The Livy Method Podcast - Hormones and Weight Loss - Part 2 with Dr. Olinca Trejo - Winter 2026

Episode Date: February 19, 2026

In this episode, the hormone conversation continues with Dr. Olinca Trejo to unpack the real role hormones play in weight loss, from thyroid and insulin to stress, sex, and growth hormones, and why blaming one lab result rarely tells the full story. Together, Gina and Dr. Olinca explore how metabolism, fat storage, menopause, and aging intersect, why properly testing and understanding your thyroid matters, and what realistic expectations look like when it comes to hormone treatment and weight changes. With a focus on sustainable habits over quick fixes, the conversation empowers listeners to get curious, ask better questions of their healthcare providers, and understand their bodies on a deeper level so they can work with them, not against them.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 fixes.

Is it an opportunity to get curious? We're here, help people get to their health goals. One piece of a time. You build and build and build. Back with Dr. Linketrejo. Listen, well, first of all, I love that. We match. Pink, pink day.

I love that. And I love you. It's always a good day when we match. Always a good combo. Listen, normally I wait to the end of the program to promote what our guest experts have. going on. But I want to get this out of the way right now because I'm so excited. You're doing a hormone masterclass? I am. Starting in May. I'm because, you know, I think,

well, you know me, I just want to download all the information that I have in my brain onto every single brain so that we can naturally balance these hormones, understand these hormones, understand the role that they play in at weight. And honestly, talk to our healthcare providers to be like, you know, can you help me out with us? Can we test? Can we not? And so I decided finally, to launch my... You said it, that me. I know. I know. I knew you were going to say it. So I was like, wait, I'll be to do the punch. And so we started May and I'm super pumped. We're going to do modules and every single one. We're going to put them together. We're going to do questions

and answers. It's going to be amazing. Who's it for? Like who? Like is it? Because I'm thinking, is it menopause? Is it anyone having a hard time losing weight? Is it like, what is it? Who's it for? Is it, it's everybody. Honestly, menopause is going to be, I mean, I need to touch on, you know, estrogen and testosterone, my gentleman out there, because it is really, really important, but this is for everybody, whether or not you're trying to lose weight, whether you're trying to just, you know, balance your hormones, understand what the role that they play. Understand, honestly, your life postmanopause and what that looks like also for hormones. It's for everybody. I know. I'm super pumped. Honestly, I've been working on it for so long, and I'm actually super

excited about to launch. So, yay. Well, congratulations. I love this for you and I love this for us. if you want to find more information. Info at Dr.olinka.com. I'm in love with the conversation we had. I just love how every time we have this conversation, it's like fresh and new for people who've been here before and so foundational for people who this is their first program. You know, also you guys, we have like so many podcasts

with Dr. Alenka talking about this. Like you can listen to all of them and not get bored. Last, so last session, we talked about hunger hormones, which is so important. We talked about dopamine. And today on what we have here is metabolism, fat storage, insulin, thyroid is a big one, sex and growth hormones, menopause and aging and stress hormones. Okay. Where do you want to start?

Well, listen, I think that when I like briefly checked the chat after our call on Tuesday, so many people have questions about thyroid. And so I want to start there because I think that metabolism of fat. storage is so important for people to understand. I think that the minute that your weight doesn't move, everybody assumes like it has to be thyroid. And it's not that it's not thyroid. You know, one in about eight women in their lifetime will have a thyroid condition. It's significantly more likely to happen in women than it is in men. The thing about thyroid is that thyroid will for sure impact the way that your metabolism burns calories, right? Like what you eat. It will also impact how you burn through a lot of the carbohydrate that you store.

