Perimenopause Labs: HRT vs Peptides for Weight Loss

If weight loss has gotten harder in perimenopause or menopause, you're probably hearing a lot of noise right now about what you should be doing— hormones, peptides, GLP-1s, functional medicine— and you're trying to figure it all out. Like, what actually applies to me? Most women that I talk to are not anti-medicine, right? They're not trying to biohack themselves into oblivion. They just want to understand what their options are, and they want to stop making expensive decisions without a whole bunch of context. So that is what we are doing today. By the end of this episode, you will understand the 3 pieces that actually matter in perimenopause weight loss: medical support, metabolic stabilization, and identity-based change, and how they work together and not against each other. Girl, if you're tired of losing the same 20 pounds over and over and over again, listen up. For years, I thought something was wrong with me. I kept promising this time would be different, only to find myself stress eating at the kitchen counter after a long stressful day. I thought the problem was my body. I thought the problem was the diet I was on or my lack of discipline. But the truth, the real problem wasn't what I was doing. It was who I was being. When I finally stopped trying to fix my weight and started transforming my identity, Everything changed. No more starting over on Monday. No more food guilt. No more feeling like I was fighting against myself. And now that's exactly what I help my clients do. Welcome to Stop Dieting Forever, the podcast that helps you break free from self-sabotage, rewire your mindset, and reinvent yourself into the healthy, confident woman that you crave to be. I'm your host, Jennifer Dent-Brown, certified life and weight loss coach, and I'm here to show you how to finally stop dieting forever. You ready? Let's dive in. So let's start with HRT, hormone replacement therapy. HRT exists to support the hormonal changes that happen in perimenopause and menopause. It can support sleep, it can support your recovery, it can boost your energy and your overall function and just make you feel like a human being being again. But what we want to clear up is a very common myth, and I have to be honest with you, when I started going through perimenopause myself and I started doing my own research about it, I thought that getting on HRT was going to help me lose the perimenopause weight that I had gained out of nowhere. But here's what I need to tell you: starting HRT does not make you lose weight. I'm gonna say that again. Starting HRT will not help you to lose weight, but that idea, kind of that fantasy, is everywhere, but it's wrong. HRT doesn't cause weight loss. What it does is that it removes the friction so weight loss can happen. It helps to support the environment for weight loss. So if someone tells you, oh yeah, girl, once you start your hormones, the weight will just come off, Yeah, no, that is not how bodies work. So let's talk about signaling. And before we jump into peptides and GLP-1s, which I know, hot topics right now, right? I need you to understand what signaling is. And again, I only know this information the way that I do because I had to do a deep dive research because there wasn't a whole lot of information 2 years ago when these perimenopause symptoms started to kick my ass. So let's talk about signaling. Signaling is your body's constant communication with itself. I talk about this all the time. Your body is always sending you text messages. It's always telling you something. You just have to know how to read those text messages and what to do once you understand what the text message is. So your body is constantly communicating with, with itself. And your hormones, what do they do? They send signals. Your blood sugar, it sends signals. Your stress that you're under, it sends signals. Your hunger and fullness when you're eating, it sends signals. And so those signals tell your body things like, we're safe, we can not stress out right now. Or it'll send a signal like, we need to conserve because we don't know what's happening right now. We might be in a famine, so we got to conserve what we're eating, or it may send a signal like, we can burn, we've got extra, we can burn, we can use that, right? So when these signals are clear and consistent, your body is going to respond efficiently the exact way that God has designed it to do. But when those signals are distorted by chronic stress, blood sugar swings because of the sugar we're eating or the ultra-processed foods that we're consuming, when those signals are distorted by poor sleep, constant overthinking, overworrying, that response gets blunted. That's why I say most perimenopausal weight loss struggles are not just calories in, calories out. So you think all you need to do is just eat less and you will lose weight. That worked for you when you were 25, when your hormones were at their peak, but now we're in a different hormonal state and we have to treat our bodies differently. So it's not a calorie problem that you're experiencing if you're struggling with weight loss in perimenopause. It literally could be a signaling problem. So let's talk about the hot topics, peptides and GLP-1s and what they actually do. So peptides are the tools that work through the signaling pathways. They don't force your body to do anything. They influence how your body receives and responds to the messages. GLP-1 medications like tirzepatide and semaglutide, Ozempic, Mounjaro, those are the brand names, Wegovy. These