Can You Be On A GLP-1 And Still Love Food?

Recent studies say that somewhere between 12 and 16 percent of Americans have used GLP-1s like Ozempic, Wegovy, or Zepbound. Many people who take these drugs report that the meds have fundamentally changed their relationship to food.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dan Pashman?

  If you're the kind of person who plans vacations around where you're gonna eat, Scottsdale belongs on your list. And look, whenever I go somewhere, my priority is on eating things that are the specialties of that region, eating things that I can't get at home. So when I'm in that area, I'm looking for the specialties of the region, like authentic southwestern and Native American flavors, modern Mexican cuisine, and as basic as it sounds, homemade, fresh flour tortillas. There's nothing like it, and you can't get them like that in the Northeast. And there is such a farm-to-table culture in Scottsdale, inspired by the Sonoran Desert. Everything is so fresh, the peppers, the spices, it is so vibrant. And Scottsdale's just got a great vibe. It's one of those places where breakfast becomes brunch, happy hour turns into dinner, and every patio has another amazing view.

• 0:45Dan Pashman?

  And explore Old Town Scottsdale between meals, or relax at a spa after brunch. From award-winning and James Beard-recognized chefs to neighborhood gems and nationally acclaimed restaurants, every meal in Scottsdale tells a story. So come hungry and leave with new favorite restaurants. Start planning your next culinary getaway at experiencescottsdale.com. I grew up on Lando Lake's cheese. I still remember going to the supermarket deli counter with my mom and her ordering Lando Lake's American cheese. And now, Lando Lake's cheese and butter are a huge part of my home. There are so many easy weeknight recipes using Lando Lake's cheese and butter that bring delicious restaurant taste right to your table. From chicken parm to weeknight shrimp pad Thai, Lando Lake's has plenty of quick

• 1:26Dan Pashman?

  dishes that'll have the whole dinner table talking. Visit landolakes.com/reцепes/collection for easy weeknight dinners.

• 1:46Dan Pashman?

  Please note, this episode contains discussion of mental health issues, suicide, and weight loss and body image, including specific weights.

• 1:55Dan Pashman?

  I believe strongly that when you're buying bagels from the store, everything bagels must be sequestered in a separate bag, because any bagel that touches an everything bagel becomes an everything bagel. Agree or disagree?

• 2:09Speaker 01

  I agree. It is, that to me is honestly like a kosher law.

• 2:15Dan Pashman?

  This is The Sporkful. It's not for foodies, it's for eaters. I'm Dan Pashman. Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people. And before we get into the show, I want to tell you about a super cool live event we have in the works. We're gonna be doing a run of shows at Little Island, which if you haven't been there, it's this beautiful park on a pier on the Hudson River that has performance spaces, food, and more. Now, these shows we're doing will be free, no tickets required. You can sit on the grass with a view of the water and hear us tell a story entitled "The Great Yogurt Feud." And yes, there will be free samples. These shows are August 28th, 29th, and 30th. That's Friday through Sunday, 5:00 PM. Same show every evening, so come on down and hang out with us at Little Island. All right, let's get to the show.

• 2:56Dan Pashman?

  Do you know anyone who's taking GLP-1, like Ozempic, or Wegovy, or Zepbound? Maybe you're taking one yourself. Not only do I hear more and more people talking about them, I hear more and more people saying they're on them. Recent studies say somewhere between 12% and 16% of Americans have used GLP-1s. Now, weight loss has always been a loaded subject. It touches on physical health, yes, but also stigma, shame, and mental health. Society tells us it's bad to be fat, it's bad to be unhealthy, but also getting medical help to address those issues is somehow cheating. If you can't do it through diet and exercise, you must not be trying hard enough. And yet, I've heard from so many people on GLP-1s who say these meds have helped them lose weight,

• 3:36Dan Pashman?

  in some cases, addressed health issues, and also fundamentally changed their relationship with food. Now, this is a big topic. We're not gonna cover all of it today. We're gonna hear about one person's experience, Jason Diamond. He's a writer who covers men's fashion, food, and a lot more. And he wrote a recent story in New York Magazine called "Eating with My Daughter and My Zepbound." I was curious to understand Jason's relationship with food, as well as various types of medication, from his childhood to today. How did he get to the point where he decided to go on a GLP-1? And how does he feel about it now that he's on one? So, we had a lot to discuss, but you know, this is The Sporkful, so I wanted to start with a subject near and dear to my heart: bagels. Jason, to start us off, I have a little surprise for you.

