Episode #3 - The Happy Hormone Cottage Weight Loss Program

In this episode Lyn talks through The Happy Hormone Cottage Weight Loss Program with special guests Jeff Hogrefe & Nikki Smith.

How is Our Program Different from Other Weight Loss Programs?
* Not a stimulant
* Very few side effects
* Not a diet program. You eat what works for you
* High success rate
* Metabolic testing
* Support from Dr. Kim Sunshein
* We use peptides

***Although our HHC has a telemedicine license to easily service clients in Ohio and Florida, we can also work with clients who live out of state as long as they come and visit us in person annually. Our goal in publishing this podcast nationally is for the educational value contained within. Education is key!***

Transcript

Pam: [00:00:00] Have you ever noticed that the moment that you decide that it's time for you to lose some weight, how many food commercials are on the tv? It's like the food cartel knew about your decision. The truth is, it's not a conspiracy against your ladies' efforts. It's really just about the empower and the importance of food in our life.

It's surprising to hear that 70% of Americans are overweight. Or obese and that 45 million Americans go on a diet. The weight loss industry itself is a $56 billion industry, and people spend about $33 billion on weight loss products. I mean, just digest that for a moment, that those are some big, big numbers.

Unfortunately, most of us and myself as I'm included in this, we continue on the merry go round of weight loss and we never seem to have any [00:01:00] long term success. Welcome to the Happy Hormone Cottage podcast. My name is Pam Gross and on today's podcast, we are going to talk about weight loss, more specifically weight loss programs with the founder and the executive director of Happy Hormone Cottage, Lyn Hogrefe.

Lyn is referred to as the warrior for women's wellness. And she is very excited to talk today about the Happy Hormone Cottage's new weight management program. And to address the benefits of the program that will help you avoid the common reasons why diets fail, and why this program will finally help you lose weight, keep it off, and to find the long term success and happiness that we're all looking for.

Welcome Lyn. Thank you so much. I'm happy to be here. Throughout our podcast, we're going to have some other guests and I will introduce, introduce them as we continue our [00:02:00] conversation. So Lyn, in the opening I talked about the power and the importance of food in our lives. If you think about it, food really is an integral part of our life because I know some of my treasured memories revolve around cooking with my grandma and with my mom.

And if you think about it, food is also kind of how we connect with one another. I mean, we have holidays. We just came out of Thanksgiving, which is all about food, right? Anything in regards to a sporting event, we have tailgating, which again is about food, right? And I think food in general, kind of, it gives us comfort.

I think it can help with distractions. It's a form of entertainment. It's also a form of socialization. And I think that's super important. And I think that is something that we've probably learned through the COVID pandemic. Right. How important that socialization truly is to all of us. The truth is we just really like to eat.

We do. We do like to eat. I know. And I, and I told you my favorite weight loss [00:03:00] joke is that we are what we eat. And I said, I always need to eat a skinny person. Then we wish it was that easy, but unfortunately it is not. So I'm very excited that you're here to share the information on the weight management program through your company.

As we've talked before, your work impacts so many people's lives. And I know that weight loss, when you're talking about someone's weight, it's a difficult subject. It is. And it's not usually a very fun topic for most people to kind of address, but we're going to change that. Yeah. And that's the, that's the point of this conversation is that, so I kind of want you first to kind of give me an overview of Happy Hormone Cottage's weight management program, and then we're going to kind of dive right in and talk about the specifics.

And talk about how it works, but more importantly, we're going to talk about why it works

Lyn:. I love that. And I want to give you some background here because you know, I'm a one trick pony. I began the Happy Hormone College. My husband can attest to this. I want to just do hormones and [00:04:00] hormones and hormones.

And I've always, I'm kind of always holding him back. My husband's brilliant. He's very bright. He's just a lovely man. Women love my husband. He's just I'll stop now. He's just great. Okay. Um, and he's very smart. He gets lit up by learning. We go on a vacation. I want to read a romance novel. Don't judge. And he wants to read research and charts.

I'm just like, Oh my goodness, I married a nerd. God love him. But through all of his reading and research over the past several years, and especially last fall, he stumbled across this really great program that he became certified in called peptide therapy. And because I just wanted to do hormones. Women had said to me for years, can you start something with weight loss?

