The Livy Method Podcast - Hormones and Weight Loss - Part 1 with Dr. Olinca Trejo - Winter 2026

Episode Date: February 17, 2026

In this episode, Gina is joined by Dr. Olinca Trejo for a real and eye-opening conversation about hormones, sustainable weight loss, and why it’s never just about calories in versus calories out. Together, they unpack what hormones actually are—dynamic chemical messengers working like an orchestra behind the scenes—and why “balancing” them isn’t about a magic supplement but about getting the body out of survival mode and back into thriving. From set point and stress to sleep, inflammation, digestion, and the effects of years of dieting, this episode connects the dots between your environment, your habits, and how your body responds.Dr. Olinca is a licensed, board-certified Naturopathic Doctor in the province of Ontario. She also holds an honours degree in Kinesiology and has achieved her certification and internship in bioidentical hormone replacement therapy (BHRT).You can contact Dr. Olinca at [e-mail] find her on Instagram: @dr.olincaYou can find the full video hosted at:https://www.facebook.com/groups/livymethodwinter2026 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm Gina Livy and welcome to the Livy Method podcast. This is where you'll have access to all of the live streams for my 91 day weight loss program. With a combination of daily lives, guest expert interviews, and member stories, there is something new almost every day. Miss the morning live? Want to re-listen to one of our amazing guest experts? Well, this is the place. This podcast is hosted on ACAST, but it's available on all podcast platforms, including the one you're listening to right now, Spotify, Apple, and Amazon music. We're focusing on sustainable habits, not quick-fixing.

Is it an opportunity to get curious? We're here, help people get to their health goals. One piece of time, you build and build and build. Hormones are sexy, and I'm not just talking sex hormones, and weight loss is so much more, at least healthy, sustainable weight loss, so much more than calories in versus calories out. Here to have this conversation with us today is the birthday girl, Dr. Olinka Trejo. Hi. It's my birthday.

Hello. It's also the Lunar New Year. It's very lucky to have your birthday today. I mean, it's very lucky for me to be here. So we're just, you know, the three is a term. That's so nice. I actually didn't, I don't know that I put those two together. But you guys, this is going to be our lucky.

There's going to be a lucky call them. Right? You are coming to us straight from Buenos Aires. Yes. I am. Yes. This is the level of commitment I have for you guys. I know.

I love it. Okay. I know you love this conversation. So do I. They say, you know, weight loss is calories in versus calories out. All that takes in consideration is eating less food, exercising more. When in reality, we know, yes, eating the right food is important. But what your body chooses to do with the food is also important, which comes down to hormones. Your issues, your associations tied into food, your beliefs, your habits, that's the big one. And then there is your digestive. system, and then all of your hormones, which basically tell your body what to do with everything. So it's actually quite complicated. But I know you're going to make it really simple for us today. Where do you want to start? I'm going to start. What do you want to start? Well, you know what? We always start with what hormones are. Because I think that if this is the first time that you're joining this conversation, it's important for you to understand that hormones are tiny little like chemicals,

chemical messengers that tell your body what to do and want to do them. But the most interesting thing about hormones is that they're dynamically interacting every minute of every second of every day to regulate everything in your body, which is actually why I always go back to the concept that your hormones are like a big orchestra. And if you've ever listened to an orchestra or a song, you know that all of the instruments have to be playing the same song at the same time and they have to be in tune. And so this is actually why hormones for weight loss become really, really important, right?

Because if you think about all of the things that play a role from your gut bacteria to your appetite, to your behaviors to all of these things and all these chemical messengers being involved in every single one of those things, hormones can't, they have to be part of the conversation when we're talking about sustainable weight loss. And I think that the lifestyle program that you've created is so magical that are actually giving your hormones finally almost like the power to be able to do what they're supposed to do if you just allow them. Is there such a thing as everyone's talking about balancing hormones?

You can't actually balance your hormones because your hormones are always in flux. That's what hormones do. Is there such a thing as healthy hormones? Yeah. I mean, you know what? The thing is that this is something that I think that we touch based on when we were talking about the sleep and hormone conversation a couple weeks ago. And what you want to always remember whether when it comes to like hormones or behaviors or gut, health or inflammation or all of these things is that your body is hardwired for survival, right?

