Reta and the pleasure from food and drinks

Bioexplorer

Bioexplorer

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Before I began retatrutide, my brother told me that the pleasure I get from a nice meal and from alcohol would largely disappear, and that going forward these things would be purely social or functional for me.

About alcohol, he was definitely right. I'm only on a very low dose and it's been just a couple of weeks, but my usual pre-dinner drink has become nothing more than a habit. The pleasant warmth and the happy buzz are gone. With the dopamine absent, what's the point? I switched to an electrolyte drink instead. That's definitely healthier, and I'm sure this new normal will grow on me, but it's still a little depressing.

A tasty meal, though, still tastes good and I find it quite enjoyable. I simply don't think about food much, and I'm never really hungry. Perhaps those who stopped enjoying food had a different response to it before Reta, maybe one with more dopamine release.

I'm sure I'll still have a drink now and then at social events, but it won't be something I look forward to regularly. Has almost everyone stopped drinking on retatrutide? I assume this is part of the anhedonia side effect.
 
Same for me, some of the pleasure in eating has gone. These days food is something i get through rather than something i look forward to tasting.

Alcohol was never really my thing, so no change to report there.
 
My own journey has been much the same. Food is still something I enjoy. Halting my intake is simply less of a struggle now. Up to this point, it has worked ideally for me. Of course, certain items can wreck you at nearly any serving size, though the rare slip-up stays rare.

In the beginning, booze held much less allure. Over time, though, that faded and I'm back to drinking more than I ought to. Annoying, yes, but reining it in remains simpler too. Ultimately, it eats into the calorie allowance for meals.

Your point about separate drives seems accurate to me.
 
There's a friend I encouraged to try Reta. When the subject comes up with most people I speak to, they push back by saying it lacks FDA approval or hasn't wrapped up phase 3 testing. His objection was different: he didn't want food to lose its flavor.

As we talked, it became clear to me that eating sat at the center of his world. It was where he got his pleasure.

A month passed without us meeting. When he saw me again, my weight loss hit him hard. Within a few days he'd signed up at a gym, and someone there who was already in great shape eagerly shared his own Reta story with him. That very day, he asked me where he could get some too.

These days, workouts and computer games have taken food's place for him. He sounds proud when he reports going a whole day without eating. Perhaps he'll keep adding other pursuits to his life beyond food. He appears happier.
 
Alcohol has lost much of its appeal for me too. A few days ago I visited a really good cocktail bar, and although drink number 1 went down fine, I couldn't get through the following 3 and passed them along to others sitting at the table. By the end it definitely seemed like money poorly spent.

Food is still something I like, though I eat smaller amounts, and I no longer dwell on it or get excited about it in advance. On the whole, this makes daily life considerably simpler.
 
Since I rarely consume alcohol, I have no real basis for comparison there. Smoking, though, is something I do, and I often find the craving is weaker, with longer gaps before I light up another one.

Food-related thoughts have quieted down for me, yet hunger hasn't disappeared—it's simply reduced. On top of that, satiety arrives a lot sooner.
 
Reta has led me to quit alcohol entirely. During my final stretch before starting, things had gotten concerning: there were occasions when I drank far too much, and while intoxicated I even took other substances. After beginning Reta more than 4 months ago, those urges have vanished. Alongside my body recomposition, this has been the greatest benefit for me.
 
Bold, heavy flavors no longer appeal to me — wine included, which I used to love. These days it just feels too "intense" for my pallet. Food still makes me happy, though the pull toward comfort dishes is gone. What I reach for now is greens, Whole Foods, fresh sushi.

Even 1 glass of wine tends to backfire. The buzz fades fast and turns into a rough hungover feeling almost right away. After 2 glasses the last time, the next day I was stuck on the couch from fatigue and couldn't get up at all.
 
A friend of mine recently began Reta, and last night at dinner I got a front-row seat to it taking effect. It was pretty funny.