• 4:17Speaker 01

  Oh, boy.

• 4:18Dan Pashman?

  You wrote an article a few months back suggesting that the bagels on Long Island, the suburbs of New York City, were better, are better, than the bagels in the middle of New York City.

• 4:27Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 4:28Dan Pashman?

  And you took a drive out to Long Island, and you listed your top bagel places on Long Island.

• 4:33Speaker 01

  I did.

• 4:34Dan Pashman?

  And I live on Long Island now. Uh, I'm from New Jersey for the record, but I happen to live just down the street from one of the places that made your list.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 4:45Dan Pashman?

  Country Hot Bagels. Shout out to Country Hot.

• 4:47Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 4:47Dan Pashman?

  In Northport, New York.

• 4:49Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 4:49Dan Pashman?

  So.

• 4:50Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh. Wow.

• 4:54Dan Pashman?

  I got about a dozen bagels here.

• 4:57Speaker 01

  This is great. My daughter is gonna be like, super psyched. She's gonna try to eat all of these.

• 5:02Dan Pashman?

  Yeah.

• 5:02Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 5:03Dan Pashman?

  Now, I just bought these this morning.

• 5:05Speaker 01

  Oh, you got the Bialys?

• 5:06Dan Pashman?

  I got you a Bialy.

• 5:07Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 5:07Dan Pashman?

  I figured you'd be a Bialy guy.

• 5:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what I'm going for.

• 5:10Dan Pashman?

  Should we have a bite? I'm gonna, I'm gonna have one bite of my bagel.

• 5:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, this is great. God, this is, this is a Bialy. Oh, my God. Thank you.

• 5:18Dan Pashman?

  Sure.

• 5:19Speaker 01

  By the way, this is the second Bialy I've had. This is not the first Bialy I've had today.

• 5:23Dan Pashman?

  That's amazing.

• 5:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, which is, yeah.

• 5:25Dan Pashman?

  Jason, you are nothing if not on brand.

• 5:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's. It's very true.

• 5:31Dan Pashman?

  Jason grew up outside Chicago. He also visited New York a lot where he had family. He said that as a kid, he spent a lot of time with immigrants and old people, which instilled certain food memories in him.

• 5:41Speaker 01

  So I remember specifically opening my, my mother's father's refrigerator and not being tall enough to get to the top and seeing this like white paper with like the kind of blood. What is that? I remember getting up there and it was a tongue. It was cow tongue. So tongue is usually the first thing I go to.

• 5:59Dan Pashman?

  Like the whole tongue?

• 6:00Speaker 01

  It was a big, I mean, I was maybe five, so it, to me, it looked like the whole tongue. Um, but like stuff like that, like tongue, liver, and also I like vodka. Like when I, when I do drink, for some reason vodka just always kind of takes me back. So I knew a lot of like Soviets and a lot of Soviet Jews and a lot of Eastern Europeans, and they were always drinking vodka. Yeah, so like stuff like.

• 6:22Dan Pashman?

  And what about cooking? What kinds of things were being, being cooked?

• 6:26Speaker 01

  So obviously like my mom loved to make liver and onions and I hated it. And now I love to make it. My, my grandma, my nana never cooked anything, but had her famous chicken, which it was just chicken and. And everyone was like, this is the best chicken in the world, Nana's chicken. It was just a rotisserie chicken she got at Dominick's. And she never told anybody that, but she called it her chicken. You know, and I also grew up just around a lot of different immigrants. My next door neighbor was Indian and the other one was Mexican and the other one was Greek. And then, so I would, you know, go to their houses and I'd just kind of be able to eat all these different foods and, you know, it kind of, early on, kind of showed me like, everybody, we all have our own foods, but there's ways to sort of like, connect.

• 7:10Dan Pashman?

  A big part of the reason why Jason spent so much time with his grandparents and neighbors was that things at home weren't good. His parents weren't together. He had been diagnosed with ADD. And when he was eight, his parents were debating whether to put him on medication. His dad was against it.

