Episode 143 - Food Noise, Cravings & GLP-1s: What’s Actually Happening?
Episode 143 Show Notes
In this episode, Tiffany dives into one of the most talked-about — and emotionally charged — topics in the health and wellness space right now: food noise. Is it a real physiological experience? Is it just rebranded cravings? And where do GLP-1 medications actually fit into the conversation?
Tiffany unpacks the cultural shift that has caused many women to fear hunger, appetite, and cravings altogether, while also acknowledging that for some people, constant thoughts about food can feel genuinely overwhelming. She explores the difference between normal human appetite and the patterns that can develop from chronic dieting, blood sugar instability, stress, nutrient deficiencies, sleep deprivation, and years of restriction.
She also gives a nuanced perspective on GLP-1 medications — not from a place of shame or hype, but from a physiological and behavioral standpoint. Rather than framing these medications as “good” or “bad,” Tiffany discusses how they may create enough mental space for some people to finally build consistency and healthier routines, while also emphasizing the importance of understanding what’s happening underneath the surface.
This episode is ultimately about reclaiming a healthier relationship with hunger, food, and your body — without spiraling into fear, obsession, or black-and-white thinking.
Key Takeaways
Hunger is not a character flaw. Tiffany challenges the idea that normal appetite should automatically be labeled as “food noise.”
Cravings can come from many different sources. Blood sugar crashes, sleep deprivation, stress, chronic restriction, and nutrient deficiencies can all influence eating behaviors.
GLP-1s don’t magically create discipline. For some people, they simply reduce enough mental overwhelm to help healthier habits finally stick.
Modern culture thrives on instant gratification. Tiffany discusses how dopamine-driven behaviors extend far beyond food and affect self-regulation overall.
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Tiffany Wickes: Today, we are talking about one of the most controversial topics in health and fitness right now, food noise. So let's get into it.
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Tiffany Wickes: Okay, first off, is it real? Or is it just rebranded cravings? Are we pathologic…
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Tiffany Wickes: Let me try that again.
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Tiffany Wickes: Are we pathologizing normal human hunger? And where do GLP-1 medications actually fit into this conversation?
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Tiffany Wickes: Because I'll be honest, some of the messaging around this topic makes me deeply uncomfortable. Women are being taught, in my opinion, to fear their appetite, to fear cravings, to fear hunger, and while I absolutely believe that some people benefit tremendously from GLP-1 medications.
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Tiffany Wickes: I also think we need to be a little bit more honest around this conversation and what's actually happening physiologically, emotionally, behaviorally, and culturally.
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Tiffany Wickes: So…
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Tiffany Wickes: When did normal appetite become a disorder? So, first off, appetite is normal, okay? Hunger is a survival mechanism, not a character flaw.
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Tiffany Wickes: Women, you have been conditioned to view hunger as weakness, and diet culture has praised under-eating for decades. So now, social media labels every urge to eat as, quote.
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Tiffany Wickes: Food noise. Listen, somewhere along the way, normal human appetite started to get treated like a software glitch.
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Tiffany Wickes: enjoying food is completely normal. It's always been a social… I mean, to a lot of degree, it's a social event. So if you think about food when dieting is normal, if you're in a deficit, to be hungry is normal. If you have increased hunger during stress or sleep deprivation.
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Tiffany Wickes: That's also normal. When you're training hard, and your appetite increases, there's a reason for it. So, really, is food noise just rebranded cravings?
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Tiffany Wickes: So, sort of, but not entirely. I'll explain my thoughts on it. So, the old terminology would include, like, cravings, emotional eating, binge tendencies, blood sugar crashes, nutrient deficiencies, chronic restriction, rebound, and that's when you're restricting so heavily that you, like, blah, you know, go crazy and then blow up and start eating everything in sight.
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Tiffany Wickes: And now, many people are using the term food noise as a catch-all term, so cravings can absolutely be influenced by inadequate protein, mineral deficiencies, blood sugar instability, overconsumption of ultra-processed foods, sleep deprivation.
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Tiffany Wickes: Chronic stress, increased cortisol that doesn't recover very well, like, dopamine dysregulation, chronic dieting, chasing the deficit, always.
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Tiffany Wickes: And it's important to balance out that not every craving means that your body needs more magnesium, not every appetite signal, it means you have some medical condition either.
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Tiffany Wickes: So, here's what GLP-1s are actually doing for you.
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Tiffany Wickes: Glp-1 medications are slowing your gastric emptying, okay? They're reducing your appetite, it increases your fullness signals, and it reduces the reward response.