medications are also signaling tools and they send signals related to appetite, fullness, and blood sugar regulation. So this is why when women start taking the GLP-1s, the first thing that they may notice is like, oh, they're not hungry anymore. Like, there's no— the food noise is quieted down. Their appetite is suppressed. It's blunted, right? Because they now have these new tools, this peptide, which is carrying the signals from their brain to their gut. Now, here's the part that matters most. If the system receiving the signal is overwhelmed, stressed out, or just simply unstable, the signal doesn't land cleanly. And so this is why these tools can be really, really powerful and also why they are often disappointing when they're used too early, because they amplify what's already happening. They don't override the chaos, they don't cancel out stress, they don't replace consistency. So there are a number of peptides that you can use as part of your wellness protocol. But again, using peptides is not a magic bullet. Just because there's influencers on Instagram saying, oh, this is my new peptide stack and these are the things that are actually working for me, doesn't mean that that same peptide stack is going to work the same for you if your foundation is damaged. Because remember I said if the system that is your, your metabolism, the system that is receiving the signal if it's overwhelmed, overstressed, overworrying, unstable, that signal is not going to land cleanly. And so you're not going to have the same results. So what do you do? You're like, Jennifer, I need to lose some weight. I'm in perimenopause. Give me— give me the solution. OK, here's what I want you to know. And here's where things finally can come together. Your metabolic health is influenced by your hormonal environment, your blood sugar regulation, your stress load, and your overall metabolic function. And these are not separate problems. Together, these describe how your body is operating, and this is why context matters so much. There are so many platforms out there right now because, you know, being in perimenopause and menopause is like the hot thing now. Every year, 1.3 million women enter into menopause, and so now we have a lot of platforms that are popping up online, telehealth platforms that are now prescribing hormones. They're prescribing peptides and medications based on questionnaires. All you need to do is log into their app, fill out some questions, and then you answer these questions about how you feel. And then someone that you've never met with before, they review them and they say, okay, she's a green, green light, go. She gets a prescription. And then the prescription shows up and you start taking it. That is one way to approach wellness, but symptoms only tell part of the story. And let's be real, y'all, at this age, at this stage in the game, we have so many things that we're worried about. And honestly, a lot of us are chronically symptomatic. And so we're having symptoms that we just think are normal, right? A little bit of sleep apnea or a little bit of indigestion or chronic indigestion or just not being able to sleep well. Like, we think that's normal because we're so used to it. And so you're not even going to know all of the symptoms that you can share with these telehealth companies because it's just not in your realm of thinking. So data shows patterns, right? I love data. If you've been following me for a while, you've been rocking with me for a while, you know that I love collecting data, and that is how you get to sustainable weight loss. Because data shows patterns and data gives you context, not just like, oh, I'm feeling this way and I'm feeling that way on this day. And I'm feeling this way on this day, some other days. No, when we have concrete data, numbers and things that we're looking at, this data can help you make decisions instead of you guessing what might be okay. So this is why I want to be really, really transparent here. This is one of the reasons why I started working with a telehealth company for myself in my own perimenopausal journey, because I looked at the other platforms where they were just asking me some questions about symptoms, but I'm like, well, how do you know I actually need an estrogen patch? Like, do we even know what my estrogen levels are? And the answer was no, because they weren't requiring any type of lab work to be completed. And then I was reading stories online of people who are like, oh, they started testosterone and then their voice deepened and they started sprouting hair in weird places. And I'm like, well, did you know exactly what your testosterone levels were? Where was your prescription dosed to meet the gap of where you were? Oh no, they didn't get a prescription. It was just symptomatic prescription. It was a symptomatic prescription based off of somebody's questionnaire. So I don't like that. I want my data. I want to see exactly what my baseline is. I want to see if I'm doing a protocol, am I making— is it making a difference? And I want to check again in 90 days to see, is it making a difference? This is the exact process that I have been teaching my clients how to lose weight since 1865. Every 90 days, we're collecting our data every single day. We are averaging our weights every single week. We're looking at the trends. We're looking at our evening assessments. We are looking at the number of times that we emotionally eat versus intentionally eat during the week. All of that information, all of that data gives us context. It gives us information that we use to make