• 7:25Speaker 01

  He was like, it's gonna turn him into a zombie, which, it's not, that's not what Ritalin does, but he, he definitely did not want me going on it. And my mom, I think my mom saw it as more of like a magic bullet, like, oh, it's gonna cure everything. So they just went back and forth and, you know, they, they used my doctors and my mental health as like, another bargaining chip in the, you know, who pays for what and who gets this, who gets that.

• 7:52Dan Pashman?

  Jason did eventually go on Ritalin, but it didn't help in the way his mother wanted it to. Then he was diagnosed with depression and started taking a variety of antidepressants, which only complicated things further.

• 8:01Speaker 01

  I was on Paxil, I was on Wellbutrin. They switched me from, I don't even, I was taking so many meds in my life that I forget what they all were, but I was literally like, taken off of one of them without like, any wind down time and I had to go through withdrawal. And I wanted to kill, I literally wanted to kill myself. I've never been a suicidal person, but I was like, this is the most miserable feeling I've ever felt in my life.

• 8:26Dan Pashman?

  Hearing all this, it's not hard to understand why Jason developed a skepticism of medication.

• 8:31Speaker 01

  I just didn't feel like it did anything for me. And I've always had this like, anti authoritarian streak. I've just never liked people telling me what I need or, you know, unless there's a good reason, like, why this other one didn't work, why is this gonna work? And nobody could ever explain that to me.

• 8:45Dan Pashman?

  Jason continued to struggle with mental health and dealing with his parents only compounded the issues.

• 8:50Speaker 01

  My dad's an alcoholic. He was pretty abusive mentally, physically. And he, when I was about 12, he kind of went over the edge and lost all custody of me.

• 9:02Speaker 01

  You know, and my mom... I don't think my mom and I ever really got along, you know, just from the, from the jump. I think she saw too much of, she saw too much of my father maybe in me. And I think she was just like, oh, sorry, now he's my problem? When I was about close to turning 16, like 15, 16, just one day my mom was like, I'm moving. I'm moving down south, South Carolina. I just want to get away from here. Uh, you can come or you don't, you don't have to. And I'm like, okay, I'm not coming. I don't know if it's like a generational thing, but I was the poster child of like one of those like late 1980s, early 90s kids who would just ride his bike for miles and, you know, come home whenever and stay up. You know, I just didn't have any real rules. So I'm like, I could do that.

• 9:47Dan Pashman?

  So you had a couple of months living in the house you'd been living with your mom.

• 9:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:51Dan Pashman?

  Uh, she's gone.

• 9:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:53Dan Pashman?

  And like, what were you eating?

• 9:55Speaker 01

  I worked in a McDonald's, which was problematic because at the time I believe I was, I wasn't vegan, but I was vegetarian. So I was just basically living off of, I would just take buns home. I would eat french fries and yeah, you know, I, I did grow up like in the punk scene. Not to like, make it like this, like hardscrabble life, but like my friends were like, we're going dumpster diving. I'd be like, okay, cool. Let's go get some dinged cans of beans and all. So it was just like stuff like that. I was just eating whatever. Didn't really put much thought to it. I ate, I ate almost everything with hot sauce on it though. So anything, I would just put hot sauce on everything. It was a meal.

• 10:31Dan Pashman?

  And then at a certain point, the house gets sold. Then where do you go?

• 10:35Speaker 01

  I don't remember the exact, because there was a lot of places, but I would stay with friends mostly. Uh, I stayed with a lot of friends.

• 10:43Dan Pashman?

  These were friends who were still in high school?

• 10:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:45Dan Pashman?

  And were you going to school?

• 10:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was going to school. So I actually stayed with a teacher. A teacher kind of figured out what was going on. And, you know, she passed away a few years ago, but to her, I remember when that book came out, somebody was like, you've had a lot of angels in your life and that thought has stuck with me and I've carried it with me because it's true. And she, she could have turned me in or, you know, she could have said something, but instead she's like, like, you need a place to stay, you know, just come stay with me. I want you to finish school. I want you to. You know, be able to come tell me that you, you know, got made something of your life. So I stayed with her for a while. I stayed with friends. I mean, I slept, I did sleep outside a few times because I had literally nowhere to go. Like a friend ditched me and

• 11:29Speaker 01

  I'm like, I have to sleep on a bench tonight. This is crazy. I slept on the beach a few nights. I got my own apartment when I was like 17.

