Are GLP-1s Fueling a New Eating Disorder Epidemic? Karen Martel on Midlife, Peptides & Body Image

An entire generation of women grew up being told that fat was bad, carbs, low-fat carbs were healthy, and that their bodies needed fixing. Now those same women today are being told they need peptides in the name of fixing inflammation, longevity. So the real question is, did the diet culture disappear or did it just change outfits? Today we're going to be talking all about body culture, how that's changed over the generations, how the introduction of peptides has helped some while fueling eating disorders in others. Got a lot to discuss today on this episode.

I am so happy to be here, Natalie Jill. You found friend, everyone. We just met in Vegas and we got to spend the weekend together at a conference, which was great. We have so many friends in common, so it was about time that you and I connected.

Yes, I know. I'm glad. I kept hearing your name. In fact, it's funny, as I was booking this with you, I realized there was an email probably a year old in my emails of somebody else trying to connect us. And I don't know how it got lost in the shuffle, so I thought that was kind of funny. But here we are. But here we are. And I'm happy to actually have this chat with you. Yeah.

And I like the topic because it— oh man, did I ever grow up in that diet culture, like being shoved down my throat.

Because I had the mom that drank Tab and, you know, was eating the fat-free salad dressing and all the things. And I remember we'd have our dinner and then she'd have her salad with her fat-free salad dressing and her—

yeah, yeah. And it was just all carbs. Like, my mom was so— we have to have no fat and all carbs. That was the diet, which was the absolute worst diet that I could have ever possibly grown up on. Like, my genetics, everything was like, no, no for carbs, you know. And that's why I struggled as much as I did, for sure. And my mom was ill around that. Oh my gosh. She had a massive eating disorder, which she then instilled on me, and she would watch everything that I put in my mouth and wonder why I was gaining weight, and like, okay, well, I'm gonna break— Oh, she took me to the gym when I was 13 years old because she saw that I was getting fat.

Wow, okay, we've got a lot to talk about here. So I'm gonna kind of start with that conversation because So pretty much most my listeners grew up in this time period. Like, unless we were sleeping under a rock, we were at least exposed to this on some level. But what makes yours maybe unique is that your mom actually ran a weight loss center. So she was not just living it like everybody else's mom, she was literally running this. So I guess talk to us about that. What, what was your beliefs around food, weight loss, and your mom as a kid?

It was a massive part of our life. That's what I feel like. Like, it was always, since, since I can remember, Food and food restriction was always a part of our everyday life and what we ate and what was, you know, she would make comments when we were kids, if we put margarine or if she happened to have butter on anything, she'd say, "Why don't you put some more Vaseline on there?" Oh, wow. And that's what she called butter, it was Vaseline. And she would just like, we weren't allowed to have popcorn with butter on it, we weren't allowed to like, It was the devil. And, and then so from a young age, because she was constantly looking over my shoulder at what I was putting in my mouth, when I started gaining weight as a teenager, I then turned to bulimia. And so I had an eating disorder for many, many years in high school. And of course, hated my body so much. And that carried on right into my adulthood. And it wasn't until Probably a couple years ago when I, like, I definitely got better. And when I discovered the paleo-based diet when I was in my 30s, everything changed. But I still always thought about my weight. I thought, I obsessed about everything that was going in my mouth, and I was always very, very careful about how I ate until I started doing the GLP-1 peptides, actually. And it was one of the reasons I started doing it was I thought, I've put the work in and I don't want to obsess about food anymore and about what, watch every single thing that goes into my mouth. And I just wanted to relieve that pressure for the first time in my life at 47.

Okay, so growing up with this, did you think it was normal? Was this something that your mom was like sort of proud of? Like, were you getting mixed messages? Like, here I'm obsessed about food too and I'm doing all these things and here you're bulimic and, all these things are happening. Were you thinking, I'm doing a good thing because of what you were being— what you were seeing and modeling with your mom?

No, I don't think so. I think I knew it was really bad what I was doing. And I just— I knew already that I was sick in the head and I didn't look like my friends did. And so I was— I couldn't figure— I knew that what was happening to me wasn't normal.

Yeah.

And I had rapidly put on weight because she put me on birth control pills for acne. And my body just like gained 20 pounds within months of being on it. And I was really sick. And she never figured that out. She never put the two and two together that that's what caused it. And so it was a matter of you need to exercise more and you shouldn't be eating what you're eating.

So as a child, you knew this was wrong. As a teenager, you knew this was wrong. What was your relationship like with your mom during this?

Not good.

Not good at all.

No, no. And my mom still is obsessed about it. She's the first to admit it too. Like, I've actually talked about it. Oh yeah, I've interviewed her on my podcast about her eating disorder and growing up with that.

Wow.

And she knows that she doesn't do well with it either.

So she had her own issue and she realizes that she put that on you?

Yes.

Wow.

Yes, 100%. Yeah. And so for her to see, have a daughter that's gaining weight was like traumatic for her. Like, she was like, oh my gosh. She was also a fitness instructor, so she was a full-time fitness instructor, manager of Nutrisystem weight loss center. So she was always in that field of work growing up. And so for her to have a daughter that was overweight was not— yeah, it was, it was hard on her.

Were you truly overweight looking back now, or were you just—

I was, yeah. Oh, you were truly to that during that time? Yeah, yeah. And then I went off the pill and I lost the weight.