And I was like, no, no, I'm a hormone specialist. I don't want to do weight loss. I would kind of get whiny. But he came to me with this program a year ago, November. He said, you know what? I think I've got, this is a really great program. Let's go ahead and see if we can't adopt this as a weight loss protocol.

So he and a lot of our staff members went on this, this protocol, which we'll talk about, and it worked. They began to lose weight. My husband had a little, don't most men have a belly? He had a little belly and he lost his belly and it was pretty [00:05:00] painless. I mean, it was really easy. Just wasn't hungry. A lot of my staff members lost weight.

We have Nikki coming into the program later who's lost 50 pounds. And I've had women say to me, it's the easiest thing I've ever done. So what is it? So it's the peptide that we're going to be talking about. But the biggest components of this program, if you're taking, if listening and taking notes, you would write these two things down.

It lights up our hunger hormone called ghrelin. And so we're not hungry, it kind of shuts that down so that we're just not hungry, and it lights up the hormone, the fullness hormone called leptin, which is in our brain, I always go up here, lights up our leptin hormone so that you're full, and most women and most people who have overeaten for a long time, they've shut off those signals, they disregard the hunger hormone, they eat when they're full, the fullness hormone doesn't work anymore, and you just kind of are out of control, but this peptide that we are using, Again, it shuts down the hunger and lights up fullness hormone so that it's just you just don't eat as much and if you don't eat as much, guess what happens, you lose weight without much effort.

And what we've done as well because we have a compounding pharmacy is we've [00:06:00] also supporting insulin receptors. And we're supporting metabolism so that people have energy. I've not really been on a weight loss program because I'm not overweight, but people tell me all the time, I have no energy, and I think about food all the time, and it's just about willpower.

And it just sounds horrible to me. It's like, that's probably why it doesn't work, right? It just sounds horrible. Because food is so important, it's pleasurable. So with this hormone, or with this, I'm sorry, with this, uh, weight loss protocol that we do, that you're not hungry and you feel full, you simply don't eat as much and it's painless and the weight just comes off, right?

So I think that's why it just works because we don't eat as much, right? And then the question I always get is, well, when I lose the weight that I, that I want to lose, what happens? Do I just come off the program? And that's kind of a really interesting question. And it kind of depends on the individual person.

The answer is probably going to be probably not. You will, if you are overweight, you have a tendency to be, to be overweight. So you want to maybe send this protocol, maybe at a lower dosage, maybe less frequently for the long haul. I'll use my husband as an example, we've both done genetic testing, he has what's called, [00:07:00] maybe I made this word up, but the snacking gene.

He just loves to snack, which is why you get a little belly, right? So when he uses our protocol, the snacking urge goes away, he doesn't snack, he loses weight. And I can tell when he needs to use another dose because I say your snacking gene is kicking in, are you ready for another dose? And he rolls his eyes and but it's true he'll need another dose because he's snacking again.

So that's kind of our gauge because genetically there are fat genes and that's important as 

Pam: well. Well I feel like since we have talked so much about your husband and abused him 

Lyn: and his little belly and his 

Pam: His snacky gene and that you do not, and that you don't like romance novels, uh, that you're more of the, uh, more along the line of, what did you call him?

A geek? 

Lyn: A nerd. A lovely nerd. 

Pam: Yes. Helpful. Anyway, I do want to bring into our program your husband, Jeff. Jeff, welcome to our podcast. Jeff is a registered pharmacist. It's Jeff Hogrefe, sorry. Yeah. He is a registered [00:08:00] pharmacist. And your title, I believe, is A F A A R M, and I think one of you guys can tell us what that all stands for.

Go ahead, Jeff. What's that stand for? 

Jeff: It's an advanced fellowship. or advanced fellow in functional 

Pam: medicine is what that means. Okay, and you're, you're, you're basically at the Happy Hormone College. You're the one who does all the compounding and does all of the Dispense dispenses with all of the medication, 

Lyn: our integrative hormone center, which is a happy head, happy home on headquarters there in Centerville, Ohio.

Pam: Okay, got it. Jeff, one of the questions I wanted to ask you with your weight management program, because obviously, as I said, in the very beginning, we have almost 70% of our population is overweight and or obese, which, by the way, absolutely detest that word, but it is what it is, and that we have all of these.