• 11:39Dan Pashman?

  By the time he was 18, Jason was off all meds. After high school, he spent a little time in Florida, then moved to New York with dreams of becoming a writer. His first day in New York, he went drinking with friends and ended up at this Ukrainian diner called Odessa at 3 a.m.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  There's a whole history to that place. Like in that, what used to be Odessa, that was where Black Flag asked Henry Rollins to be their singer. Like, you know, there's like a punk rock, there's all these different like weird little pieces of history, but next door, there used to be Odessa Bar, which was like this weird, like, western themed, but it was Ukrainian. I don't remember what the deal was. And I, I knew the bartender, you know, he was a friend of mine. Like, we were all like, whatever, AOL friends or something. And he hooked us up, got us drunk and went next door. And I just remember the lighting was bad and there were people like speaking other languages. And I just remember getting

• 12:31Speaker 01

  however many pierogies we got and cream cheese, you know, onions, the whole, the whole thing.

• 12:38Dan Pashman?

  And potato pancakes.

• 12:39Speaker 01

  We got a lot because the waitress, I could tell she was, you know, Ukrainian and obviously did not want us there at three in the morning. But I'm like, oh, this is home. I'm home. I'm already home.

• 12:51Dan Pashman?

  In his first 24 hours in New York, Jason rediscovered his love of food. But that doesn't mean the clouds magically parted. He was still struggling to find his footing after the difficulties of his teenage years. He describes himself during that time as a terrible, obnoxious person who got drunk a lot and didn't really have any friends.

• 13:08Speaker 01

  I think I had arrested development. You know, I couldn't really hold down a job. I would steal from jobs, you know, if I needed extra money or I would do this, you know, it was like shade. It wasn't, I don't even think it was shady, but it was just like this sort of like leftover survival, this like stuff from like trying to like get by.

• 13:29Dan Pashman?

  After the break, Jason's life starts to stabilize. Then later, he has to decide whether to go back on meds and whether to start GLP-1s. That's coming up. Stick around.

• 13:44Speaker 02

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• 13:50Dan Pashman?

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• 14:32Dan Pashman?

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• 15:14Dan Pashman?

  Discover the craftsmanship behind every bite at your local Boars Head deli. Boars Head, committed to craft since 1905. Last year, right around this time, I got a new jacket from Quince, a lightweight fall jacket, and it has turned into my favorite jacket. And this is why you need a lightweight jacket, and probably a new one, because it's time to freshen up your look. You need a lightweight jacket from Quince because the beauty of a lightweight jacket is you can wear it in the early fall, you can wear it in the early spring, but also it goes over a sweater, over a sweatshirt, and then suddenly, your lightweight jacket is a great accessory for pretty much the whole winter. Bottom line, when the temperatures start to drop... Quince makes it easy to build on those everyday staples with versatile layers designed to keep you warm and comfortable all season long.

• 15:57Dan Pashman?

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• 16:41Dan Pashman?

  in business for over 100 years. Their claim to fame is that they're the inventors of the fried clam. Woodman's is still owned by the same family. I talked to the grandson of the founder. And I welcome a special dinner companion, my mom, who grew up in the area. When was the first time you came here?

• 16:56Speaker 03

  I used to drive here in my 1959 Pontiac Bonneville. I was talking to my friend, we used to go to buy Endicott when it was at junior college to spy on her ex-boyfriend to see. Don't, don't put that in.

• 17:12Dan Pashman?

  Too late. Check out this episode from two weeks ago called Welcome to the Clam Capital of America to learn how the fried clam was invented and to hear more about that ex-boyfriend from Endicott Junior College. All right, back to my conversation with Jason Diamond. As he entered his mid twenties, Jason had been in New York for a few years and things were starting to stabilize for him. He published articles in some magazines while paying the bills working at bars and restaurants. Then, when he was 29, his life changed in a big way. That's when he met Emily, his future wife.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  There is like literally the B.C. and A.D. of my life. That's Emily. And I don't feel any, any like pause even saying that. Like, you know, my love for my wife is so just deep and ingrained in who I am.

• 17:58Dan Pashman?

  Jason had found a life partner, one who shared his love of food.