Got it. Yeah, you know, it's interesting because I grew up in that same time period. Now, my mom certainly didn't work at a weight loss center or do that as her business, but I had that messaging. And then me getting into the fitness, fat loss space for so many years, I was very aware with my daughter to not talk about— I thought, so I thought like, oh, I'm not going to talk about her and what she's eating. I won't comment on it. I'll let her choose. But it didn't matter. Like, she still heard this being my business. She still saw it being my business. So it still affects her. It still did, even though I thought I was being super aware of like, let me not ever address or talk about her food. But it's more than that. It's the behaviors. They're watching.

Yeah, yeah. We have the same age daughters, I think, don't we? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And if I ever said like— I exactly the same as what you just said. I have always been very conscious of that, and I never talked about my body in front of her. I never put myself down, nor to my husband. Like, that was something that I always kept to myself because I didn't want— A, I didn't want them to think I had an issue, a self-image issue, but I didn't want to put that on her. And I wanted her to be confident with how she looked and how she ate and all of those things. And if I ever did say something, like, I think I remember pointing out that she was drinking, you know, the Starbucks, you know, Grande Venti like with double shot vanilla and she thought that there was no calories in liquids. This is when she was, you know, 16, 15, 16. And I pointed that out to her and she was just like, "What?" And she's teasing me, she's like, "Mom, I hope you're not body shaming me." I'm like, "I'm not body shaming you." Little brat. But I was like, "No, but just so you know, that's probably like 500 calories." But it's a very fine line. You have to be so careful about how you talk to them because you want to educate them, but you don't want to have— create food issues.

I completely stayed away from the conversation even though she saw me doing it as a business. I never addressed what she was eating or doing. But actually, that backfired a little bit because when she— this is not too long ago— she was asking me questions, and she said, because she had went through her own little struggle with stuff, and she said, you're so knowledgeable, Mom, of food, and why didn't you teach me? And I thought, wow, this is so interesting. I went this other direction of like, I'm not going to I don't talk about any of it to you because I don't want you to create— but now— but then she's like, but I still wanted to understand, like, what is a calorie? What is it? So it's kind of a similar thing there. So yeah, I went back and now I do talk to her about it. I still don't comment on body or food or anything, but I'll answer questions when she asks. I feel like no matter what we do, we mess up our kids, right? Like, I'm sure our moms were doing their best, and then we try to do our best.

Yes, I think so too. Like, I think my mom didn't have ill intention, and I certainly never have. And I just try to come at it from an educational standpoint with my daughter and my son, where I try and teach them not to calorie count or obsess about food, but like, prioritize your protein. And carbs turn to sugar, so if you're eating a ton of carbs, that is still equivalent to eating a lot of sugar, so you have to be very careful about how you balance this. So I just try to teach them that kind of stuff, and I never talk about their physique.

Sure.

Yeah.

Do you think that— I think our generation of women possibly is still operating from a lot of these beliefs without even realizing it.

Oh, I think so too. Big time. Big time. Even the calorie counting stuff. Like, how much have we talked about in the last couple years that calorie counting, just, it's a flawed system. And yet, how many women do you know that still obsessively count calories and think that that's what's gonna work? Yeah. A lot.

Why do you think that so many still have this huge guilt around calories and food, and what can we do about it?

I think it's burned in our brains. From probably childhood and from having the mothers that we did. And then from society, I mean, how much was that shoved down our throat, especially for women, right? We weren't allowed to have any weight on us. I think now it's getting a little bit more acceptable actually with this generation, right? Girls are curvier naturally now. I thought it was because of the hormone stuff.

I thought it was, um, in the 2000s, like 2010— let's call it 2010 to maybe 2024— I was thinking, okay, muscle is in vogue. It's like, this is the thing. Like, we're talking about being stronger, we're strong— talking about being healthier, talking about bone loss prevention and why the importance. I thought we were there, and then I've seen it really go backwards in the last 2 years. I've seen that sort of heroin chic, super skinny look come back in. And I feel like— yeah, well, let's— I want to talk about that. Like, yeah, because unfortunately peptides can— you, you mentioned right at the beginning of this interview how much this helped you, but how much is this also fueling this perfection belief of skinny, we can never be too skinny? And now I, I'm shamed into doing that too. Like, the body positivity movement just completely disappeared.

It did. Yeah, yeah. And I think it is because of the peptides, because now we're seeing that women can get really, really skinny if they take the peptides. And so we're seeing a lot of people, especially out on social media and in Hollywood, these women— I mean, I don't know if you watch the Kardashians. It's like one of my little guilty pleasures in life that I watch stupid Kardashians. But I remember when they started doing them and they all got like, like super, super skinny for a while where I was like, oh no, like this is terrible. And even in my own journey with them, you know, I've been obsessed about being skinny my whole life and I just so badly wanted to be thin. I didn't want the body I had, even though I had accepted it in the sense of like, okay, I don't think my weight's ever gonna change from this. Like I'm not gonna get below this number because no matter how much I ate or didn't eat or worked out, it just would never drop below that number. So it was like, I think I just got to accept these curves. And then I start doing this peptide and I blow right past that number and I just drop, drop, drop. And I'm just like, oh my gosh, for the first time in my life, I actually feel like this is the body I'm supposed to have. And I thought it would just stop. Like it would get to a point where it was, I wasn't going to lose anymore. And that doesn't happen. You can get skinnier and skinnier and skinnier. And I dropped down to about 119. I'm 5'3" and I was like, oh my gosh, this is way too skinny. This looks horrible on me. And I actually then stopped and I gained a bunch of weight back. Not a bunch, like 5 pounds, 6 pounds. And then I was like, okay, this to me looks good. But what about the person that has that, that doesn't have that kind of viewpoint of their body, like that have body dysmorphia, that get their hands on these peptides, which is so many women, and they think skinnier the better. So, and it's, this is a scary thing that's happening right now.