But the funny thing about thyroid is that if there's a thyroid condition, and you replete that thyroid with medication, because the medication that we have for thyroid issues is amazing. You actually only end up losing about five to 10 pounds because thyroid actually impacts a lot of like water weight and salt balance, if that makes sense. And so it doesn't actually impact weight as much as we thought that it did because we're pleading it actually only impacts about 5 to 10%. It's not that it's not important and it's not that you shouldn't get it checked out. If you think you have a thyroid condition because you have weight loss resistance or difficulty losing weight, you're tired, you're losing weight, you're losing hair, sorry, you're constipated,

all of these things, it's a really important thing to get checked out. But it's one of the easiest things to identify in medicine. The only tricky thing is that there's more than one's. screening test, right? And in medicine, we often only do one test, and there's probably about five that we need to be running to fully understand the way that your thyroid is working. Well, this is the one they always test if you go and you say, I'm in menopause or I think it's menopause. They will test to make sure that it's actually not thyroid issue. It's not that there's a great test for menopause in general. But, you know, I've had, I can't even count the number of

women who've gone, and men, probably gone through the program with thyroid issues and been able to lose weight because just like menopause, it's great that you can take hormone replacement or menopause therapy, whatever they're calling it right now. It's 80% lifestyle. It's 80% lifestyle. The medications help get better sleep and all of that, but it's lifestyle. Yeah, and I think, you know what, and I think that that's a key here because the thing about thyroid, and I don't want to make it too complicated, and maybe I want to learn more tech my master class, but I don't want to make it too complicated. But your, exactly, exactly.

But your body releases two big hormones, right? There's one that's called T4, which is it has four little prongs of iodine and T3. That actually has three. But your body's really smart and it releases the four ones so that your body can like slowly cleave off that fourth iodine prong slowly through the day so that you don't feel like your metabolism is ramping up randomly through the day, right? The only thing is that we've talked about this before, but hormones work in a key in lock system manner in your body. And the only key for the thyroid lock is actually the three-prong one.

The fascinating thing about thyroid is that there's actually a lot of lifestyle things, a lot of nutritional deficiencies that can actually impact that conversion between the four-prong one to the three-one, which is actually the active one, right? We want the three-prong one. And so this conversion actually can be impacted by things like lack of sleep, like you're not eating a whole food diet, like cortisol, like menopause. Like there's so many things that can actually impact that conversion. And so you can go to the lab and you can go to your doctor and your labs, which mostly the screening test that we check for, look perfectly fine. But that's actually not the issue. The issue is that you're not converting it and you're not converting it because of your lifestyle, because of the 80% of the things that you're not doing. And that's not something that medication just like

magically does for you. You have to do the work to be able to change that. Okay. So you go to your doctor, you check to see if you have a thyroid issue. And then you discover that you do so they can help put you on medication. And then what are that lifestyle changes? What are the things that someone can do? If let's say they're on medication right now, what can they do? What do they need? What do they need to focus on specifically. Do they need to take different supplements? Like what, what can someone do to help with their weight journey if they're dealing with thyroid issues? With that conversion. Yeah. So the, I mean, the nutritional deficiencies, honestly, that are actually very common to impact this are going to be things like selenium, zinc, iron, all of which are actually in healthy foods,

nuts and seeds, fish, like all of the things that we're trying to focus on, right? And sleep is a huge one for thyroid, huge, huge, huge. Cortisol is another one that's huge for thyroid as well. And so the, if you can go back to the sleep week, right? And we can talk about like the cortisol and how like that impacts it. I would say that lifestyle wise, it's so important for you to focus on improving and prioritizing your sleep quality, not just the quantity, because quality matters more than quantity, in trying to help your body perceive stress in a different way. Because stress is going to be part of your life regardless, but it's actually your perception of stress and how you cope with that stress, right? That can actually change in the mindset component of it.

That will be really, really important. And nutrition-wise, honestly, having a really big variety of fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and this is something that you and I have chat out about a number of times, but I find that, you know, when we find our routines and routine is so important for your body because we've talked about this, right? Like your body loves rhythms, which is actually why we want to feed it, like consistently. But we want variety. And I'm guilty of this. And I know so many of my patients listening to this are so guilty of this.