• 18:01Speaker 01

  I'm more, I, I'm, I hate to say adventurous, but I am the one who's like, let's go, I want to go try this like. Go find this like taco place I heard about.

• 18:10Dan Pashman?

  About a year and a half into dating Emily, there was another big change. Jason got health insurance.

• 18:15Speaker 01

  And I'm like, okay, cool. I'm gonna start going to the doctor again. And, you know, not long after that, I think we just kind of realized, you know, we don't ever want to be away from each other. We're definitely gonna probably end up getting married. And so I'm like, you know what? If that's true, then I need to start seeing a shrink again because I know there's a lot of things I need to work on. I didn't want to like bring all that baggage into my marriage. And started seeing a doctor and the first thing we did was, I was like, you know, when I was a kid, I had ADHD, but now I'm in my, I'm like 31. I've grown out of it, right? And diagnosed again. She's like, no, you still have ADHD.

• 18:53Dan Pashman?

  Jason was also diagnosed with anxiety and obsessive compulsive personality disorder, which is not the same thing as OCD. With OCD, people experience intrusive thoughts. Obsessive compulsive personality disorder is more a preoccupation with perfectionism, organization and control.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  You don't have to like click things 10, you know? But I have to have things a certain way. But it doesn't infringe upon other people. Like, I'm not gonna tell you to do this. Like, I'm not gonna be like, you have to be right there because I need you right there. It's more in my head, I need things to be a certain way.

• 19:23Dan Pashman?

  So Jason was dealing with that and anxiety and ADHD. In consultation with his therapist, he decided to go back on meds for these various issues. He was at a very different point in his life from when he was 18, when he went off everything. He also started meditating. He kept going to therapy and he got himself organized. He created routines and schedules around when he would eat, when he would work out, when he would meditate, and it really helped. All that, together with finding meds that work for him.

• 19:48Speaker 01

  It's insane, like I, you know, I don't tell, I don't tell anybody anything when it comes to their mental health or their, their bodily health, whatever. But for me, I was like, oh my God, I can't believe I had, I figured it out finally.

• 20:05Dan Pashman?

  Jason's career started growing too. He got a job as a food writer for Men's Journal.

• 20:09Speaker 01

  I always joke, but it's actually true, that I was like the token fat guy at a um, men's magazine that wrote a lot about like abs and how to get. And I remember they would just send me to all these like food things. And I was like, I am eating these crazy meals for free, like five nights a week.

• 20:27Dan Pashman?

  From there, he jumped to Rolling Stone. He and Emily got married and he published his first book, Searching for John Hughes. It's framed as a quest to write a biography of the beloved director John Hughes, but it's really more of a memoir about Jason's own struggles growing up. When he turned 43, Emily gave birth to their daughter Lulu. That day, Jason did what Jason does. He picked up two dozen bagels, smoked salmon and white fish salad for the hospital staff. The next day, with Emily and Lulu sleeping in the maternity ward, he set off again to the classic Manhattan restaurant, JG Mellon. It's an old school place with green and white checkered tablecloths where the Heinz ketchup is still in glass bottles. Jason took a seat at the bar.

• 21:04Speaker 01

  So I bought a martini and I took one sip and I said, hey, I'd like to buy a round of drinks for everybody at the bar. I just had my first kid. He just told everyone that it's like, hey, this guy's buying drinks for everybody. He just had his first kid. They were like, oh, yeah.

• 21:17Dan Pashman?

  Right. A little cheer goes up from the bar area.

• 21:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. And everyone was just so like, oh, man, you know, all these, it's like three guys were like, I also have a daughter. It's the greatest thing in the world. And, you know, I just felt like I had um,

• 21:32Speaker 01

  in a lot of ways,

• 21:35Speaker 01

  if there's ever a moment in my life where I feel like I made it, it was that. Like I have gotten to the point where I'm like, I have worked my ass off. I have done everything. I've tried to be a good person. I'm in love with my wife and now I'm a dad. It's all I ever wanted to be was a dad, above all things. And I was like, I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm so afraid. I'm so excited, but I'm so afraid, but I'm gonna have this one moment to just be a little, I won't say careless, but like, you know, just something kind of out of the ordinary. And I'm like, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna buy everyone drinks and did it. Yeah, it was very beautiful. I'll always appreciate that moment.

• 22:20Dan Pashman?