It is scary. And this might be a weird question for you, but I'm going to ask it anyway because it's It's what people are probably thinking. You clearly— you said you've had eating disorders. You said your mom had eating disorders. You have managed that your whole life. 80% of people that have eating disorders never really get past their eating disorder. They have it. How do you know that the lens you even look through— I mean, here you're an expert here helping other people, but how do you— I've got to ask the question, like, how do you know? How do you check yourself to know what lens am I looking at this through?

I think because I was always very aware of that slippery slope. And I had, since I was in my 30s, I gained a bunch of weight after I had my daughter. That's why I got into this profession, was I just started piling on weight for no reason. And I started to work out harder than ever. I started doing all the right things and eating perfectly, and my body just kept gaining weight. And when I figured out that it was hormonal weight loss resistance and I recovered from that on my own and figured out what to do. I then stopped counting calories. I stopped doing CrossFit. I started taking care of my body. I wasn't ever gonna weigh or measure any of my food ever again. And I, and I decided right then and there, I'm not obsessing and I'm not gonna be crazy food girl anymore, and I have to embrace that this is my body, this is where it's comfortable at. And I did. And so from that, for 10 years, I never, I never calorie counted, nothing, and I maintained the same weight. And so I feel like a lot of the recovery around my body happened during that time span. And then I hit early menopause and I packed on like 15 pounds overnight. So then I had to like, okay, what the heck is happening now? And have to go figure that all out. And that's why I do what I do today. But I have to check myself, Natalie. Like, still to this day, I have to check myself. And I, and I still think that there is underlying eating disorder inside of me, and I have to be really careful. I have to be careful with these GLP-1s. I get super frustrated that I have to be on them in order to not gain the weight back. And then I get mad at my body that it does that. And I have to be, you know, go, okay, now I'm gonna be kind to myself and, you know, practice what I preach. But yeah, so I still think it's there and I think it's a slippery slope and I have to be really careful.

So there's women listening to this right now, I know there is, that they heard some of these statements and that they're now thinking, whether they are admitting it forward or not, it's in their brain, Maybe I should be doing this. Maybe, maybe, wait a minute, wait, she effortlessly, or that's what they're hearing. She took something and she's getting thinner and now she's getting past her goal. Maybe I should be doing that. I know that women are thinking that because that's what we do. We compare and we still have that talk in our head around being skinny or being tiny, that that's somehow increasing our self-worth. What do you want to say to those women that are hearing that right now?

Well, the peptides can be the most incredible thing ever for women because of that. And I see it in my own group where women go, oh my gosh, for the first time in my life, I'm not obsessing about food. I think about food 24/7. I think about what goes through my mouth 24/7. So to have that relief taken off and the brain space, like you don't have to think about your weight, 24/7, and that disappears out of your brain and just frees up all this space in there. It's glorious, and it can be absolutely incredible, but there's a dark side to it for sure. Talk about that, where you have to be— but you got to be careful.

I don't feel anyone's speaking to that dark side enough. I mean, we hear vague things. We hear, you know, you don't want to lose muscle. I mean, that's not so vague, but that's what we're hearing is just, you don't want to eat protein, don't lose muscle. But what do you want the woman listening that is going back to this 1980s, 1990s, 2000s scarring and that talk about, oh, I'm not enough now, I better go do this. What do you wanna tell them? Like, what would you wanna tell the younger version of you? What do you wanna tell your mom to that person? Because I heard you say, you know, there, this could be an answer, but there's also this dark side. What, what do you want them to know?

Mm-hmm. I, I, I want them to know that they should do it right if they're going to do it. And there's a right way and there's a wrong way. And there's a way that you can do it where you're putting your health first and you are still continuing to work on that, those food disorders and the body image issues, because the peptides doesn't take— it doesn't necessarily take that away, right? And so you do have to be really, really careful with taking them. Because it's so easy to lose weight when you're on these, that that can be a danger.

Do you worry about the long-term effects of these or the doses that it has to keep going up?

What we see in the women that I work with, because I work with midlife women, that typically this, this weight gain— yes, we see people that have always struggled with weight and now it's even worse because they're in midlife. But a lot of the women that come through the door are women that didn't necessarily have weight problems until midlife or until having children, and then they've always just kind of struggled to maintain, like, like me. And so when they use them, they use them— we recommend using them in as low a dose as possible and not titrating unless they absolutely have to, unless they've plateaued and they're not losing any more weight and they've done all the things to complement the weight, the peptide. So they're still, they're lifting weights, they're eating well, they're still prioritizing protein, and they're doing all the right things. Okay, then you can titrate. But we really, really make that clear with these women, which is you do not want to keep going up, up, up in your dose. And we never see women having to, like, I can count on one hand how many women have had to go above 6 milligrams of tirzepatide. And doctors though are titrating 6 milligrams every month up to 15 milligrams.