Before this, he had seen me on Reta and assumed I was just ordering tiny portions—an appetizer, or a side salad plus a bit of chicken—because I was exaggerating what Reta was doing to me.

He was really looking forward to his meal last night, right up until it arrived. (Some kind of heavily cheesy chicken plate.) The moment it was in front of him, his expression shifted and the enthusiasm drained away. The food looked perfectly fine. He's a big food lover, and as he describes it, his "inner fat kid" is the one who always calls the shots about what he eats.

The first three bites were enjoyable, but by bite four he was abruptly finished and completely uninterested in the rest. I just sat there laughing while he tried to work out how a small shot could do that.
 
Ozempic, in my experience, triggered far more pronounced food-aversion reactions than the other GLP's I've tried. Part of that may have been the frequent low-level nausea I had, but the bigger factor was simply that almost nothing appealed to me. For roughly a year I ate the same meal over and over, and oddly enough that settled my gut — less pain, better function — so it ended up being beneficial. The aversion effect is also genuinely useful for shutting down cravings for junk.

Some of that reluctance lingers. I'm hesitant about unfamiliar foods, and every so often I'll begin a meal and then realize my stomach won't accept it, so I have to quit. Even so, I'm running my doses and stack pretty aggressively to blunt appetite as much as I can, because I'm trying to hold onto the 80 kilos I've shed. Current protocol: tirz 4.5mg/2 days, reta 1.4mg/2days, cagri 0.25 /4days. So yes, there's still some food aversion, but it's milder than with Ozempic, and the nausea is milder too. My read is that nausea, food aversion and the illness-response effects all stem from GLP-1 agonism and usually show up together. Dose clearly matters as well.

A little hesitancy about trying new foods isn't purely a downside when you're committed to a very strict, very repetitive way of eating. Taste hasn't gone anywhere — food still tastes good. That said, my diet completely rules out anything high-calorie or highly rewarding, because otherwise I get some strange extreme-hunger rebound after rich food, and that rebound has destroyed every diet I've attempted before.
 
lessthanhalf said:

Ozempic, in my experience, triggered far more pronounced food-aversion reactions than the other GLP's I've tried. Part of that may have been the frequent low-level nausea I had, but the bigger factor was simply that almost nothing appealed to me. For roughly a year I ate the same meal over and over, and oddly enough that settled my gut — less pain, better function — so it ended up being beneficial. The aversion effect is also genuinely useful for shutting down cravings for junk.

Some of that reluctance lingers. I'm hesitant about unfamiliar foods, and every so often I'll begin a meal and then realize my stomach won't accept it, so I have to quit. Even so, I'm running my doses and stack pretty aggressively to blunt appetite as much as I can, because I'm trying to hold onto the 80 kilos I've shed. Current protocol: tirz 4.5mg/2 days, reta 1.4mg/2days, cagri 0.25 /4days. So yes, there's still some food aversion, but it's milder than with Ozempic, and the nausea is milder too. My read is that nausea, food aversion and the illness-response effects all stem from GLP-1 agonism and usually show up together. Dose clearly matters as well.

A little hesitancy about trying new foods isn't purely a downside when you're committed to a very strict, very repetitive way of eating. Taste hasn't gone anywhere — food still tastes good. That said, my diet completely rules out anything high-calorie or highly rewarding, because otherwise I get some strange extreme-hunger rebound after rich food, and that rebound has destroyed every diet I've attempted before.
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A neighbor of mine spent some time on Ozempic and couldn't stand it. She had no appetite at all and felt sick. Her doctor switched her to a different medication, though I don't recall which one. She has no idea that we use Reta, and she probably has never heard of it either.
 
I stopped consuming alcohol completely while taking Mounjaro, though it was something I had been wanting to do anyway. My drinking wasn’t a regular habit—it happened only on weekends when I was out socializing. With the medication, quitting became far less difficult. As of last June, I have not had a single drink, and I’m happy to report that, so I understand your perspective.
 
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