Winona for Weight Loss
This is the million dollar question I get asked almost every day. Will Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) help me lose weight? The short answer is: Maybe.
I know that's not what you want to hear but keep reading and hear me out. I lost 26 pounds in three months after I started Hormone Replacement Therapy. I was mindful of what I ate, how and what exercise I did, and I also started experimenting with intermittent fasting. In other words, I did it the hard way. The old-fashioned way.
I truly believe that it was due to the fact that HRT allowed me to feel NORMAL again that I was able to get into a place where I could do all right things and begin to see results and for the weight to finally begin to melt away.
Winona Women's Health
What did Hormone Replacement Therapy do for me within ten-days of starting? I no longer had hot flashes, night sweats and I didn't want to kill my husband. I was closer to being back to my normal self than I had been a very, very long time which meant I was in a place where I could get motivated to do the right things to figure out how to lose the menopause 35 I had gained.
Hormone Replacement Therapy
I started HRT in December of 2019. By May of 2020 I had lost 26 pounds. I was within 12-15 pounds of my goal weight. Once I found Winona, I was in love with online, telehealth Hormone Replacement Therapy. This type of medical treatment didn't require that I schedule an in-person appointment, drive 40 minutes to the doc's office to sit in the waiting room for 20 more minutes only to have 8 minutes of his undivided attention.
Weight Loss Secret Revealed
I would love to tell you that Hormone Replacement is all you need, but for me it took a combo of therapies to achieve my goal of weight loss.
When you combine the hormonal effects of menopause and a generalized tendency to be overweight, it's a recipe for a very un-happy woman. It was my story and maybe it's yours as well?
According to Menopause Solutions' February 2023 article, Semaglutide and Weight Loss, "Due to the hormonal changes associated with menopause, semaglutide is particularly effective for effective and sustained weight loss in middle-aged and menopausal women."
Was this the missing piece? Was Semaglutide the answer I'd been looking for?
Contrary to long held beliefs, weight loss is not simply a matter of willpower. As Julia Belluz writes in the New York Times, “We tend to believe body size is something we can fully control, that we’re skinny or fat because of deliberate choices we make. After talking to hundreds of patients with obesity over the years and to clinicians and researchers who study the disease, let me assure you: Reality looks a lot less like free will.” Weight gain and weight loss are a complex orchestra of hormones that tell the body when we’re hungry and when we’re full.
One of these hormones is leptin which regulates body weight not meal-to-meal, but over time. Disorders in leptin metabolism or the brain’s response to leptin can result in increased hunger, decreased satiety, and weight gain which are beyond the individual’s ability to control with willpower.
Adding a GLP-1 could be the missing piece to Weight Loss during menopause
It's no secret that losing weight and keeping it off once you hit perimenopause or your menopause years is HARD! Believe me, I know, it's no joke.
Most of us have heard or learned that our estrogen levels decrease during this time in our life. Our bodies are starving for estrogen so it searches for it anywhere it can. In obese postmenopausal women, adipose tissue (fat) is the main source for estrogen production. Your body needs estrogen so it hangs on to fat and makes more fat so it can create the much-needed estrogen. That's why it's so hard to lose the fat.
Hormone Replacement Therapy is used to add the needed estrogen to our bodies which helps prevent additional fat from being added, but what to do for the existing fat that needs to go?
This is where the GLP-1 or semaglutide drugs come into play. But isn't this the drug that we hear all over the news is impossible to find because pharmacies can't keep up? Well, the brand name versions, yes.
However, just like Bioidentical Hormone Replacement Therapy is produced by compounding pharmacies so is semaglutide which is the compounded versions of drugs also known as Ozemic, Rybelsus and Wegovy.
The FDA approved semaglutide for weight loss in June 2021. In January of 2024, semaglutide and tirzepatide were both on FDA's list of drugs in shortage, which meant compounding pharmacies are now able to step in and provide compounded versions of GLP-1 meds.
My personal experience with Winona HRT and Semagtlutide
I've been on Semaglutide just about three months and have lost about ten pounds. I have maybe 5-10 more to go. It's slow and steady but I'll take it.
I continue on my HRT journey as well and plan to take it forever! As I continue to learn more about the long-term benefits of Hormone Replacement Therapy, I don't see any reason to stop!
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