimes, I would say frequently we do see gastrointestinal effects like nausea, vomiting, diarrhea. But we find that when the doses are ramped up slowly, that can make a difference. That can decrease some of those GI side effects. But regardless, we are gonna feel those. Why? Because it is slowing digestion. It is keeping, holding things in your stomach for longer. And sometimes, especially, depending on how much you eat, it can make you feel nauseous if things are just sitting there and it, and sometimes you can vomit. So next, some of the risks are if you have any gallbladder type disease, that risk is higher with these medications, especially at those higher doses, and especially [00:08:00] after we've used it for longer periods of time. And especially when we're using it more for those weight loss specific indications versus diabetes. So one thing you can do is, watch for any kind of right upper quadrant pain, so right under that rib. If you're having a lot of pain there, that can indicate that something's gone with your gallbladder. But like I said, that would be definitely something you'd wanna be talking to your doctor about or going and getting checked out next in diabetic retinopathy. So that's just a complication that can occur in with diabetes and that can affect your eyesight. And we can't, we do see that that can be affected with that rapid improvement in your blood sugars. And I, like I said, that was in the new England Journal of Medicine, so it's something that you definitely wanna talk to your doctor about if you have any kind of diabetic retinopathy. Next, it can slow down your, the emptying from your stomach and can cause something called gastroparesis, which is when you have [00:09:00] chronic slow emptying from your stomach, which makes you chronically feel full and nauseous. Next is pancreatitis. Data's mixed on this, but we do find that overall risk signal is low, but it's clinically important. So if you have a history of pancreatitis or if you're having a lot of abdominal pain, you're gonna wanna definitely seek care for that. Because that is not a comfortable inflammation of the pancreas can cause a lot of pain. Okay, next is thyroid cancers. You're gonna wanna make sure to talk to your doctor about it if you have any kind of personal or family history of any types of thyroid cancers. 'cause they do see an increase with that. And then if you're having surgery they, there is some guidance, around that and most patients can continue to take their GLP ones around surgery, but a lot of times you need to talk to your doctor about this because since it [00:10:00] is slowing what is leaving your stomach, a lot of times they'll have you not eat after midnight, maybe the night before. If you're on a GLP one, they might have you hold the GLP one. A week before, or if you are continuing to take it, they might have you take like more of a clear liquid diet for a day or two beforehand. 'cause they don't want anything sitting in your stomach. 'cause that can increase risk of heaven forbid you throw up or you aspirate after surgery. We wanna make sure that to keep you safe if you're having any kind of surgery. So definitely talk to your doctor if you have any plans, surgeries scheduled to see what you should be doing if you are taking the GLP ones. 

So now let's talk just a second about two different types of GLP ones, compounded ones versus FDA approved. And these are very important because we know that, the Food and Drug Association when they're approving medications, they undergo rigorous safety and quality checks. So compound inversions. Are cheaper because they are [00:11:00] not FDA approved for safety and efficacy. So you wanna make sure to to talk to your doctors about that and see, how important it is for you if you should be taking, more of the FDA approved versus the compounded formula. The FDA has flagged dosing errors and fraudulent kind of research only in quotations products. And. It, it was out of there was so many shortages on some of the brand new products, and that's where the compounded products came about because they could get them, they could get them faster, but they have found that there might be some issues there. So the bottom line is, using the FDA approved brands from legitimate pharmacies, be wary of the. Generic semaglutide or tirzepatide claims. And just make sure that you're getting your medications from reputable sources and that you are being followed by a doctor. 

So the next problem, and that I worry a little bit about as a dietician is the Then what problem?[00:12:00] So when we stop these medications. Frequently weight comes back on without those strong habit systems in place. So they have done some research and shown that many people who have gotten off these medications, about two thirds of them regained the weight that they had lost within a year off the. And that's, that's significantly, that's concerning to me. That's similar to me as, yo-yo dieting, when we go on these diets that we're losing the weight very quickly, unfortunately we can lose muscle with that. And so after all is said and done, we lose the weight quickly. Then maybe we go back to what we were doing before. We've regained that weight plus a little bit more, and, we're not burning as many calories as we're, so it's gonna be a lot easier for us to gain weight, and it's gonna be a lot harder for us to lose that weight. 