  Coming up, Jason faces a new challenge.

• 22:23Speaker 01

  A friend of mine had said, you know, when I told him we're having a kid, he said, "Well, congratulations on thinking about your mortality."

• 22:31Dan Pashman?

  That's after the break. Stick around.

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• 24:29Dan Pashman?

  Welcome back. For most of his life, Jason didn't think a lot about his weight. For the past decade, he'd weighed around 240, and he was content with that.

• 24:36Speaker 01

  I've always said that I have a George Costanza look. Like, you know, I'm a stocky Jewish guy. It's like, it's sort of a thing. It's like, not like out of the ordinary, but I'm like, you know, I look fine. I'm pretty happy about my looks. The one person that matters, Emily, loves how I look. Or she says she does, I think she does. But, you know, like, I just didn't really care that much. Like, it just wasn't a thing. And I would look at like photos of like guys in like the 30s or 40s, like those guys you'd see at like, you know, um, Old Steakhouse. And they'd just be like, these robust. I'm like, I'm one of those guys.

• 25:10Dan Pashman?

  Right.

• 25:10Speaker 01

  You know, then you, you know, you forget to look and they'd be like dead by like 50.

• 25:14Dan Pashman?

  All those like three martini lunches and like ribeyes.

• 25:18Speaker 01

  It wasn't like a, like a macho thing. It wasn't like a basket. It was just like, I looked up to the guys in my life. The men who did set a decent example for me as a kid were like my grandfathers. And that's what they did. They were, you know, they liked to eat steak and they liked to sit in silence and watch baseball. And, you know, they like to, you know, go to the schwitz and stuff like that.

• 25:37Dan Pashman?

  But then, after your daughter's born, something changes that makes you think about your weight differently. Which is what?

• 25:45Speaker 01

  A friend of mine had said, when I told him we're, we're, we're having a kid, he said, "Well, congratulations on thinking about your mortality." And it's not something I ever really thought about, like living or dying. I'm like, oh, there are probably like a dozen times in my life I probably should have died. It didn't really bother me. But, um, I, I looked at Lulu and I'm like, oh, I gotta be here for you. Cause I'm already, you know, an older dad by being 43. And, um, you know, I, I was like, a lot of the men in my family have not done too well. Like strokes, cancer, heart attacks, stuff like that. And, um, the doctors said I'm in pretty good health, except I've been prediabetic for like eight years.

• 26:26Speaker 01

  Which I'm like, how long do you have until you're no longer allowed to just be prediabetic? You know, like, so I was like, huh. And, you know, I was obese and my blood pressure was high and. Just all these things. And I was like, okay, those numbers aren't good. You know, they weren't saying you're gonna die if you don't do these things. But I'm like, as you get older, you know, it's harder to get healthier, to lose weight, to do these things. I'm like, okay, so I need to change. I need to figure this stuff out.

• 26:54Dan Pashman?

  For Jason, that meant talking with his doctor about whether or not to go on GLP-1s. But it was complicated. For one, there's a cultural norm around manhood, health, and weight, as if caring about your health or trying to lose weight is somehow weak or effeminate. This is borne out by surveys showing that men are less likely to go to the doctor than women. And when it comes to GLP-1s, men are less likely to take them in nearly every age group. Jason could see that attitude with other dads he met, including one in particular that he was chatting with at a playground. He writes about it in his story for New York Magazine. Here's Jason reading from that piece.

• 27:26Speaker 01

  We somehow got on the topic of how I wear moisturizer with SPF in it. And he told me that he just doesn't see the point in men putting stuff on their faces. Just age gracefully, he said, before going on a little rant about how everybody is trying to change their bodies and bringing up drugs like Ozempic and Zepbound.

• 27:46Dan Pashman?

  Even if Jason didn't agree with that, he could still feel that sentiment out there, that judgment. And there were other things weighing on him because of his own history. Here he is reading again from that piece.

• 27:56Speaker 01

  Deciding to take medication is a big deal for me. I'm one of those children of the 80s and 90s who was overmedicated by my parents and doctors in hopes of curing everything from ADHD to anxiety and depression. And it bred skepticism in me that I've had to work hard not to immediately default to.

• 28:13Dan Pashman?