Okay, 6 milligrams is a lot though. That's 3 times the starting weight loss dose, is that accurate?

Yes. Okay. Yeah, it's 2.5 is the start dose for, for terzametide.

Okay, so, and then there's people that I know you feel, because I've talked to, that could actually microdose even that, so they don't even need to be—

Absolutely.

On that.

Yep. Yeah, we see microdosing working for about a third to a quarter of women. So if they, let's say we're just talking about tirzepatide, 1.25, we've seen women that have been able to just do 1.25, never go higher, lose the few pounds that they needed to lose. And they continue on it because it helps with their inflammation, helps with their blood sugar, helps with lots of different things. They want it for the health optimization and they just stay there. So many of the doctors—

Jordi, let me ask you this before you keep going. Like, many of the doctors that I've interviewed have even shared that 1.25 would be not considered a microdose, that that's still— that I've heard that you could be on like literally like 0.50 or very small to actually have that inflammation benefit. Have you seen that?

Yeah, we have. With— for if people are doing it for that purpose, for the inflammation purpose, we have seen lower doses working for that, but I've seen more people that it doesn't work for.

Interesting.

Yeah. Yeah. Like I was just doing a podcast with my head coach and she was saying that she finds that if she doesn't take 3 milligrams of tirzepatide a week, her inflammation and her endometriosis comes back.

Interesting.

And she's not losing anymore. She eats lots of calories. She works out all the time. She's super healthy. And that's just where she has found what has worked for her. What we have seen work best and for majority of the women is the starting dose of 1.25, increasing— if you're not losing weight, then you would increase it to 2.5 within that first month, and then you stay at 2.5, and we typically see that working for weight loss for about 6 weeks. And then we see that they typically have to go to 5. And very few people have to go above that, and they will lose their weight at 5 milligrams a week.

Now, you're talking specifically about the weight loss patient, the weight loss client. What to you puts them in that category? Like you said, you struggle. I mean, are you talking somebody with an extra 100 pounds, an extra 50 pounds, an extra 10 pounds? Like, what, what's your definition there? How do you define that this person really does need to release weight?

If they put the work in, and even if they haven't, Natalie Jill, I still don't judge somebody for taking the peptides because food addiction is like— is worse than cocaine addiction, for heaven's sakes. Like, it is one of the hardest addictions to overcome. And so if somebody hasn't been able to exercise and hasn't been able to stick to a diet their whole life and they are 100 pounds overweight, I just don't think we should be denying that person because they weren't able to put the work in.

Yeah, no, I think we're—

because they need to help.

We're clear on that, like 100 pounds. Okay, that's— that to me is— they're— that's an obviously struggle, that's a metabolic breakdown, there's a lot there. But I'm asking, I guess, about the person who is like making their own deal with their 10.

Yeah, they—

they're thinking they're fat, they're using those words, you know, then they've got 10 pounds.

Yeah. And because I feel like I kind of fall into that category, right? Had somebody looked at me, they would have said, well, do you really need to lose weight? You know, I was 140 or 138 pounds, 140 when I gained the menopausal weight gain, and I was able to drop down with just lifestyle stuff to 135. And looking at me, I don't think people would have been like, oh, she's overweight. But in my eyes, I wasn't comfortable at that weight. And so I wanted to lose 10 pounds. That was my thing. And I feel so much better in this size. And I don't think I look like I'm too skinny. I'm 5'3", 125 pounds right now. Like, I don't think that that's too much. So I just don't want to judge the woman that feels that 10 pounds to her is a lot. If she's been 120 pounds her whole life and then she hits menopause and gains 10 pounds, and no matter what she does, she can't get that off, then I don't want to deny or judge her for wanting to take a peptide to make that easy.

Do you think that peptides, uh, and I'll actually put all biohacks in there, so peptide, and I, and I do a lot of biohacks. I mean, I do my gosh, this infrared sauna, the red light, the hydrogen breathing. Do you think when you look at this long list of things, is this a new form of orthorexia or a new type of disorder? Women that are piling on all of these things to try to achieve something specific?

I think so. I think there's an element of that for sure. I think there always will be, no matter what, you know, what's coming down the pipeline as far as new stuff goes. And I think as human beings, we always wanna take the easiest path forward. We're wired to pick the easiest path. So if something tells you, oh, weight loss is gonna be easy, or oh, this red light therapy is gonna help with the process of aging, or this is going to help your hair to grow if you put this red mask thing on your head, or whatever it might be, whatever hack it might be, if you're being promised that it's going to, make XYZ easier and that you can feel better by doing just that, right? And not having to put all the work in, we naturally will do that. And that's the same as what happened in the diet craze culture. We were being promised, oh, you do the grapefruit, do grapefruit diet, you're going to lose all the weight and it's going to be so easy because all you have to do is eat grapefruit. Oh, okay, bring it on. The HCG diet. I did that. I mean, I think a lot of people did that. The amphetamines, you know, when they came down the pipeline. The ketogenic diet. Fasting, intermittent fasting. Like, look at how fast we all jumped on that bandwagon when that came down the pipeline. And it was like, everybody's justifying eating one meal a day because they're calling it fasting. Well, how is that any different than being anorexic?

I don't believe that, unfortunately, the quest for skinny and tiny is going to go away. I just— I don't.