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Tiffany Wickes: to food for many people. So, you know, salt and sugar are two high reward system responses, and it sort of dulls that. So, an important point here is for women, this creates enough mental, submission that
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Tiffany Wickes: allows them, oftentimes, to finally follow a nutrition plan, and to regulate their intake, and to stop compulsive eating patterns, and to build consistently… consistency in your routine. So, for some people, GLP-1s don't create discipline, they just create
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Tiffany Wickes: Breathing room for discipline to finally stick, alright?
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Tiffany Wickes: Now, discipline is something that I think is… some people are born with it, just being highly disciplined individuals, but others, this is a muscle we have worked over time, right? Learning to say no, learning to wait, in a world now where I feel like everyone has this…
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Tiffany Wickes: like, immediate gratification. Like, if you want to look at porn, you just pull it up on your phone, boom, it's there. Like, you don't even have to go to a store and go into the back room like a creep to get it. Like, it's just available. If you want any meal.
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Tiffany Wickes: ever. They go, hmm, I'm craving chimichangas. I'd like some chimichangas here in about 20 minutes. Boom! You can have it delivered to your doorstep. Everything is so immediate that
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Tiffany Wickes: culturally, we've just not been conditioned to practice discipline. So it is not a huge surprise to me that now when it comes to, getting healthier and losing extra body fat and building muscle.
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Tiffany Wickes: people just don't have that discipline muscle, and it has to be worked. And unfortunately, if the discipline's not there in the beginning, GLP-1s can create space for you to start to build that muscle, okay? Because you will have to build it. You can't rely on GLP-1s forever to do it for you.
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Tiffany Wickes: So, honest perspective, I don't like the fear-mongering around normal hunger. I don't like the over-medicalization of somebody having an appetite.
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Tiffany Wickes: The idea that medication alone equals health is not sitting well with me, and I think coaches… well, I'm hearing a lot more now, but a lot of coaches are ignoring the muscle loss and nutrition quality.
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Tiffany Wickes: So, you know, appetite suppression is not the same thing as metabolic health. Just because you push down the fact that you're hungry doesn't make your body
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Tiffany Wickes: not hungry and not require nutrients to process. So, we gotta talk about why protein matters. Listen, when you are on a GLP-1 and you're losing weight quickly, you are losing muscle with that. You just can't lose fat that quickly. It just doesn't happen, because fat is your body's, reserve system. Like, it…
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Tiffany Wickes: it doesn't want to wave the white flag and release that, because that's what keeps it safe long-term, since there are more calories and fat than there are in carbohydrates or proteins. It wants to hold onto that fat for as long as it can, especially when you're
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Tiffany Wickes: put into a caloric deficit with the appetite suppression. You're just not eating as much, so when you go into a calorie deficit, or your body feels fuller longer because the gastric emptying has slowed down, then…
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Tiffany Wickes: It doesn't mean your body doesn't need those calories just because you have cushed the entire system that says, hey, we're hungry, we need to be fueled.
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Tiffany Wickes: So, protein is 100% going to matter, because that's going to help preserve the muscle, and maybe even grow some if you're resistance training, which brings me to my next point. Why are you not resistance training? You have to, you have to, you have to, have to. It is not negotiable if you want long-term health. It really isn't.
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Tiffany Wickes: Rapid weight loss without muscle preservation is going to be very dangerous for you later on, and maintaining
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Tiffany Wickes: a nutrient deficit, you know, and a caloric deficit, because they kind of go hand in hand, is going to be bad for you long-term. Bad for your bones, bad for your heart, bad for your entire skeletal muscle system. It's just going to be all bad news, and when it comes to your metabolic downregulation, it's going to be very difficult to recover that if we crash it into the ground, okay?
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Tiffany Wickes: So look, no shame, but also, you can't escape responsibility, okay?
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Tiffany Wickes: You can support
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Tiffany Wickes: yourself while using a GLP-1 without pretending that your habits don't matter, okay? They do. Your nutrition absolutely matters, even on a… especially on a GLP-1.
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Tiffany Wickes: Strength training is 100% going to matter. So, medication is going to help open the door for you, but you still have to walk through it. You still have to learn the basics of nutrition. You still have to consume calories that fuel your body,
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Tiffany Wickes: I don't want you to feel any shame in it, though, okay? I'm not superior because I have a greater level of discipline, and I know that I do. That is unequivocally true. I have proved that over and over and over and over again, and if you're saying, I just can't do this without medication.
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Tiffany Wickes: yeah, there's some degree of, personal discipline that you don't yet have, and I'm not saying it's your fault. Maybe you weren't even raised with it. Maybe everything you ever wanted was handed to you at the exact moment you wanted it. Or, when you want a coffee, you get in your car and you go get a coffee, whether you got the funds for it or not. Credit cards!