decisions. What are we going to do next week? What are we going to do differently next week? Or what are we doing the same that was actually working? And then every 90 days, you're looking at your identity, you're looking at who you're becoming, you're looking at your data, and you make consistent progress every 90 days. So when I partnered with this telehealth company, they had the same philosophy, right? Now, I want to be clear. All of my clients now are going to a telehealth— this telehealth company that I have partnered with and that I love and I've had a great experience with. And I want to be very clear about my role. I do not interpret labs. I don't prescribe anything. And that is intentional. I am not a medical professional. I partnered with licensed medical professionals who review comprehensive data. They meet with my clients, they create 90-day protocols for them, and then we retest their labs to see what's actually changing. Are we making progress? What do we need to tweak? It's the exact 90-day cadence that perfectly matches how I coach lifestyle and identity change and weight loss. So this is data-driven care. We're not chasing symptoms, we're not guessing, we're not throwing tools and peptides at a body that just isn't ready to receive them. We introduce all of these things when they're ready. Hey, I want to interrupt this podcast for a quick second because if you're listening to this episode right now, I already know what you're thinking. Okay, Jennifer, I get it. Comprehensive testing, it matters. But how do I actually find a provider who does this right? So that's exactly why this week's Stop Dieting Forever Friday newsletter is called The 5 Questions That Expose Bad Providers. I want you to ask these first. Now, you heard me today in this episode talk about women being prescribed hormones or peptides based on questionnaires instead of real data. This is what I want you to do next. When you sign up for the Stop Stop Dieting Forever Friday newsletter, I'm going to walk you through the 5 questions you should always ask before working with any functional or hormone provider so you can avoid expensive mistakes and make confident, informed decisions. If you didn't know, Stop Dieting Forever Friday is the complimentary newsletter to this week's podcast. And when you opt in to receive the weekly newsletter, you will get a weekly newsletter, the next step, the one thing you should do, the summary from the podcast. Last week I did a quiz based off last week's podcast topic. It is, it is the way that you implement what you're learning or what you're hearing in the podcast. So you can go to jenniferdent.com/emailclub and it will land in your inbox this Friday. If you're listening to this in real time, again, you can go to jenniferdent.com/emailclub. The link is in the show notes. All right, let's get back to the episode. So I want to share something personal here. We've talked about HRT, we've talked about peptides, we've talked about GLP-1s, and I want to share something from my personal journey because I, I think it's important and a lot of people probably be able to relate. But as I was saying at the beginning of the episode, that it's confusing when you enter into this stage of life and you don't have a lot of information. Or now it's like a plethora of information and you don't know exactly what you should be doing. And I was one of those people that was confused when perimenopause came and hit me upside the head. And all of a sudden I had all this extra weight. I wasn't sleeping well. My mood swings were epic, like, and not in a good way. I was on the hunt. I was like, somebody's got to help me here. Somebody's got to help me and figure this out. So I found a functional medicine practitioner and I started HRT. HRT because my hormones needed support. I started with testosterone because that was like the lowest level, like single-digit level. And in my mind, I was like, okay, I'm gonna pay this functional medicine practitioner out of pocket, I'm gonna pay for this HRT out of pocket, and I'm gonna start taking it and I'm gonna lose weight. I was so wrong. Nothing changed at first. And the reason wasn't because of the hormone that I was taking. Wasn't like the compound pharmacy was not a good thing. It was my stress. Because we were doing my labs, we could see that my stress was chronically high. And when stress is high, nothing else works, y'all. We got to get that stress down. And so stress is a feeling, and this is what a lot of you all don't understand. But when you come work with me, we help with this. Stress is a feeling. This was not new information for me. Stress is a feeling that is caused by your thoughts. So you have thoughts, it causes a feeling, a good vibe, and it creates a vibration in your body. I am a certified life coach. I already understood how stress works. I already had the tools. What I had to confront wasn't what to do, it was whether I was actually enforcing it in my life. I had gotten to the point where the way that I was working, my work style and my schedule, had me in a chronic state of stress. And because that's just the way that I I did things, I was chronically stressed out and I didn't know it because I was like, oh, well, this is just the way that I do things. I didn't realize that it could actually be a whole lot better. So I want you to think about it, right? At this stage in your life, you're probably worrying about a lot of things. You're worried about your kids. You're worried about your parents. You're worried about the economy. You're worried about aging. You're worried about