I don't think so either. It's going to get worse now.

I think we had a glimpse of it with body positivity, and now I think people are being shamed out of body positivity. Um, and it's concerning to me, and it's part of why I actually didn't do my whole fat loss launch this year in January with my regular way of teaching because I just, I didn't want to be in the noise of all that. I just, I don't like it. It's concerning to me. Um, I hear what you're saying. Uh, I also am concerned and I want to talk about some of those. I'm not talking about the exception of the person that this has really changed their life. They are healthier, they've changed their metabolic markers, they're not depressed anymore. There's a lot of good there. But I'm concerned about the long-term ramifications, and I'm just going to list some of them out. And I mean, I'm open, I want to just discuss it. Um, let's talk about number one. I'm concerned that research peptides, which is what a lot of people use, are going to go away. I feel that it's becoming a black market, not tested, possibly dangerous. They might go away, people will massively rebound, and what is that going to create? I want to get your thoughts on that question first.

I think it's going to create a lot of grief for people. It's really scary. I mean, I remember when they were threatened to be taken away a couple years ago, and I stockpiled entrazepatide because I was like, oh my God, what if they take these away and I can't get them?

So it's becoming a drug that people are dependent on in a lot of ways.

No, no, 100% it is. Yeah, because you will rebound. That's from most cases. Most women will rebound.

I need women to hear this because this is something you sign up for the rest of your life. This is like You don't just take insulin sometimes when you have type 1 diabetes. This is the rest of your life.

So, and the way I thought about that for myself, because I thought about that, I was like, if I do this, this is forever, because my body is— has— it was— it's not going to change my body, my physiology. It's gonna— it's only gonna change it while I'm on it. Yeah. And it'll go back to the way it was if I come off of it. So are you prepared, Karen, to take this for the rest of your life? And I thought to myself, I will spend the rest of my life trying to lose weight either way.

Okay.

Right? 'Cause I have up until now, so why would I stop? There was no way that I was ever going to stop caring about how I looked and trying to lose weight and keeping the weight off. I would've done that forever. And so in my eyes, I'm like, I'm going to sit and spend the rest of my life trying all these different diets or sticking to my very regimented diet and putting all this work into it, which is, freaking exhausting mentally and physically, or I can take a little baby dose of this peptide that is supposed to be great for my longevity and health and all these different markers.

It's not a baby dose though, it's 6 milligrams. So I just want to be clear, I don't want people to hear that.

Oh, I'm not on 6 milligrams.

Okay, you're not on— okay, good.

No, and, and when you go to maintenance, you never stay at that same dose. Everybody can come way down.

So what do you consider a baby dose? When you say that?

So what we've seen is the maintenance dose seems to be different for everybody. We've had many people that they take one injection a month.

Got it.

5 milligrams, maybe once a month. Great. My husband, he takes one 2.5 injection every 6 weeks and he's been able to maintain his weight and he lost 15 pounds on it. I've had many, many of our members say the same thing. My sister, she, she takes a dose every— she takes maybe 2.5 milligrams every 3 weeks. I personally find if I take 1.25 every 10 days or so, that, that seems to maintain my weight. I can eat totally normal. I can get all my protein in. I don't feel any side effects. It does help with cravings at that dose. And that's, and that brings down my inflammation. And that's, that's what is working for me. And so most people like that, besides the lady I work with, She's probably the person that's on the highest dose that I know of on a maintenance dose, which is 3 milligrams.

Let's talk about gastroparesis and digestion changes and pooping daily, uh, consistency of that. Um, which, by the way, those of you that don't know this, like, if you're going to have a surgery, for example, they're going to make sure you are not on any GLPs for several weeks leading up to it because of this slowed down, um, gastric emptying. What do you want to share about that? What are your thoughts? What are your— what's your understanding? What are you seeing around that? Because if we don't eliminate every day, we're— we are recirculating toxins.

Yeah. So we, we do have a lot of things in our program for recommendations for the side effects that can happen to some people, that being one of them. We find the best thing to do is to take a combination of ginger and magnesium. And then it seems to— the, the bowels will, will release every day. Um, if somebody is having really severe constipation, then we would recommend that they drastically reduce the dose.

Okay, let's talk about malnourishment. Some people not eating enough because of it.

Yep. And women, we see women starting to obsess about that because food noise— the food noise part of it tends to die down So when you first take them, it really does squash the food noise, but that tends to get better over time. And women freak out when they start to feel hungry again or start to have cravings again, and they'll be like, I need to increase my dose, I've got these cravings coming back. And we're like, no, you want to get your food back, like what you can eat back. Like you want to be eating sufficient amounts of calories. Because it works on so many different mechanisms. It's not just reducing food noise and reduction of food intake that is causing the weight loss. It also increases metabolism. It really does absolute wonders for the thyroid. I've had to reduce my thyroid medication in half since starting them. So it really affects, it affects how you, like fat lipolysis. So there's lots of different mechanisms of action And so we encourage women to get the food cravings back again so that they can eat a sufficient amount of calories so they don't get nutrient deficient. Some women, of course, don't listen to that. And there's not much we can do because there are, no matter what, there's always gonna be people that are going to abuse the protocols, abuse the system. I have like my, somebody in my family not in my program, in my family, started doing them and is just going on, on that, the food reduction. And she doesn't want— she tries not to eat at all. And now she's losing her hair because she lost weight too fast and she's malnourished. And I was like, you have to slow down, like cut back on it and start eating and start eating protein. So we tell women like they should be taking like Kion Aminos every day. They need to be taking their collagen, they need to be taking their supplements, and trying to get so that they— that food noise does die down. And if that might— then that might mean adjust your dose so that it's lower so that you can eat more.