And so in your hormones will always respond to whatever environment you put them in. And so if you put them in an environment that is stressful, sleep deprived, that's coming in with, you know, years of starvation, that's coming in. with, you know, all of the, like inflammation and, you know, leaky gut barrier and all of these things, your hormones are going to respond to that. But if your body is in a state of what we call homeostasis or balance, right, because you are giving your body what it needs. And it never really feels like it needs to survive because it's, instead of surviving is thriving, then your hormones naturally are going to be in balance. And so a lot of the times, I think people come in thinking that like, oh, but what supplement is going to balance my hormones? And it's the, well, I hate to tell you

this, like supplements really can help with so many things like cortisol and, you know, maybe like estrogen detox or all of these things, but it's not, they're not really fixes or band-aids. The fix is actually getting your body out of that survival mode and bringing it back into balance with the bare basics so that your hormones can follow and balance themselves. Yeah, I mean, survival mode has been so overused in the diet industry, but basically your hormones have learned that it needs to store a certain amount of fat for you for emergency purposes, for when you go long periods of time without eating, every time you go through a famine and there's not enough food, which, of course, there's an abundance of food around, but you choosing to follow a super low calorie diet and

not eating enough coupled with high stress, lack of sleep, constant anxiety and fear, like it basically teaches your body to store a certain amount. So that's where your set point. People say, well, this must be where my body's happy. No, it's not where your body's happy because carrying more fat than your body needs also is unhealthy, carries inflammation. It just everything gets factored in around that set point. So your hormones adjust to that set point, which is why you can lose that weight,

but you keep gaining it all back plus more every single time. So you not only need to help the body release the fat, but you need to help the hormones adjust to your new weight each time. And that's why hormones are really important when it comes to not just losing, but maintaining and sustaining. That's the key, really. 100%. And you know what?

And I think that when it comes to this conversation, you always have to remember that you're, there's hormones that are going to always regulate your appetite and your satiety, right? Or like your fullness. And when you go through big swings, those are going to be impacted because your body goes into like, oh my gosh, you are starving me, right?

So those hormones are going to be really, important. There's going to be hormones that regulate how much energy you spend or your metabolism, which actually goes back to a set point that you were talking about. There's going to be the hormones that regulate fat storage, right? And like what you do with the food that you eat and how much of that you store and how much you use. And there's going to be also hormones that regulate like your blood sugar, which is actually why, you know, you've asked me this many times and it's very much the, you know, how long will it be until my hormones are balanced or how long will it be until my body response. And that's what we always talk about. Like this is like this is like the long term

game. You know, like this is for sure we've, you've created this like beautiful 91 day program. But it is this is like a lifelong, um, journey of like balancing your hormones and balancing all of those things of the equation. Because that balance for sure for some people happens in 901 days. And then they, you know, they come back and they're like, oh my God, you fix me. This is great. The rest of my life was magical. And like, we are so happy for you. But the reality is that for most of us, that's not the case, right? Because there's so many things that happen. Again, that all of those hormones are going to respond to the environment that changes, right? Your stress is going to change. Your sleep is going to change. And so all of those factors that

play into a lot more than calories and calories. Or how many calories you take in and how many calories you store, right, as a result of that, are constantly in flux. Yeah, that's why you have to be healthy in order to lose weight. And that's why some people, they don't see. their weight move until like week six, week seven of the program, putting six weeks, seven weeks into it because you need to address your body's needs first and help your body be healthy in order to help it specifically focus on fat loss. That is healthy, sustainable weight loss. Sure, you could starve and deprive your weight off, but it's, it always, always, always leads to it all coming back plus more. Okay. So first of all, I want to remind people that we had that incredible

conversation with Dr. Alinka about stress and hormones in week three of the program. So that's available. It's in the app, in the expert guide section, if you want to listen to that. And then we had Dr. Paul come on, talk about four reasons why your weight might be slower to muscle. We talked inflammation, food sensitivities, gut health, and then hormones. He touched on, for example, insulin resistance. So that's a great conversation to get caught up on. Hormons we're going to talk about sort of over this session and next.