It's different products and things that you can do. And we're inundated every day with commercials and products and all kinds of things. And now we live in a society where [00:09:00] everybody kind of thinks that you can find some relief in some kind of pill when the truth of the matter is, is that a weight management program is super important to have that structure because it's.

Quite clear that we can't really do it on our own. So Jeff, if you don't mind, can you kind of walk us through of what the program is about? Maybe we'll start at the beginning, kind of what the program is about. And if somebody comes to you now looking to lose some weight, where do you guys start? I mean, how do you start this process?

Well, 

Jeff: I, I just think that nearly everybody needs to lose weight. Lyn touched on the idea of around genetics. And some people have genes around being overweight. The truth is that most people have genes around being overweight. It's built into our ancestry to conserve, right? Because we always dealt with the stresses in life.

We didn't have enough food, right? So we learned to survive on very little food. And that's come [00:10:00] back to bias. Now, because there's plenty of abundance of food, it's rare like my wife to have what I call skinny genes, because it's such a small percentage of the population actually have these variants in their genes where they can stay skinny, and food, they can use, utilize food properly for metabolism, where most of us are just genetically wired to store food.

Okay. And so, When you start talking about living longer, living healthier, longevity, the number one reason, or the number one way to live longer is to reduce caloric intake. To the point where we should probably eat somewhere around 30 to 40 percent less than what we typically eat. Okay, the problem is, is that we get hungry.

We can do weight loss programs for a while and we can lose 20, 30 pounds and do keto and all those things, reduce our caloric intake, but at the end of the day, we start [00:11:00] feeling hungry and it's miserable, so we'll revert, excuse me, we'll revert back to our old ways and start putting the weight back on.

And when we do that, this yo yo dieting, we screw up our thyroid levels and so we, we are less metabolically healthy. So we gain the weight back faster and we tend to put on a little extra pounds. So we go down, we go up a little higher, we go down, we go up a little higher. Okay. And it's simply that we're hungry.

That's all the signaling in our brain tells us we need to eat something. What's interesting about this peptide therapy is that that signal that you're full stays with you. And it stays with you for an extended period of time. So you're really not hungry for five, six days. And so it's very easy to not eat.

When you're not hungry. As a matter of fact, if you do start eating, it only takes a few bites and you suddenly feel full again. And so that's why I [00:12:00] think this is so revolutionary, is that it takes all that pain of weight loss away. And when you don't eat, a lot of good things happen. You lower your inflammation, you feel better, your brain weights up, and all those kind of things in addition to it.

So people are fatigued and sluggish, it's because that food is information. Being sent to the body, and that causes you to feel sluggish after you move. That's kind of where we're at with, with the weight loss program. And 

Lyn: so to get started, we have, we've actually hired a weight loss specialist, Dr. Kim Sunshine.

I love her name, Dr. Kim Sunshine. And she's all virtual. So it's easy. And you just call our facility and you schedule an appointment with her and she'll spend 30 to 45 minutes with you asking you, what have you tried in the past? What has and hasn't worked? What, why do you overeat? What's your support system?

She might ask you to get some lab work done if you need it. If you're a candidate, and most people are. Then she'll prescribe the therapy for you. And then you just check in with [00:13:00] her every so often and kind of accountability and see how you're doing and she'll follow you along. And it's just been really successful because you're eating less food.

Your grocery bill is lower. It kind of takes up the cost of the protocol. You're kind of coming out even right, Jeff. I mean, it's because you're eating so much less food. You're, you're saving money. So I, I 

Jeff: love that, especially with today's prices on food. Yeah, 

Pam: yeah, yeah. One of the things when I was reading about your weight management program, it's important that everyone understand, and I think this is what makes your program a little different than some other people's programs is because if you.

Typically when you go, and I'm, I'm going to name something like a Weight Watchers or something like that. They kind of give you an outline of what you should eat, what you shouldn't eat, how much of that you should eat, those kinds of things. You guys don't really, your program's not about that. No, it isn't about that.