My concern is that most people won't. They— yeah, this does fuel disorders. And I, I— it takes a quick scroll on TikTok, you can see people glamorizing not eating. So there's this trend video going around, people stir-frying a syringe and a bottle and going, you know, when you're hungry but you're on GLPs. It's concerning to me.

It's very—

and I don't— when someone gets—

always gonna have that. Like, it doesn't matter what— look at what happened for years and years. How many years did we see the fasting culture go sideways? Like, I can't tell you how many women It's not because you're not signaling to the brain that there's no food coming in. And because what that does then to the biology of the body, the physiology of the body, is very detrimental. And people, I saw people ruin their metabolism, lose their cycles because they were just intermittent fasting. They were all mad and they thought, oh, because all of these health practitioners are saying this is okay, which by the way, I did for a very long time. I totally— and I still promote fasting, but it got taken by a large section of women, very large, down the wrong pathway. And they all started starving themselves. And to me, that is no different than anorexia.

My concern is I understand what you're saying. So yes, it's totally different when you're doing this right. My concern is the ones not doing it right. So I don't mean the person doing it responsibly. So like, as you're saying, you're you're not doing it so you shut off your appetite. You are eating, you're getting your nutrients in, you're making sure you're listening to instructions. I'm saying the person that's not, it's almost worse than fasting because you're, you're now in starvation modes. You're creating this huge deficit where you're messing up your thyroid, you're losing your hair, you're going to absolutely get sarcopenia, you're going to lose bone. There's a whole host of things that go wrong there, and you shut off your hunger drive. So you don't— like, in fasting mode, at least your body at some point's like, We need food. You're not getting that. So that's my concern. So I don't mean— I'm not talking to the one— I'm not trying to argue with somebody doing it right and for all the health benefits and the reasons. I'm concerned there's a lot of people just doing it wrong without the right guidance.

Oh, 100%. But my point is, we're always going to have that. We're always going to have people that are doing it the wrong way, right? Like, how many women do you know that started to go from OMAD to, okay, now I'm going to do a water fast for 5 days because I'm starting to gain weight.

Yeah, they never say it's hard to wait. It's always a reason. I'm doing it for mental clarity, or I'm doing it for— it's really, it's— I see it, it's happening for weight a lot of times.

It is, it is. And so I think there's— it's just, I think that this is going to come with it no matter what. There's— and same with people that biohack. There's a group of people that are excessive with biohacking and it's like, oh my God, like you're causing way more stress to your body than not because you're doing all of these things. You're whatever it might be. Like there's a long list of biohacks that you can do now, or the people that are using a bazillion different peptides from who knows where. Like I think we're always, it doesn't matter what it is, there's gonna be people that are gonna abuse the system and they're not gonna do it right. And it's like, we all— we as practitioners, you and I, we have to make it our mission, I think, to really teach people how to do it correctly and do what we can on our part and be the practitioners that really try and teach people how to do this right.

Yeah, I'm actually— I'm not a practitioner. I'm not a doctor. I'm— I am a fat loss expert and nutritionist and Master Sports Nutritionist, and this has been really— it's been hard for me to wrap my brain around a lot of this, and I try to understand.

Absolutely. Yeah.

And be compassionate. And I do think they are groundbreaking for a lot of reasons, but I can't help but to see the fallout with this, and it's concerning. It is concerning. I don't know that women realize how dangerous sarcopenia is, how dangerous osteoporosis is. My gosh, 1 out of every 2 women over 50 will break a bone, fracture because of osteoporosis. If you're over the age of 65 and you fracture a hip, 20% of those women won't even live past a year because of that. When we are creating malnourishment, we are absolutely losing bone, sometimes not repairable. I'm concerned about that.

Yeah.

And what that's going to create.

How do you—

how do you help us? Like, how do you—

where the world was going like obesity. I'm sorry, but like, what is it, 98% of the population is metabolically unhealthy right now? And so what are the stats on that? Yeah, I don't know what's better, you know what I mean? Like, it's— we're causing another problem with these peptides, 100%, but where we were was not good. That's true.

That's a valid, valid point there.

So for some people, yes, it's— I think can be an incredible tool when used properly. And we just have to try to educate the people on this. Like, there's people like Tina and Dr. Tina Moore, and there's many, many practitioners who are really trying to teach people to use these appropriately. And I think that that's what we just have to keep doing, is we just have to get that education out there and hope that people will be safe about this, but you're not gonna— you're not— it's never going to be 100%. That's just not the way it's going to happen. Yeah, but these are not going anywhere. And so it's like, we better figure out how to use these appropriately and start teaching. I think doctors— that's where the problem lies, is these doctors aren't following up with patients. They're prescribed from a form that a person fills out. Which— that's how we do it too. Like, our, our practitioners, they, they, they get the intake form from you and they send through the prescription. We just implement the coaching part of it, and we have the online program so that people do this correctly. But majority, like 95% of these clinics that are offering peptides and doctors that are offering peptides don't have the program.