Hunger hormones, hormones that affect food choices, metabolism, fat storage hormones, stress hormones and obviously how it all ties into weight loss, but not just weight loss, aging as well, right? Because we don't lose weight. We want to be healthy. Should we talk about hunger hormones? Because everyone's talking insulin resistance and there is such a thing as leptin resistance, for example. And this is downsizing week. And I talk about how people get used to eating more than they need. And they need to eat a large amount of food just to feel satisfied. But that's not actually the amounts of food necessarily that they need. So we're slowly taking away at getting in tune with that. But what do you want to talk about

when it comes to hunger hormones? What do people need to know there? Yeah. So listen, your body weight is very tightly controlled by an area in your brain. That's actually very ancient. That's called your hepatololumous. And that one, so your hepatololumous is responsible for very, like, automatic processes in your body, right? Like breathing, like heart rate, things like that. And it just, it's meant to keep things in balance by receiving messages from other places to kind of figure out what to do. And so your fat cells actually and your gut are constantly talking to your brain to kind of tell it what's going on and what's happening in your environment. And so if you haven't eaten in a while, what happens is that your stomach actually releases a hormone that's called ghrelin.

And Grellin tells your brain, like, listen, she hasn't eaten a while, activate the hunger pathways, right? And so you eat something. And then a cascade of hormones a little bit later in your gut like GLP1 and you know PYY C-C-K like all of these like crazy hormones. Can I tell you Roddy like, okay, she's eaten in those hormones kind of peak about 30 to 60 minutes after your meal and kind of tell your brain, you know what? Like she's eat enough. Like you can stop. Okay.

This is why when we eat our food so quickly. Exactly. Right? This is why we need to take time. And this is why when you eat and you feel like you've had enough in the moment, like 15. 20 minutes later, like your body isn't really processing and digesting that food yet probably, right? Because people have such a fear like, oh my God, I didn't eat enough. When you just, why you hold off and wait a minute, you realize you've actually had enough and

adding more food than you need is not helpful. Okay. That is exactly why we talk about mindfulness when it comes to eating, right? That's why we always talk about putting the fork down, taking a deep breath, because you have to give your body time to respond to these hormones before these hormones to peak so that you don't go past her satiety point and then get to fullness. You know, this brings me back to, you know, I'm old enough to remember that, you know, Europeans were always so skinny.

I think there was like a diet book written about a French woman. But, you know, you go to Europe and people sit around tables for hours. They linger around their food. No one's actually, they won't even bring the bill. You have to ask for it because people will literally sit there. I remember Tony and I were in Spain. And Tony's reading the tapas menu and he orders like everything all at once. And the guy besides us was like, that's not how it's done.

Like you order something, it comes hot. You like enjoy a drink. You eat that. And you order the next thing. Like you don't, it's not a mortgage board of food. And it's just different, right? And this is where we talk about Europeans who typically, historically, not that there wasn't anyone who was overweight, but they drink wine, they eat bread, they stay up late.

Like they kind of tend to break all the rules that we're trying to instill for ourselves. Because they are more naturally active, they walk everywhere, they have community, and they're not scarfing down all of their food in five minutes, right? And they're also not scarfing it down in front of a computer. Right? Or on the go. Like if you, and you probably remember this in Spain, right? When you try to get a coffee to go, and unless it's Starbucks, people are like, oh, no, no, you sit down to have that coffee. And so, but, you know, I think that one of the most fascinating things about Grelin, the, this hormone, the hunger hormone, is that your, your grilling, and part of the reason as to why I

actually think that the eating really frequently also that you've, that you've implemented in this program works really well, is because ghrelin will increase to like astronomical levels if you don't eat for long periods of time, right? So this is actually the problem that we see a lot with like intermittent fasters or people that, you know, just like, get. get really, really busy and have a coffee for breakfast and then only eat dinner, this ghrelin actually will start increasing really, really, really fast, really, really, really high. And when you start eating, your body almost clues in into like, oh, my gosh, you've been starving me all day long.