wrinkles. Oh, you're worried about the gray hairs. You're watching people, your classmates, and you see people on Facebook who are getting diagnosed with terminal illnesses. You see your classmates begin to pass away. And that worry lives in our minds, whether it's in the forefront or playing, playing in the background, it is there. But that worry, when it doesn't have anywhere to go, it lands in our bodies. And so chronic unmanaged worry feeds everything that we don't want. So I had to be real honest with myself. I had to keep it real, and I had to be honest with my own sources of stress. And when it comes to my business, y'all, I built this coaching business, a multiple six-figure coaching business, from the ground up, from like nothing. And so I had a very strong need for control around my business, not because I'm controlling. I'm actually That's not my main personality, but because that control felt like safety, I felt like I needed to do everything. And if I didn't handle everything myself, something was going to fall apart. I know somebody out there can relate to this. I know you can feel me on this one, right? But needing to control everything keeps your nervous system switched on. Some of my biggest grown woman standards became learning to ask for help. That meant increasing my assistant's hours, letting go of tasks. I was like, oh, I can do this real quick. Letting go of those tasks and actually allowing someone else to do that work for me that I didn't need to be doing. I restructured my schedule. Instead of coaching Monday through Friday, I now only see my clients on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and half a day on Saturday when I coach my group clients in Learn and Lose. This wasn't about me doing less. It was about me working in a way that my body could finally trust. I ended my work days earlier. I started my work days later. So I gave myself time to do my morning rituals and go to the gym, get my workouts in. My brain likes a slow, easy morning. So I didn't make myself wrong for starting my work day between 10 and 11 o'clock. I end my work day no later than 7 o'clock during the week because anything after 7 is going to disrupt my sleep. So putting those grown woman standards in place allowed me to reduce my stress, reduce my cortisol, actually made more money when I finally ended up doing that. And I could still support my clients in a much more intentional way because I was finally working with a body that I could finally trust. And so when my stress levels came down and I use an Oura Ring to track my stress, because y'all know I love the data, my Oura Ring tracks my nighttime nighttime stress and my daytime stress. And I noticed that my stress levels were coming down. Everything began to shift. I was starting to sleep better. My blood sugar stabilized. I've talked before on the podcast how I had insulin resistance, which is very common when women enter into perimenopause. Not because I started eating a whole bunch of sugar and things, but the, the signaling was off with my hormones. And so I made some changes there. I stabilized my blood sugar. My body became responsive again. And that support that I was using with the peptides and the HRT, it finally started to make a difference. Now, y'all, I feel amazing. I feel so good. I wake up every morning just like so grateful that I slept through the night soundly. I have energy. I don't have to take naps anymore in the afternoon. I have solid energy. My brain fog is gone. I can think clearly. I can get my words out. Um, I feel like my ADHD symptoms have decreased immensely, but none of that was going to help me if my metabolism wasn't supported, right? If I hadn't healed my metabolic dysfunction first. And so this is the journey to weight loss in perimenopause. If you want sustainable weight loss and if you don't want to just be throwing HRT and peptides at your symptoms and you really want a protocol that is prescribed Based off of your data, this is the best way to go. So this is never an either-or conversation. It's medical support and metabolic stabilization and identity-based change, right? Your lifestyle change, because your identity is going to determine whether your body can receive the support or not. Most women start with just wanting weight loss. The real goal here, y'all, is wellness. And optimization. And there are stages. There's stabilization, then there's the weight loss stage, then there's the wellness stage, then there's the optimization, optimization stage. And that continuum actually probably deserves its own podcast, and we'll talk about that in another episode. But this is what you want to do. This is the path to lose weight in perimenopause. You gotta get those labs, you gotta complement it with the identity-based lifestyle strategies, and you have to work on the metabolic stabilization through your nutrition and your lifestyle. That's it. That is the secret formula. So if this episode helped you understand your options more clearly, then this week's Stop Dieting Forever Friday is going to help you choose wisely. You don't need more control. You need the right support at the right stage and the willingness to let your body feel safe again. You can go to jenniferdent.com/emailclub to make sure you're on the list to get that Stop Dieting Forever Friday. And if you want to work with me directly, You can go to jenniferdent.com/consult and schedule a 60-minute complimentary consult to see where you are right now, where you want to go, and I— how I can help you. All right, y'all, live luxe, and I will see you in the next episode.