Transforming my own narrative: ADHD, autism and how Mounjaro silenced a lifetime of food noise

As an AuDHDer (ADHD and autism), I’ve spent my entire life battling food noise, impulsive eating, and compulsive behaviours that felt impossible to silence and this all changed when I discovered Mounjaro.

I’ve hesitated to share this journey publicly, but I have experienced something life-changing and life-saving. Something I believe is worth talking about.

But what happens when your brain is wired for constant reward-seeking? When food isn’t just fuel, but the fastest, easiest way to quiet an insatiable dopamine loop? When the thing your body needs to survive is also the thing that holds you hostage?

If you know, you know, the world loves to tell fat people to just “eat less and move more.” Nothing like that old chestnut to layer on the shame.

For years, I thought I was failing.

Now, I know it was never about willpower.

It was about imbalance.

Weighing in on weight might be something you don’t expect to see here on these pages. 

But as you’ll see, this conversation isn’t just about weight. It’s about intersectionality, neurodivergence and the unseen struggles that shape our relationships and stories with food, body and self.

The polarity between body autonomy and systemic bias

This is a deeply tender and complex conversation, one that exists in the polarity between body autonomy and systemic bias. 

It’s impossible to talk about weight loss without acknowledging how it has been weaponised against people. How the world has long been designed to shame bodies that don’t conform to a narrow standard.

So much of my work is about disrupting harmful systems and structures and amplifying the work of those people that do. And I feel sharing my story is a small part in this resistance. As you’ll go on to read about industries that are worried by the impact of this innovation.

I am deeply aware of how discussions around weight can be co-opted into anti-fat narratives that harm those who are perfectly at peace in their bodies. This is not the intention of this discussion and sharing of my story.

My choice to take Mounjaro was never about wanting to be thin. It was about my health concerns, my ADHD (AuDHD) management and my own relationship with food noise.

What I didn’t expect was how radically it would shift my understanding of dopamine, addiction and the science of my own lived experience.

For those who are content exactly as they are, that is a beautiful and powerful thing and something I truly admire about you and is a feeling I have long been searching for.

I have forever felt at a wild edge. Trapped in a cycle I couldn’t break and this conversation creates space for the sharing of my story. One that is not about shame, but about understanding, choice and self-compassion.

Why I started Mounjaro and how it transformed my ADHD

Sometimes you are confronted with a metaphorical mirror. For me this mirror was holding up some uncomfortable realities about my health and I share my story with heart wide open vulnerability. 

I started Mounjaro because my blood pressure was creeping up (140/90) and my GP told me to monitor it. ADHD meds can sometimes elevate BP, but I knew intuitively it wasn’t the medication itself. It was the system it was operating in. A system I could see was under extra pressure from my weight.

A life without ADHD medication wasn’t an option. Because it has transformed so much of my life. I was going to do everything I could to try and prevent this.

At the same time, I had my long-overdue sleep apnea consultation. The specialist told me that 80% of sleep apnea cases are caused by obesity and that, had I not started Mounjaro, she would have referred me for weight-loss surgery.

That floored me.

That something so permanent and invasive was the next step, when something far less drastic existed, was staggering.

We did however have a good debate how obesity needed to be treated as a symptom of food noise, not as the central cause of so many health issues that are swiftly attributed to it. I am not going to tangent on this but at the centre of my obesity, I’ve always known, I’m not fat because, I’m eating too much out of choice. I’m fat because I’ve been using food in an out of control way to silence my dopamine eating. There lies the cause. That is what needs to be targeted to get any kind of change.

This knowing and these two moments crystallised my vision. Starting Mounjaro was about long-term ADHD management, metabolic health and perhaps, for the first time, true freedom from the food noise that had dominated and controlled my life.

And so I did what any ADHDer (AuDHDer) would do. When I discovered Mounjaro, I became gripped in Nobel Prize level research making it my absolute special interest and intense hyperfocus for weeks before I made a decision about what to do.