And so what happens is that the research shows that then you'll start overeating to make up for not just the calories that you missed and all the meals that you skipped, but then for more because your body feels like, I have no. idea when she's going to feed me again. And so you're going to go not just past the point of satiety in fullness, you're going to end up being over full, right? And that's happened to all of us. We know that. But the other reason why I think, you know, mixing a lot of the things that we often do here is really, really important is because grilling comes down really quickly with carbohydrates, but it stays lower when you actually mix it with things like fiber and protein, which is actually

why we never skip carbs. We're not like a low-carb diet. They're just like, oh, my God, grains are bad, flowers, bad. Fruit is bad. No, no, no, no. And why we often, you know, it's like protein first, leafy greens first. Like in every single meal and every single snack, you've made the point of like, always adding something in that will tell your brain like, no, don't worry. Don't worry. Don't beke this hormone. Like, we're good, girl. Like, we don't go back to what we used to do. We're here to stay. We're here to survive and thrive. Well, and people always, their counter to that is like, oh, well, you know, eating so often spikes your insulin, but not when you're eating good nutrient rich foods, not when you're following the program. And actually helps to lower your blood sugar overall.

So 100%. Yeah. Okay. And then the hormone to counteract that because we were talking about hunger. So now let's talk about satiety, which is leptin because I think that this is the newest kid on the block that everybody's trying to figure out, right? Like right now we're, we had a moment with, with GLP1 and Dr. Sandy has talked so much about that. But let's talk about leptin because leptin is really interesting. Leptin is actually a hormone that's released by your fat cells because fat, especially

visceral fat is an endocrine organ, right? It's an organ that actually releases hormones. And so your fat cells, again, send a message to that exact part of your brain, the hypothalam is saying like, you know what? Like we probably don't need to eat a lot because like we have ample storage here. Like you don't need to overeat. And so in a state of, again, balance, there's going to balance between your hunger and your satiety and your fat cells because your brain just kind of understands like I have enough

to survive. She's feeding me like we good here, right? I just, you know, I've had the opportunity to talk to Dr. Jason Funn and it's interesting. He's like, if you're carrying excess weight, you're never starving. You are literally never starving because you have all of this emergency energy reserve sitting there for you, right? So this is where your hormones have just learned to pack more, pack more, pack more, pack more. Sorry, okay. Exactly. And you know what? And so leptin is released into the blood in direct proportion to how much fat you have. The problem that we get into, very similar to the whole thing about insulin resistance, is that if your leptin is high, right? In theory, your appetite should be decreased. But what happens is that often you end up with a lot of that fat deposition. And then your leptin is maybe disrupted also because of all of the, the other disruptions in the chemical messaging system, like, you know, your ghrelin and your dopamine and all these things that we're going to talk about. And is these disruptions that happen all the time

that then end up confusing your brain? And that chronic elevation almost like made your cells a little bit less sensitive to this hormone. And I always use this example, but we all know this, you know, like if your mom is or, yes, I always, sorry mom, but I always use this example where like, if your mom is somebody who's like really quiet who really yells, the minute that she yells at you, you're just like, oh my God, oh my God. Yeah, I'm sorry. I'll do whatever. But if you, if my mom was somebody that yelled at me all the time all the long and just like, whatever, this is my mom. You know, you kind of like stop listening to these messages as much as you used to because it just kind of becomes you're normal. You're just like, whatever. And so that's actually what happens,

right, to yourselves because eventually just stop responding to this screaming of lepten. and your brain, even though there's a lot of fat cells that are releasing a lot of leptin, your brain just kind of doesn't listen to that message anymore. And you end up with this leptin resistance. And it's really interesting because we don't really know what to do with it. To be honest, we can measure leptin in blood and we can tell when people's leptin are high. And then we also know that if you have really high triglycerides, which are a part of like your cholesterol panel when you go get your blood work,