No, because it's not, Jeff, you touched on it, is that this is really about changing your brain. I mean, you [00:14:00] have to really start changing that whole, you have to have a new kind of I'll call it brain strategy. That to me is kind of where we're all going off the rails with the weight loss thing is that we haven't changed our mindset.

We haven't changed the brain. That's why one of the things that about your program is that you make it very clear that you, the person is going to determine what they're going to eat. And when they're going to eat it. So it's very individualized. It's kind of not, you know, not for lack of a better word, not very cookie cutter.

We're back to the one size fits all. Because I think what you guys are focusing on and Jeff, you said it was that you're focused more on the whole physiological, emotional, and situational kind of factors that go into why it is you eat what you're eating. And I think that that's where the medicine and really, really helps because.

It gives you almost, for lack of a better word, kind of a kickstart in the fact that you're not as hungry. And so [00:15:00] then that kind of helps because sometimes you hear people all the time, Oh my gosh, you know, I can only eat three pieces of three celery sticks and two carrots. And by the time I get home, you know, I'm going to chew my arm off.

Yeah, 

Lyn: it's miserable. And again, they're going to eat people like when I'm going to run out the door now. See you later. Yeah, I think, I mean, like, I think, you know, Jeff. said if you're hungry, you're going to eat and that's why any kind of an obsession, whether it's food or alcohol or smoking, willpower alone doesn't work because at some point you're going to give in.

So we've taken away that hunger hormone and the hunger need so you don't feel like eating. If you don't feel like eating, you don't eat. It's just so simple. And it may be a lifelong protocol. It depends on how your body responds. Like I said with Jeff, sometimes, one of our nurse practitioners can go, I think she's been off of it now for 6 or 8 weeks because she's lost 35 pounds and she's still, she's just able to keep that weight maintained with what she's doing, but if she needs to go back and do a protocol again here and there, she can.

It's [00:16:00] individualized. Because you're not hungry, there's no suffering. It might be nice to bring Nikki in here who's with us now, who's lost. Well Nikki, I'll let you share the big news and when you started and why you started and how you've been on this and kind of give our listeners some. Give us a skinny, if you will, Nikki.

Yes, I'll 

Nikki: do. What I like to do is start by talking about a weight loss program that I did way back in 2016, I was about 45 and it was a contest. Of course, you know, since it was a contest, the first day I weighed myself with all of my clothes on, my shoes on, and then I proceeded for three weeks to eat clean, no sugar, no alcohol.

I worked out hard for an hour every day. Like I couldn't even finish some of these workouts at the beginning of the program. They were so hard. And then when the three week weigh-in came, I weighed myself with all my clothes off and no shoes, , and I lost making, [00:17:00] went naked, walked pound and a half, and it, it was so frustrating.

And come to this year when I wanted to lose weight, I just starting on that journey again, just the thought of starting on that journey was hard. So when Lyn and Jeff told me about the peptide therapy, I was on board and let me tell you, it, it was really one of the best things I could have done for myself.

When I did my metabolic panel with Dr. Kim, my A1c came back as pre diabetic, so I really needed this program and I set my goal at 35 pounds because I didn't think that I could lose 50 pounds and I did, I ended up losing 50 pounds and maintenance has been a breeze. I could have sworn that Kroger was going to put up a missing [00:18:00] persons poster for me because Yeah, I live right across the street.

So I used to go there two, three times a day. I'd be like, Oh, what do I want for lunch? Let me just walk over to Kroger. What Jeff said about not being hungry. It's even better because when you do get hungry, It's not like your blood sugar drops so low where you feel like it's an emergency and you need to just stuff things in your mouth.

You actually have time to make better decisions about what you eat. And then you only eat about a third to a half of what you normally eat. I've been on the program for almost a year. I'm doing maintenance now, which every two or three weeks, I'll have a dose of the medication. And I have not gained any of the weight back and I've actually incorporated things in my diet, which were big no nos in the [00:19:00] past, like bread.

So now I enjoy bread every now and then because I'm not going to eat a half a loaf of bread. So it A1C

Lyn: now? How long, how low has that gone? Do you know? No, I 

Nikki: did not do a second, but I'm sure it's 

Lyn: fine. Yeah. I'd like you to do another one to see, cause I know it's come down and you're fasting blood sugar would be great. Jeff, what'd you want to say about 

Jeff: that? How long did it take you to lose 

Pam: the 50 pounds? I would say 

Nikki: because I was happy with the 35 pound weight loss, I didn't even know I lost those last 15 pounds because I had stopped weighing myself.