Yeah.

And they're not doing it appropriately. So the education has to come at a higher level. To the prescribers, which that's not going to happen though, because then that means that, that they need to take time and they don't have that.

You bring up some valid points about what's worse, the obesity. Yes, granted, that makes total sense. You also brought up some valid points about the woman that's suffering around not being able to be thin or whatever they define as that. And what that's creating. So I hear all of that. Um, what do you want people to take away from this conversation? Like, what do you— the, the person that's judging, the person that's questioning, like, help us. Like, what— the person that's going to be doing it, um, help us understand.

Where do you—

because you're talking to women that grew up in this, I'm not enough, I've got to be thinner, I've got to be smaller. Some of them busted through that. Some of them have struggled, some of them are still struggling a lot. Help us, like, what do you want everyone to hear?

I want everyone to, if they have struggled with this, that they still continue to get help and to teach themselves how to self-love. And you know, that, that has to be part of it, and they got to continue to work on that. And that if they are considering peptides, that they do have to consider that this could be a lifelong thing if they want to keep the weight off and keep the health benefits of the peptides, that a lot of that does have to be, you know, a lifelong thing. And that if you're gonna do it, you do it appropriately and you do it the right way. And there's people like myself that can help with that, but there's other practitioners that do as well. And so find the person that's gonna help you do it appropriately. Use it as a tool in the toolbox. Midlife women, we have it harder than anybody. With weight, and you can be doing everything right and you can still gain weight in menopause. You could be the fittest and never had a weight problem your entire life, and you drop in estrogen, your estrogen drops, and you can gain 15 pounds without changing anything. And that 15 pounds can be impossible to come off. I can't tell you how many women I've worked with in our HRT clinic that we optimize their hormones, everything starts to look better, their labs look better, their insulin sensitivity's better, their cholesterol's going down, and yet the fat won't come off. And it just all sits in their belly. And then they've got the pressure from society and the diet culture and everything that we're talking about here today to not look like that. And do you know how hard that is on a woman that is aging You know, her face is suddenly changing, the elasticity of her skin's changing, and now she's got this great big belly hanging over her pants. This was me. That's not easy to accept, and I don't want to accept it, and I don't want to feel like I should because I should have body positivity. It's like, well, no, I don't like this, and this is unhealthy. To have visceral fat is not good for me. And so using these peptides can be absolutely incredible because it can help to get off that menopausal weight gain. And that can be absolutely life-transforming. You, you put a woman on HRT and a small microdose of peptides to get off that weight and you get her eating— or a lot of these women, they're already healthy, they're already doing all the things right. So you don't have to touch that side of things, but now they're seeing the results. Their muscles coming on because they're optimized on estrogen and testosterone. I look better and feel better now at 50 than I did at 42. And that is like, I can wear a bikini for the first time in my life at 40— at— I'm 49, turning 50 in a month. At 49, I can put on a bikini and feel more comfortable than I did at 25. Do you know how glorious that is? And I I deserve that, and I have every right to use these peptides and use hormones to optimize my health. And I think if we use it like that in a healthy way with everything else, it's— it can be incredible. And we get to go into the second half of our life feeling empowered and feeling amazing and feeling beautiful. And that's different— what, what that is for each person is going to be different.

I like this perspective that you've shared because you've actually opened my mind to a different perspective. So I do, I feel like before I chatted with you today, I had some strong beliefs. One of them was always that I think that they are life-changing for people as far as blood sugar regulation, metabolism, obesity, all on board. I also could see how the small tiny doses or microdoses could be beneficial for some, but I had this really, really giant ginormous concern around the feeling of eating disorders. What you open my perspective to that I literally hadn't even occurred to me is, um, because I'm not someone who had, had navigated an eating disorder. I got my— I got lots of other problems, but not— that was not one of them. I love— I've always eaten, eaten, eaten and loved, loved food, um, and, and not had that, the complex around calories and eating, for me personally.

Um, yeah.

So what you opened my eyes to was the pain that someone experiences that's been navigating it their whole lives. That this almost— we were looking at it, me and others looking at it as this is fueling a bigger problem. And what you've shifted my perspective on is no, maybe this is actually an answer if they can learn to do it right. So that was, that's a pretty interesting perspective that I had not even considered, and I think it's an important one. The key piece to that is if they do it right. Trying to eat just 500 calories a day is not doing it right. Doing it to have zero appetite is not doing it right. What you're saying is if you're doing it to shut that noise and that sadness, and you are now eating a proper macronutrient-rich diet, you're working out, you're doing all the things, that could be a solution. And that's a perspective I hadn't heard.

Yeah, it's a, it's a mind shift. It is. And I, and I want people to look at it like this, you know, if you were 45 years old, let's say, and you start to struggle with depression, and HRT doesn't get rid of it or anything else, and you're just like, God, I'm just down, you know, I just feel down and I'm depressed. And then that person goes to their doctor and they're put on an antidepressant. Would we judge that person? Would we say, well, why are you on that? Like, your depression wasn't that bad. It was just a little bit. It wasn't really affecting your life that much, was it? Like, don't you think you could just do something else to get rid of that depression? Like, why don't you do a self-help program? It's a great, you know, like, it's— yeah, yeah, it's just something to consider. Like, we don't judge people for doing that, but for some reason, when weight loss is suddenly made easy and there can be a peptide that you can take for this, suddenly that changes the landscape. It's like now everybody wants to judge the person that's taking them. And there's multiple reasons why people take these. I mean, we don't know how the half of it, right? It can be food disorder, it could be just a lifetime of struggle, but it could also just be like they want to be healthier, they want to lower inflammation, they want to— who knows why. But who are we to judge? Like, we don't judge people for doing— for taking an antidepressant or taking a cholesterol medication or for taking, you know, anti-anxiety. Yeah, they do. You're right.