done. If you actually look at your blood work, there's something that's called triglycerides. If your triglycerides are really, really elevated, those triglycerides actually somehow prevent the leptin crossing to your brain and telling your brain like, hey, we have enough fat, you probably are not as hungry as you think that you are. And so there's something, there's a connection there with inflammation, with cholesterol, with fat storage, with like fatty liver. But we haven't really figured it out just yet. We just know that for some people legitimately, it doesn't matter how much fat you carry. It doesn't matter how high this level of hormone is. Your body doesn't respond to it in the same way. So you are never satisfied. So you're hungry all the time and never satisfied. What about

if you're not hungry? So this is where GLP-1s obviously are coming in and they're helping with people and their appetite so they're not hungry. But I mean, we have people all the time come into the program who are not taking medications and they're just, they're not hungry. They're just like, oh, I'm just not hungry. I can go all day long without eating. Is that like grullin resistance? Like what's happening there when someone doesn't have much of an appetite?

They're carrying all this excess weight and they just don't have much of an appetite. Yeah, you know, I would say that grilling resistance is probably less understood maybe than like leptin resistance. we don't actually understand, to be honest, like how that happens and like why the metabolic set point then stays as elevated. Yeah. When you don't necessarily have, because those, I have plenty of those patients as well where, you know, they can be eating like a very small amount. But the problem is that then your body just adapts so that caloric intake, right? And so the hard thing with that then is that if you're not hungry and your caloric intake is maybe, you know, supposed to be three,

thousand calories a day, but you're actually only taking in a thousand. Your body doesn't want to die. Your body will adapt to those 1,000 calories. And eventually your body will survive at that exact same weight at 1,000 calories because she just learns to give up. It's almost like it turns off different things that it can in order to actually keep on the bare basics so that you can actually survive. And then it will hold on to that fat even harder because it feels like, no, no, she's going to, she's going to go down to 500 calories. And so this is actually one of the most complicated things, honestly, even as a clinician to get people out of that mode where it's the, your metabolic set point is actually really local or intake. And I'm trying to feed you more while not making

you gain 80 pounds because you've been starving yourself consciously or subconsciously from, you know, whether it's like behaviors or whether it's hormone imbalances or whatever it is. But it's it is actually really challenging as a clinician because it's a very fine line that we never really want to cross because otherwise people give up and then they just go back to not eating, right? That's exactly that. And that's why with the program, you're also simultaneously trying to increase your metabolism, right?

So you keep giving the body what it needs. It's like, okay, I'm getting this food. I'm getting this food. But it's like you have to do it in smaller bits throughout the day, healthy, nutrient-rich foods if you were just to go do that on whatever, you know, and you end up gaining weight. It's why you're not getting gain weight while following the program. But I mean, this is, yeah, I mean, this is what it's all about, right? It's all about hormones. And then, you know what, and this is the thing. And this is actually why the small meals frequently for people like that

work a lot better than the one meal at the end of the day or like the one meal at the beginning of the day or whatever. And so that's actually like clinically, that's usually what we do and what I've done even before this program. Now I can just end up to you, where, you know, we would do little bits at a time to try to get their body and their brain to respond, their hypothalamus to snap out of that starvation mode, right? Yeah. It takes time, though. It takes time. And this is why hunger is good. It's good to feel hungry. People get freaked out. Well, I'm used to going all day long without being hungry. Now I'm hungry all the time. I'm like, good. Your body is like talking to you. Anything else that we, like, what do we do about our hunger hormones? Like, I know people are

following the program, obviously. You're eating good nutrient-rich foods. They're drinking their water. They're trying to manage their stress, get better sleep. They're moving their body. Maybe they've added in the basic supplements, omega-3, vitamin D, magnesium. Like, how do you give us a pill? What can we take?