And then one day I went to the. Gail and I was like, Oh, wow. So I would say it all together. It was about five months. 

Jeff: I think we've seen a loss of about what? Three 

Pam: pounds 

Lyn: a week, but nine pounds, it was, 

Nikki: it was, it was steady [00:20:00] three pounds a 

Pam: week and 

Jeff: we do have one person. She's a younger woman that, you know, in probably four weeks she's dropped 40 pounds, so she's kind of the exception, but three pounds a week is just kind of.

Lyn: And it's without suffering you're not suffering and thinking about food and sluggish I mean, it's it's high quality of life. You're simply not hungry. You live in your life You've got more energy and you're losing weight. I can't think of anything better. Honestly, I really can't well maybe maybe the lottery But it's amazing amazing program.

Yeah, I 

Nikki: actually had to find other things to occupy my mind because I didn't realize how much I thought about food all day long. 

Lyn: That's interesting. You've taken up crocheting and you're now you're a crochet wizard. I know, which has been awesome. We want to talk about some of the things you've crocheted.

We'll just move right along there. 

Pam: Well, I'm glad that was one of my questions that I had jotted down was, and it was for Jeff, but Nikki, I think you kind of addressed it and it had to do with, [00:21:00] so you start off taking This medicine that cuts your appetite obviously in half and is quite effective and it's the peptide Right.

Now is the peptide the same thing as ozempic? Well, Jeff, let's 

Lyn: let's have a Jeff the man, 

Pam: you know, as you know Jeff we've heard lots and lots I think the ozempic is all of a sudden Huge in the news all of a sudden now, because now it's kind of being abused by, uh, unfortunately it's, it's kind of being used, I think, in a manner that maybe it's not quite intended to be.

And I know too, that because so many people are prescribing it, that there's actually a little bit of a drain on the medicine itself when you go to a pharmacy. Yeah. We'll let Jeff 

Lyn: answer all that. 

Pam: Anyway, just. 

Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. They're the same 

Pam: family. Okay. Yeah. Is it called peptide? Cause Ozembic is their name.

Ozembic is a peptide. Okay. Got it. Okay. That's, that's what I think most people would assume. And [00:22:00] a 

Jeff: lot of your newer medications are peptides. And when you think of peptides, you're thinking of signaling molecules, right? Okay. So in a way they're sort of like bio identical hormones, like bio identical hormones are signaling molecules too.

And our body recognizes and makes some response to it. These peptides are small pieces of proteins or amino acids that are signaling as well, and they're, they're going to be thousands and thousands of these that come up, you know, because we're learning more and more about it. And what they've done, it's a good example, they've taken this peptide, they've modified it slightly, so that signal lasts a lot longer, like, the normal signal is a quick 20 second signal to your brain.

This is about a week long signal. I'm full. I'm full. So it's kind of taking the best of both worlds and figuring out how we can modify these signaling chemicals for benefit. So I feel like it's not really abuse because I think everyone has. Yeah, that was 

Pam: my [00:23:00] word, by the way, so don't hold me to that.

Jeff: Right. Well, I mean, in terms of like overuse, like you should save this medication for diabetics. Well, my mind, we're either diabetic or we're pre diabetic, what's the difference? You know, 90% of us are going to be diabetic just because of the way we live our lives. That's because 70% of us are overweight.

Pam: 

Right. Yeah. 

Jeff: Well, it's all about how we use our insulin and how our insulin receptors get overworked. And so why not? I mean, if we can train ourselves to eat less and just think of the motivation behind the fact that, hey, I'm eating less and it's actually showing something like I'm losing weight. I'm feeling better.

Now I'm going to go out and I'm going to exercise. I'm going to do all these other things because before I would eat. Do what Nikki did, right? And, and work out crazy and not see any results. Well, how demotivating is that? So now to throw this into the, to the mix with everything, suddenly, you're like, oh, [00:24:00] this works.

And so now I can go back and do these other things. So it really snowballs, I think, for people to get excited about. Hey, I'm actually losing weight. I'm feeling better. Now let's put on some muscle. Let's build some lean mass.