So what's really important when it comes to being on these medications is have a plan in place before you start tapering. And that's gonna include your [00:13:00] nutrition, your resistance training, may, getting good sleep. Managing high stress and having a solid support system to help you hold that line. So these are habits that we want to start working on immediately when we start on this medication and before we start losing that weight. 'cause we really wanna focus on muscle first and protecting that metabolism while we're on the GLP ones. So we are gonna plan, if you are losing and if you have a larger weight to lose. You are gonna lose muscle. It's just, that's just part of weight loss is if you're lose, have a lot of weight to lose and if you are lose losing it faster, we are gonna lose some muscle. And that muscle is what burns calories. And so that is gonna affect metabolism. So a greater amount of it is going to be fat, but muscle is so important for metabolism as well as longevity. As our goal is to age well. So we wanna make sure that we are maintaining as much as muscle as we can because we know that we [00:14:00] naturally are gonna lose it as we get older. So what is gonna preserve that muscle best while you are losing weight? It's gonna be progressive strength training. You've heard me talk about this so many times, but making sure that we're challenging those muscles. And sometimes people on these medications, they don't feel like working out. Especially if you're losing weight quickly, it can make you more tired. You can feel a little sick or nauseous. People can have headaches, makes you not wanna be exercising. But it's all the more important for you to be doing something, moving your body, trying to get in some resistance training and. Making sure you're getting in good protein to help to maintain that muscle. And that means more than 1 to 1.2 grams per kilogram body weight per day. That's a starting target for many adults. And then also just making sure that you're finding ways just to move more, also getting outside, going for walks doing yard work, dancing, I don't know, whatever is your favorite type of movement, but just trying to move more because exercise is going to blunt that lean [00:15:00] mass loss, okay? It's gonna slow down the lean mass loss and really help you to focus on the fat loss. So a practical place to start is trying to get in maybe two to three days a week of strength training. Even if you're starting with maybe 15 to 30 minutes each. It doesn't have to be a 60 or a 90 minute workout, and it doesn't have to be five or six days a week. If you can start with two, that's fantastic. Okay. Plus trying to just get in the daily walks, the daily steps, and making sure that you're anchoring protein at every meal. So where is my protein coming from? And then build your meal around that. So who would be who might consider GLP ones? First of all if you're considered obese or overweight. Now granted, that's, I don't like BMI numbers, especially if you have complications. If you are a type two diabetic and you know you need to get down, you A1C. If you have cardiovascular disease with overweight and [00:16:00] obesity, if you have other issues that you know that cause you need to, decrease your A1C or you need to decrease your weight because of, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, those kind of different risk factors it might be something that you can chat with your doctor about to see if it would be a good option for you. So who should avoid? Or seek specialty input from their doctor when it comes to getting on these kind of medications? Definitely someone that has any kind of thyroid cancer, either personally or in their family. If you have active gallbladder or pancreas pancreatitis history. If you have significant diabetic retinopathy, we talked about that was, the eyesight complications from diabetes and obviously if pregnancy or even with infertility or if you're, working to get pregnant GLP one's. I guess that's definitely a conversation to have with your doctor. Sometimes, if improving your A1C [00:17:00] and losing weight to make it easier for you to get pregnant or to carry a baby, that might be a, definitely a conversation you wanna have with your doctor. 

Just circling back around. We know that these medications, they can quiet the food noise, they can unlock and give you that push forward, that momentum, right? But it's so important for us to build those habits. When you do have that momentum, when you do, you are feeling good. When you are seeing weight loss, making sure that you're really focusing on what is my plan. For when I do start weaning from these medications, or if I do plan on now, if you're a type two diabetic, if this is something that you're gonna be on for the rest of your life, it can be, these medications can be thought of as chronic illness. Some people look at it that way and some doctors look at it that way. And so they might recommend that, you stay on this medication, some form of it for the rest of your life, but other people that are on it to lose [00:18:00] 2040, 60 pounds you might reach that your goal wait and. No longer wanna spend the money on this drug, and so wanting to go off of it, the building, those habits are just absolutely important, right? We need to make sure you're getting in enough protein. We need to make sure that you're doing resistance training to build up and maintain that muscle. Finding ways to just move more during the day. And then also taking care of your body, making sure that you are, like I said, getting in that sleep, managing those stress levels. All of this comes together in, in creating that lifestyle to maintain that healthy weight. So how will I be doing that next week while I am gonna be in Huntsville, hopefully snuggling a newborn little baby. I'm gonna hope to get in some short lifts. I'm gonna bring my workout bands, but I'm [00:19:00] still on a bit of a weight restriction since my surgery, even though I am bouncing back wonderfully. I get to go see the doctor here in a couple days for my four week follow up and hopefully she's gonna tell me that I can start lifting again. That would be amazing. But got a lovely little Airbnb there, so hopefully we'll be able to make some of my own meals and maybe do some cooking for my son and his wife so that they have some meals in the freezer to to eat on while the baby is, they're getting used to the, their new lives with that little one. 

Don't forget that the Five day free Midlife Momentum Challenge starts here in just a few days on Monday, September 15th. If you are looking for ways to, to build up those good habits or looking for ways to reset here this fall this is gonna be your perfect chance. I will put the link in the show notes and of course, always, if you enjoyed this. Podcast if you thought it was beneficial, I would love a rating or a review to [00:20:00] help other women to find the show and share this episode with a friend who might be curious about GLP ones, or maybe they've been thinking about one some and wanna get some of their questions answered before they head off to their doctor. Message me your questions or your thoughts on food noise because this is definitely a controversial topic.  There are people that have never had food noise that have no idea what it is, and other people who have struggled with it and they know exactly what you're talking about. 

So remember, this is all about progress over perfection. We're in this for the long haul and this is your season of strength. Have an amazing day.