Like, how do you? But you said no supplements, but what supplement can I take, though? Like, what is, like, the one thing that we could take? Listen, I always, I always say, if you. have weight loss resistance, that's a symptom of something else. And Dr. Paul says this all the time, too. And we truly believe that. This is not, it's, it is a symptom of something else that's deeper that we need to look into, right? And so I, I wish, I mean, if I had a pill for that, you guys, like, I would be living in Buenos Aires full time, just like living the life. Am I right? But it is, it's so, it's so hard because it is, it is, it is. It is.

honestly, I do think that it's in learning a lot of things. And I think it's like fixing a lot of like the basics and lowering, you know, understanding. One of the formulas that we didn't get to talk about that I actually really, really love and I'll briefly touch on is like your dopamine, right? And that's the, that actually is the part of your brain that eats because it feels good, because it tastes good. And it's really important for survival as well. But most of us actually are in the habit of eating things. that just like make us feel really good from like a not necessarily like it gives me energy and it makes me feel like balance is just because it's fun and because it tastes good and listen to an extent like that's really really great however we live our ancient brain that's

hardwired for survival lives in a brain it lives in an environment right now that is hyper palatable hyper processed overly sugared and it's an environment that makes money off of you, right? And so then the problem is that then learning to get enough dopamine from whole foods, from appropriate amounts of food that release an appropriate amount of dopamine that makes you feel good versus getting these giant fluxes of dopamine from, you know, super sugary breakfast in the morning or like the Oreos that you want to eat when you feel like you had a really hard day or whatever it is, it's a work and process and progress story because I think that for all of us, you know, we have, and you know, Sandra Elliott talks a lot about this, but we have like a really

screwed up relationship with food that a lot of the times we're trying to heal in a program like this, right? And so understanding how all of these things not just connect with like your hunger and your satiety, but also how you're feeding your body for nourishment. And there's a little bit of pleasure in that, right, right? But feeding your body for nourishment is a process. We're here to nourish your body. Like, we're not, listen, I understand that an order cookie is like way more delicious than an apple. Like, don't get me wrong. Like, I'm not eating apple and my God, like the dopamine I'm getting from this. But like, I eat the apple because it's delicious and it's great, but like it's also good for me. And I think that understanding that concept as well

of like food is meant to nourish you rather than to just give you. pleasure allows you to rebalance this so that you can get pleasure from good food. I can't. I love this. Listen, I love this because this is about losing your weight in a way you get to enjoy all the yummy bites of bits that come with life. But until you rewire that connection, you're rewiring how your body's come to function physically rewiring your brain. This goes back to that chocolate. You all remember that chocolate post? People lose their, their stinking minds. I'm not swearing today because it's Chinese New Year. But people lose their minds over. well, why can't I have that dark piece of chocolate?

Because there's a difference between what your body actually needs versus what you want. And we're constantly feeding into that dopamine. Unfortunately, the dopamine is the anticipation of having the thing. We forget when we have the thing, it makes us feel awful. Then we berate ourselves. Then we punish ourselves afterwards. We forget it's like that bad relationship. But then when we think back.

100%. Now, girl, that was a bad relationship. So dopamine, you have to not feed into it. You have to kind of like, you have to get used to the uncomfortableness of not fitting into your dopamine. Because dopamine is also scrolling on my phone. It's buying stuff from Amazon. It's like all of those things, right? And so this is, this is getting in tune with your body's actual needs over your want. So that when you've lost your weight, when you spent time helping your body adjust to your. new weight and you are just living your life, you are calm around food. You can choose to eat something that makes you feel good. Sometimes it's the margarita, sometimes it's the pizza, whatever it is, without all that aftermath happening, right? So, woo. A hundred percent. And you know what, though? And I think even if you just go back to the beginning when we talked about these hormones, you can eat the, you can drink the margarita, you can eat the pizza, but eat it slowly so that you don't over eight, right? Enjoy it. So that like you don't end up like feeling deprived and then feel like that you need to scroll or need to do whatever. Like your hormones are such a beautiful thing

and they're your friends and they're working for you. It's just that you also have to work for them. Yes, you do. Okay. Here are music. We got to go. People are asking about thyroid. People are asking, of course, about sex hormones. In thin, all of that. Cortisol, she's going to be back. On Thursday. On Thursday, we're going to get into that conversation. More to come, everyone. Thanks for joining us live. I see all your questions, your comments. I'm going to add them to a list for Thursday. Dr. Linketrejo. Thank you. Happy birthday. Thank you. Happy Lunar Year. See you next time. See you Thursday. Bye, everyone. See you Thursday.