Pam: Nikki, let me, as we kind of wrap this up a little, Nikki, let me ask you a question.

You talked about in the past, how, what you were doing wasn't very effective and that how much more effective this has been. I want to know kind of what you think changed. Between what you were used, what you were doing before and when you decided to try this program, why was this program so effective for you?

Nikki: I feel like this program makes your body cooperate with the goals that you have, where if you're not working from the inside out, you're just kind of. Throwing darts. You know, you're doing what everybody tells you to do. You're working out really hard. You're eating what everybody tells you you should eat, but you're still [00:25:00] not losing weight.

Lyn: If I could, as a founder of the Hormone Cottage, when you're hormonally balanced and replenishing the hormones you lose when you age after age 35, it's easier to lose weight and keep it off. So Nikki is a staff member. She is hormonally balanced and so she can tell you that Her success has been accelerated because she's already hormonally balanced.

So her body isn't fighting against each other. So oftentimes Dr. Kim will see people that once they've lost some weight, we'll say, I think you're ready for the hormone piece because we can, we've got you started, you're successful. Now let's get you hormonally balanced as well. I mean, they can go, they don't have to go hand in hand, but we like them to because then women seem to experience biologically, physiologically more success.

Yeah. Right. It's, it's, it's kind of a hand in 

Pam: hand thing. I'm glad you said that because I think that's a really. It's a really good point. Yeah, I think it's a great point. And I think it's a question that a lot of people would ask and we 

Lyn: have women, if you can, they come to my hormones one on one with Lyn sessions and they say, can I do both?

And I'm like, if you can afford both, it's not that expensive, but if you can afford both, do yourself a favor and do both at the same time, get the weight loss program started. Buy one of our Dutch testing kits [00:26:00] for the hormone piece and go on both journeys if you can, but if you can't do them both at the same time, if you're really overweight, I urge them to do the weight loss piece first because that's critically important in my mind and then they can go to the hormone piece.

We're not going anywhere, but losing the weight and they'll feel better about themselves. It's just a really. I just spent a really a big win and all because my husband is brilliant and likes to do research and just found this. And so then I said, okay, after big sigh, let's do the weight loss program and spend the best thing we've ever done.

So yeah, it's been great. Well, 

Pam: good. Well, Lyn, Jeff, Nikki, thank you so much. This has been a great conversation. I hope our listeners are ready to take action on their weight loss, and I hope we're motivated by Nikki's success, so congrats on that. And she's 

Lyn: just One of many. And we have an easy number to call to get started.

It's 513 444 6343. 513 444 6343. 

Pam: And you can always go to the happyhormonecottage. com. 

Lyn: Website. Yep. And it's on there as well. 

Pam: Well, I think it's [00:27:00] important to have a structured weight loss program. And I think it's really important to work with experts like Jeff and like, and like Lyn who, who really truly do understand the importance of what, of the whole hormone balancing and genetics and all of that.

I think that's super important. And I think all of you guys have said the same thing about. It has to be behavioral change kind of strategies because it is a behavior change. I mean, if you're going to lose weight, you have to change your behavior to do that. You have to manage your mind. We are thinking people we choose to think about how we feel and, and what actions we're going to take.

I mean, that's the whole. Theory behind, you know, free thinking. I remember reading once that tennis great Venus Williams once said that you have to believe in yourself Even if you don't pretend that you do and then at some point you will I love [00:28:00] that Yeah, I I read that and I thought oh my gosh, I so agree with no wonder.

She's no wonder She's a successful tennis player. So as always Lyn, thank you for your time. Thank you for your dedication Jeff same for you guys You worked always to make positive changes in people's lives and that your company, I know that's one of your central goals and that you're always looking at new ways and programs in order to, to achieve that.

And so I just want everyone, if you're out there and you're struggling with your weight, please don't, don't get discouraged. Reach out for help. There's help. And Lyn is here to help. Jeff's here to help. Nikki can be your inspiration and we all need a little motivation. So. Everyone, please, for your weight loss resource, go to Happy Hormone College and please contact them and begin your journey.

Absolutely. 

Lyn: Thanks so much. It's been great. Thank you.