Mounjaro & GLP-1 – the missing piece of the puzzle

Mounjaro is a GLP-1 (glucagon-like peptide-1) receptor agonist, but what does that actually mean and how does it affect ADHD?

GLP-1 receptors are found in two key places:

• The gut – where they regulate appetite signals and digestion.
• The brain’s reward centre – the dopamine hub that drives addiction, impulsivity and compulsive behaviours.

I am not going to deep dive on the science, because I utterly rabbit holed on it (and encourage you to too if you are considering), but a little background is poignant to my story. 

As an AuDHDer, this system doesn’t function as it should. The brain doesn’t read signals of introspection and is constantly seeks dopamine and food becomes the primary way to satisfy that craving, for me it led to:

• Insatiable food noise.
• Constant hunger.
• Compulsions that feel impossible to silence.

I’ve always found this deeply cruel, because unlike other addictive substances, I can’t just remove food from my life. 

Mounjaro corrects this imbalance. It helps me feel fuller for longer and it quiets the ADHD dopamine loop that drives addiction, impulsivity and reward-seeking.

For the first time in 40 years, I don’t feel like I’m on a diet. I don’t feel deprived.

The noise is just gone.

I can’t get over the silence. It is serene and makes me feel really emotional. This liminal space between what I always knew and something I thought would never be possible. 

Having always quietly dreamed that something would take this disruptive and demanding food chatter away. I never thought it would actually become a reality. 

The immediate changes

Well these have extended far beyond my relationship with food. 

• I eat intuitively. I’d done several courses about this over the history of time and never understood how you could achieve this with the incessant food noise. 
• I no longer crave ultra-processed food. Not because I’m restricting myself, but because I stopped enjoying how it tasted and have no interest in it.  I actually can’t believe this has happened.
• I don’t get overwhelmed preparing food because my reward centre isn’t screaming at me to hurry up and satisfy it.
• My phone use has dropped by 60%. I no longer need the dopamine hit from scrolling. I’m much more present. This has blown my mind and links into emerging findings about Mounjaro’s broader impact on addiction and ADHD reward seeking behaviour.
• My impulsive spending has stopped. No more dopamine-driven purchases I regret later. I stopped using Deliveroo instantly. I’ve only used it 3 times since October, in a tight spot, rather than 3-4 times a week for take away and top ups of dopamine filled bags from supermarkets. The money I have saved here more than pays for my Mounjaro and the clothes I’ve needed to update as my body changes.

And the health changes? They’ve been staggering:

• Blood pressure down from 140/90 to 118/72 – NORMAL!!!
• Sleep apnea massively improved – my CPAP pressure has nearly halved.
• 10 inches lost on both my waist and chest.
• Inflammation, sweating, and swelling – gone.
• More energy, more clarity, more freedom.

And the metrics for weight loss stand. I started in Oct 2024 and in just over 4 months, I’ve lost 23kg or about 3.5 stone on this journey and it is one which continues. For context I am 6 foot tall.

It feels like the dream I’ve held my whole life has come true: ‘If only something would silence the food noise. I could change my relationship with food and maybe make changes in my health I’d longed for.’ And along came a drug that does exactly that. It utterly disrupted my own narrative about all I thought I knew and fates I thought I had written for myself. And isn’t that the power of story when something comes along to shakedown the scripts you’d replayed all your life! 

The industries built on exploiting this imbalance are crumbling

This isn’t just about weight loss. It is about disruption. 

Mounjaro and similar medications are shaking entire industries. Research is already showing reductions in alcohol, smoking, impulse spending and phone addiction.

Hedge funds are pulling investments from alcohol companies like Diageo, because they see the shift, people are drinking less. Read the article on Reuters here.

Nestlé, one of the biggest creators of ultra-processed, addictive ‘food’, is scrambling to pivot. Now selling supplements targeted at people on GLP-1 medications. Read the article here.

And when you see scaremongering headlines, follow the money.

These industries exist because they profit from addiction.