  But as we've heard more recently, Jason had started to overcome that skepticism. He'd experienced the huge benefits of going on meds when they were the right ones for him.

• 28:20Speaker 01

  Once I started thinking about taking a medication, I'm like, I've done this before. I've thought about why these medications will help me. Okay, this is, this is, I'm doing this.

• 28:30Dan Pashman?

  And after you took that first shot, how did you feel?

• 28:37Speaker 01

  So.

• 28:40Speaker 01

  I've taken enough medications in my life and I had done enough research. I knew I wasn't gonna like start like losing weight right away, but I did, I did, not to get too TMI. I'm like, oh, I am peeing all the time because I was drinking so much water because I drink, I drink a lot of water to begin with, but you lose a lot of water weight. But the craziest thing, and I never understood this, how bad this was, was food noise went away. Food anxiety is very real. I had never realized how bad I had it. And I started thinking about it like, man, when I was younger and I would go like, I didn't have dinner. I couldn't get anything to eat tonight. That would stick with me in a way I didn't understand. Like, I would be

• 29:22Speaker 01

  like, you screwed up. You were not able to do this. You suck, Jason. You know, it was like, things like that. Like, oh, my God, if I don't get another meal tomorrow, I might die. Like, that, that's a very realistic, genuine fear. You have to add in generational trauma then, too. Everybody, both sides of my family, whether it was pogroms, or Hitler, or communism, the people came before me, went through all of it. And there was a lot of starvation. And that, that, that, that gets passed down. And so like, you know, I didn't really realize how bad it was. My like, just need to eat. This like, this terror,

• 30:04Speaker 01

  if I didn't eat. And growing up around a lot of immigrants, you know, you try to waste food around them, you know, they'll, they'll smack you. It wasn't like, eat your this. It was like, smack. Like, you eat that. And that, that probably, I mean, now I know, that really had a real big effect on me.

• 30:25Dan Pashman?

  That term, food noise, is becoming more and more prevalent, and GLP-1s can help to alleviate it. Stanford recently published a study that found that these drugs have changed, quote, "the psychological experience of eating itself." There are also some small early studies suggesting that these drugs may help with addictive behaviors like alcoholism and gambling, which also involve a form of noise in your head that comes from cravings.

• 30:46Speaker 01

  It was just something that I just had never considered. Like, I suddenly was like, okay, I don't need to eat everything that comes out here. Like, I can take it with me if I'd like. Which, you know, it's not like I'd never took stuff home with me before, but I'm like, In the moment, as I'm sitting there, I'm not thinking that.

• 31:05Dan Pashman?

  Also, I feel like sometimes I'm worried like I'm gonna be hungry again in forty-five minutes.

• 31:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:09Dan Pashman?

  You know, it's like, I, it's like, I, I feel satisfied now, but I don't wanna get up from the table and like, clean everything up and then realize I'm still a little bit hungry. Like, that would be a catastrophe.

• 31:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:21Dan Pashman?

  And so, and so I better eat some more now to make sure that doesn't happen.

• 31:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, yeah, preparing for the worst.

• 31:29Dan Pashman?

  Right, right.

• 31:30Speaker 01

  Sounds like, it sounds like, yeah, it's just like, oh, wow, we have it so hard. But I think about a lot of things that way, like, maybe it'll be gone. Maybe I won't have this tomorrow. Maybe my wife will not like me tomorrow. Maybe I won't get more writing gigs tomorrow. Maybe I wanna, because I'd experienced that. And with food, because it's something you need, that you can enjoy, there's so much to food in terms of like, the psychology of like, from making it to the memories to the whatever, that you don't really think about all the layers until it's kind of like stripped away.

• 32:09Dan Pashman?

  Another fear of Jason's before he went on a GLP-1 is that he wouldn't just eat less, but also get less pleasure from eating. Some patients on these meds do report that issue. It's become so prevalent that the food giant Nestle is changing the formula for some of its packaged foods to account for the fact that GLP-1s can dull the palate for some people. As much as Jason didn't want that, he was willing to accept it as a trade-off for being healthier and living longer. Luckily for him, though, in his particular case, it didn't happen.