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Tiffany Wickes: But listen, maybe you just haven't had the opportunity to build that muscle. That's okay, you really can. Just like every other muscle in your body, the discipline muscle is one that you're going to have to start flexing, you're going to have to practice it, and you can't rely on the drug to do that to you forever. And if you do, I promise you it's going to turn out very badly.
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Tiffany Wickes: No shame, seriously, no superiority, but there are no shortcuts either. There's no outsourcing your health forever, okay? Use it as a tool, but I think the real answer is gonna lie somewhere in the middle.
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Tiffany Wickes: I don't believe women should feel ashamed for being hungry, or having cravings, or needing support, or even using the medication for a time. But I also don't believe that
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Tiffany Wickes: Women should be taught that their bodies are broken simply because they have an appetite, okay? Or because someday you want a cheeseburger! That's okay! Combine that with leg day!
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Tiffany Wickes: The goal shouldn't be becoming women who never want food. That's ridiculous. It's a biological necessity. The goal should be becoming a woman who understands her body, who fuels.
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Tiffany Wickes: yourself.
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Tiffany Wickes: Through all of the seasons of life, you build strength, you regulate your habits, you practice discipline, and you make empowered decisions with or without the medication.
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Tiffany Wickes: Okay?
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Tiffany Wickes: I know that was a lot, and unfortunately, there's a lot of people who disagree online right now, and there's a lot of confusion, and what I'm experiencing with friends who talk about their family members who are using GLP-1 medications is that
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Tiffany Wickes: they are choosing between a gym membership or a GLP-1. They're choosing between a coach or a GLP-1. And because
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Tiffany Wickes: a coach feels like the extra, they're just choosing the drug. And because you will lose mass overall, weight, what that weight is, I'm telling you, is more likely muscle than fat, they're choosing the weight loss.
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Tiffany Wickes: Because they don't understand composition. They think when they're getting smaller, like, oh, look, I'm losing weight, I've heard people say that, I'm losing weight. I'm like, and?
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Tiffany Wickes: what kind of weight is it, though? Like, that matters. The composition of what the weight is that you're losing, that matters. So when I hear somebody, I've lost weight, I'm like, next? Like, what's the next part? Like, what kind of weight are we talking about?
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Tiffany Wickes: So…
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Tiffany Wickes: that all matters, okay? And I don't want to scare anybody, but I am here to tell you that if you've been on a GLP-1 for a minute, and you don't have coaching, you're not focusing on your nutrition, you're not doing resistance training, you don't have an off-ramp to using these medications.
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Tiffany Wickes: your body is going to crash. You cannot do this forever. It has to end, and you have to start practicing how you revamp your entire lifestyle to support that, because as soon as you go off of it, most people rebound, and they gain
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Tiffany Wickes: Way more weight, all the weight that they lost, weight meaning all of it, they gain it all back in fat.
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Tiffany Wickes: And at that point, your metabolism is going to be so messed up, like a vase that you drop onto the ground, putting those pieces back together again might be impossible.
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Tiffany Wickes: So, there it is. I hope that's helped you think a little bit, that I am 100%… I'm going to repeat it again, because I think it bears worth repeating, because a lot of people are…
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Tiffany Wickes: there are some very loud, proud, obnoxiously, injecting people online, but then there are other people who are feeling kind of shameful about it, and I don't think you should feel shame. I think the more power and the more knowledge you have, the less shame you will feel. When you understand that this is just another tool, like intermittent fasting, like…
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Tiffany Wickes: carb restriction, you know, prior… periodization in training, like, it's all just tools to help
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Tiffany Wickes: move your body along when your body, by and large, is pretty resistant to change. Not sure if you have noticed, because if you didn't notice, why are you on the drug to begin with? Of course you've noticed. Your body's very resistant to change.
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Tiffany Wickes: So, once you have more power and you understand how to do that, I think that gives you a lot more peace, and then gives you a roadmap to come off of the drugs and start learning how to do this on your own, because I do believe everybody can do it on their own, it's just everybody's own journey is going to look a little different. And…
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Tiffany Wickes: You know, yeah, there are a… there's definitely a crowd where they don't want to do the work that goes into it, they just want to look smaller and, you know, be damned. The downside effects of it. Right now, they just want a smaller waist size.
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Tiffany Wickes: And to that, I say, good luck, my friend. I don't think that's gonna end well for you when you're 60.
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Tiffany Wickes: Alright, if you have any more questions, if you have comments, if you think I'm just totally out to lunch and you hate it, let me know. Always welcome to hear your thoughts in the DMs, on the socials, so hit me up on Instagram at Tiffanyell Wicks. Facebook, it is just what it is, Facebook, Tiffany Wicks. And as always, thank you for being here, stay strong, keep showing up. Talk to you guys later. Bye!