But I hear this perspective, um, you know, I mean, just as we started talking today, at first I was honestly concerned. I'm like, oh boy, this going in a very interesting direction because it's my very point about eating disorders. But how you, how you dove into that and explained, I actually really appreciate because I— you are somebody that has come from a long history of this. You are your own suffering with it. You dealt with a mom that had it. You've seen all sides of it. Um, so I think you really, you know what's going on at a deeper root. Um, so you bring up some valid points here. I think my urge to women is, like you said, we're not going to stop it. We're not— I'm not going to try to stop it by all— I can't stop any of that. Um, it is that responsibility conversation. And I think the responsibility conversation starts with others not shaming them and people really taking on trying to understand and learn and providing tools. Just like we wouldn't shame somebody with a drug addiction, or we wouldn't shame— there's like— exactly, like, we have to support around it.

Yeah, not shame, it's empathy. If somebody's doing this wrong because they have an eating disorder and they're wanting to get from 115 to 100 pounds, then there needs to be empathy and help for those people. Not shaming, not saying like, well, don't use this because, you know, you've got this eating disorder and how dare you. It's, it's more, oh, this is sad. And then I do, and I worry about that. I do. Our prescribers they, they won't prescribe to somebody that has a BMI under 24.

Okay, so if they see this, they're not just—

and they've shut— and I've seen numerous times they're like, sorry, but I'm not going to do this.

That's good to hear.

We could— they'll sometimes do microdosing schedules for those people that— because they'll say, you know, we don't think you need to lose weight. We just actually had somebody today who was denied, but denied, and the doctor said 'If you could go get a DEXA scan and show it to me, then I would consider a microdose.' Okay. Because he just wanted to make sure that she wasn't, you know, losing muscle. And, you know, she was— she just only wanted to get off 10 pounds, was in that, you know, she was— I think her BMI was 22. And so out of concern, he's like, 'Go get a DEXA scan.' And so I think if we can get more doctors on board with that, that, you know, watch who they're prescribing these medications to, I think that that's good. That doesn't take care of the research peptide access, but with this landscape that's happening right now, those might not be available for much longer anyways.

Karen, what do you wish I asked you that I have not?

Probably the role of hormones that are also— should be involved in all of this as well, because we don't see the peptides working as well if somebody— if a woman has not optimized her hormones. And so just talking about kind of like the right way of doing these part of that puzzle is making sure that you've optimized your hormones first.

First, so before you're doing—

or we can coincide together doing them both, but a lot of the time women can start HRT and that will help their body to release the weight. Yeah, yeah. And kind of timing their HRT so that you don't start gaining weight, that's a really big thing too, is We wanna start seeing women getting access to hormones at an earlier age in perimenopause before all the metabolic disaster happens almost across the board to all of us in some way, shape, or form because doctors aren't prescribing estrogen in perimenopause. They're waiting till menopause till you're 15, 20 pounds overweight and you're metabolic disaster. And then they'll say, okay, well now we'll give you estrogen because you no longer have a period. So timing of HRT can really help you to avoid ever having to use peptides. Making sure that you're working with somebody that's individualizing that care for you, and that includes peptides and the HRT together. If that's something you're interested in, individualize it. Don't go with these blanket schedules of protocols, HRT protocols, etc. Get it so it's perfect for you and your physiology.

Makes total sense. Where can people find you? Where can they learn more?

Where—

talk about your podcast and where— how they can actually work with you.

Yes. And so we have a telehealth clinic in the United States, so we can prescribe in every state all the hormones, testosterone included, because that's a— can be very challenging for women to get. So I always like to say We can prescribe it in every state. We do thyroid management, and we have a very affordable peptide program, one of the most affordable I think that's out there. And we also have the podcast, which is called The Hormone Solution. Natalie Jill will be coming on that soon. And almost 500 episodes. We're top 25 on iTunes under nutrition, so it's a Great podcast, lots of information, lots of talk about hormones and peptides. And then I also have a product line on midlifesolutions.org, and that's our little Midlife Solutions shop. And we sell over-the-counter estrogen face cream, which I'm happy to send you some. I always like to give it out to my podcast, my fellow podcaster women, because it just does miracles for your face. And you don't have to put your vaginal estrogen on your face, 'cause that's a bit of a trending topic thing right now. Have you seen that? Like where all these women are like, put your vaginal estrogen on your face, and it's like, actually don't. It's probably full of a lot of nasty things that you don't want on your face, but probably don't want it on your vagina either. But anyways, we got that, we got progesterone, we got estrogen oils. These are all, can be purchased without a prescription. They're considered cosmetics. Although they have USP-grade hormones in them, and so I wanted to make it accessible for all women, HRT. So hence the product line.

And we'll link all this up in the show notes. Thank you so much, Karen. Thank you for being here today.

Thanks for having me.