• 32:36Speaker 01

  And like, one of my best friends, you know, she goes, "Do you hate food now?" I'm like, "No, no, actually, I'm more obsessed with it now." Because I'm like, "I'm enjoying it even more." We are in the season where Emily doesn't like to cook in the fall/winter as much. I do. Once spring produce starts hitting, because we're at the market every weekend, she's just like, "I wanna cook more." Like, last night, she made this, just like, you know, this is a veggie pasta, but it was just like, it was so fresh. And I'm like, "Oh, this is so frickin' good." And I, I had like, seconds and I'm like, "You know, I'm just gonna take one more bite, because it's really good." And I was smiling doing it. I felt myself smiling while taking that, that, that little last bite, like, "This is great." And I never would've done that before. I would've just been like, "Oh, oh, oh, oh."

• 33:22Speaker 01

  You know, it's still something I'm getting used to. I'm almost a year into it and, um, yeah.

• 33:30Dan Pashman?

  Jason published his story back in March. He says it touched a nerve with people, especially other men, and in particular, fathers, because the focus of this story wasn't about how he looked. It was more about how eating with his daughter had changed for the better. He was less focused on what he was cooking and eating, more present with her. And he talked about how this drug could help him live a longer life and spend more time with his family.

• 33:51Speaker 01

  I have friends texting me like, you know what? I need, I'm gonna start taking these. Thank you. Like, my blood pressure, I'm gonna, my dad died when he was three years older than I, you know, thank you. Like, I've never gotten the kind of outpouring for a piece like I got for that one. Like, in that, in that sense, like, people just being like, thank you.

• 34:07Dan Pashman?

  Right.

• 34:07Speaker 01

  Like, you've made me legitimately think about this differently.

• 34:12Dan Pashman?

  Can I ask you how much weight you've lost?

• 34:14Speaker 01

  Uh, I am at 40 pounds. I've lost 40 pounds. I'm closing in on being at 200, which is pretty crazy.

• 34:25Dan Pashman?

  And what about prediabetes, heart conditions, like, like, where are your numbers and health in terms of those things?

• 34:32Speaker 01

  I actually got the email from my doctor a month ago, because I had to go for just a checkup. And she's like, congratulations, you're no longer prediabetic. I was like, damn, man, that's, that's beautiful. And I cried.

• 34:51Dan Pashman?

  That's Jason Diamond. He's currently writing about parenthood for New York Magazine. You can find links to his articles and books on his website, jasondiamond.net.

• 35:00Dan Pashman?

  Next week on the show, it's time for our annual game show episode, Two Chefs and a Lie. My old friend Rachel Martin, host of NPR's podcast Wild Card, will be our guest. She'll talk with three people, two of whom are real chefs, one of whom is a liar pretending to be a chef. Rachel will ask each of them five questions, and then she and you will see if they can spot the liar. That's next week. Why wait for that one? Check out last week's episode about the mystery of why McDonald's ice cream machines keep breaking. That one's up now, check it out. And hey, did you know you can listen to The Sporkful on the SiriusXM app? Yes, the SiriusXM app, it has all your favorite podcasts, plus over 200 ad-free music channels curated by genre and era, plus live sports coverage. Does your podcasting app have that? And there's interviews with A-list stars and so much more.

• 35:43Dan Pashman?

  It's everything you want in a podcast app and music app all rolled into one. And right now, Sporkful listeners can get three months free of the SiriusXM app by going to siriusxm.com/sporkful.

• 35:55Dan Pashman?

  This episode was produced by me along with managing producer

• 35:58Speaker 02

  Emma Morgenstern.

• 35:59Dan Pashman?

  And senior producer

• 36:00Speaker 07

  Andres O'Hara.

• 36:01Dan Pashman?

  It was edited by

• 36:02Speaker 02

  Camille Stanley.

• 36:03Dan Pashman?

  Our technical director is Jared O'Connell. Music help from Black Label Music. The Sporkful is a production of Sirius XM Podcasts. Our executive producer is Camille Stanley. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.

• 36:13Speaker 02

  And I'm Emmy, calling from Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, California, reminding you to eat more, eat better, and eat more better.

• 36:35Speaker 04

  Instagram teen accounts have automatic protections for what teens see and who can contact them, plus time management tools.

• 36:44Speaker 04

  And Instagram will continue adding built-in safety features to help create age-appropriate experiences.

• 36:52Speaker 04

  Learn more about teen accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online at instagram.com/teenaccounts.

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