Look at this statement from the ex-Diageo Fund Manager:

“We suspect the entire drinks sector is in the early stages of being impacted negatively by weight-loss drugs.”

Let me reframe that for you:

“People are being freed from the grip of addiction. Improving their health and financial well-being, while industries that have long targeted and profited from dopamine-driven consumption are beginning to crumble.”

The hysteria in the media? That’s just the sound of an industry cracking under their panic.

Disrupting the ‘eat less and move more’ narrative

Disruption always challenges the status quo and nowhere is that more evident than in the narrative around weight loss and suffering. For so long, fat people have been told that if they want to lose weight, they just need to ‘eat less and move around more’.

It is one of the most patronising things to hear and can only be uttered by someone who has never encountered the food noise before, because anyone that has will never say that!

This mantra has made me want to scream. How was it that simple to ignore the constant noise to eat? So I tried many times to do this and earn my weight loss through struggle. Through extreme restriction, relentless exercise and sheer force of will. 

If you succeed the “hard way,” you’re praised for your discipline. 

But if you don’t, you’re shamed for a lack of willpower. 

And now, with medications like Mounjaro, those of us battling an ADHD invisible imbalance are being demonised for choosing a medical intervention that finally levels the playing field.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. 

But this was never the “easy way”, it was simply a way that finally worked,

A way that allowed me to experience, for the first time, what it must be like for people who have never had this noise in the first place.  I could ‘eat less and move around more’ without it feeling like I was having a mental breakdown. Managing the food noise in my head under such restriction, denying it was an exhausting gargantuan mission. The uninvited voice finally got the memo, things got balanced and silence reigned.

The real disruption here isn’t weight loss. It’s the breaking of a deeply entrenched belief system that says fat people must suffer to be worthy of, well, anything. Be it change or celebrating contentment just as they are.

This is about autonomy. And for removing the shame from choice and finally having access to a tool that lets me rewrite the stories I’ve been told about my own body.

Why I’m sharing this and what I am NOT doing.

I am not here to tell anyone to take this medication. I am sharing because it felt in integrity to do so. 

Having several comments made to me online., about photos I’ve shared recently or people have noticed IRL and are curious. I’ve not wanted to allude to ‘making health changes’ as I feel this just goes to perpetuate the same narrative I was stuck in.

As I’ve done throughout my ADHD and autism journey (you can read more on that, here), I am simply sharing my Mounjaro story. Now, at a point which I feel rooted in my own narrative and to show up authentically. I have always shared when I have been at this wild edge of feeling ready to share.

If food noise, addiction to food, or compulsive behaviours with food is ruling your life, you are not broken.

You are not weak.
You are not a failure.
Perhaps it has always been about imbalance.

Written with so much vulnerability and love.

Further reading

A book I found really interesting was Magic Pill by Johan Hari which explores the groundbreaking impact of GLP-1 medications like Mounjaro and Ozempic. Not just for weight loss but for emerging research around addiction and compulsive behaviours. Hari delves into the science behind these drugs, explaining how they work on the gut and brain’s reward systems to silence cravings and reshape habits. He also examines the wider societal disruption, from the food and alcohol industries to the deep-seated stigma around weight loss. The book challenges long-held beliefs about obesity and addiction. Asking whether we’ve been blaming individuals for what is, at its core, a biological imbalance that science is only now beginning to correct.

I’ve just discovered it is also on Spotify now as an audiobook. I have no affiliation. I just read it before I started my Mounjaro journey with ADHD and it helped me so I wanted to reference it!

Disclaimer: I am not a medical professional, and this is not medical advice and I I cannot answer specific questions. I am simply sharing my personal experience with Mounjaro and the impact it has had on my health and neurodivergence. If you are considering GLP-1 medication or any other medical intervention, please consult a healthcare professional to ensure it is safe and appropriate for you. It is vital to only obtain these medications from a registered pharmacy under medical supervision. The horror stories often sensationalised in the media typically stem from unsafe sources, your health and safety should always come first.