It's like you get stuck with it like, my one snack is this. And it's this for like 10 years. It's like, no, girlfriend. Like you need to rotate those nuts. You need to rotate those veggies. You need to rotate those things. Because the things that you're choosing are really high in some things which are amazing. But they can cause efficiency to see other things, which is actually why variety is also.

so important. Yeah, and we're going to, like later on the program in the next few weeks, we're going to be switching up the kinds of meals and snacks that you get, but speaking of the sweet seeds, switching up the vegetables. What about, what about the impact of food? Because there's a girl that I follow Carrie a bit. She's great in the kitchen, but she cooks food for thyroid issues. Like, what about things like swimming in pools, like chlorine, like foods that, like any of that, any truth in any of that or? Yeah, I mean, there's certain a degree of truth to that. Like, for example, your thyroid needs iodine, right? And so a lot of us will have sea salt or Himalayan salt that actually doesn't have iodine in it. And so I'm actually

a huge proponent of checking your salt to make sure that it has iodine. And if you like sea salt or if you like Himalayan salt, make sure has iodine added to it because it naturally doesn't have iodine. That's actually why table salt has iodine added to it. And so that that's actually really, really important. Selenium is really important, which really is only really found in things like Brazil nuts. There's a huge misconception about how cruciferous vegetables, actually, and I know that you love greens and, you know, we're here for like the veggies and the fiber. There's this huge misconception that, like, people that have thyroid conditions cannot have things like cauliflower or broccoli or kale because it will impact their thyroid. The research

actually shows that you can have up to, I think it's something like five cups of breast sprouts every single day without impacting your thyroid. Yes, cooking them for sure will, you know, decrease how much that impacts you. But you guys, like, you can have these. Like, you don't have to be afraid of vegetables. And when we're talking about things like chlorine, you know, it's interesting because excesses and your body, again, loves balance, right? And so chlorine excess, which is an element, chlorine excess can kind of displace a little bit

of the iodine and so it makes it a little bit harder for your body to absorb some of that iodine. But like the amount of chlorine that you would have to take in is astronomical. So I do think that sometimes things are blown out of proportion, but there is a little bit of truth. It's just expanded into something a lot bigger than that. Okay. Interesting. Anything else that we want to know about.

So what if someone thinks they have a thyroid issue? Like what would some of the symptoms be there? Yeah, so the first thing that we typically see is fatigue. Like, people really have this overwhelming sense of fatigue that's like, it just feels like I got unplugged from the wall. Like, I just have, like, I just feel, it doesn't matter how much I sleep, I feel really, really tired. They tend to retain a lot of water.

So you feel really, really puffy. And, like, your rings, for example, like, you'll, you know, they leave those indent marks or socks. They start losing hair typically, like, in an abnormal amount of hair loss because, you know, there is a normal amount of hair loss that will have. happen to all of us. Often they will get constipated. They will, they will also start having issues with like brain fog and like memory. I mean, this is starting to sound like all of us. I hear like, oh my God, do I have a thyroid condition? And that's actually the hard thing. Exactly. That's a

hard thing about thyroid, right? Like hypothyroidism can look like so many things. And the problem is that also, you know, like peri monopause can look like that. And that's, so that's actually why it's really important for you to get your thyroid check. I think. it's it's super, super, super important. I think it's even more important to get all the thyroid test done. But even a screening test can be good. And I'll just say this now, because I get asked this all the time, but the screening test that we test for in medicine is called T-SH, thyroid-stimulating hormone. The in the States and in Canada, I know that we have listeners from everywhere, but in the States and in Canada, the normal level of TSA is up to about four to five, depending on what lab you go to.

but the ideal, because, you know, normal and optimal are very different. Yes. But the optimal is for that TSA to be under 2.5. Wow. Yeah. I know. Take my master class. I feel like you're talking like treating people on mass.

Like you have to have a standard. And that's where new people need to be an advocate for them, right? That's what they need to be like, okay, I get. I might be like just making the cut. But it's like this is how I feel. You know, I just saw Essie here talking about iron. Yeah. Iron is something.

Yeah, iron is something I don't touch because I think people should be speaking to their doctors about iron. But like just very quickly, how would low iron affect someone's journey? Because they see it all the time. People struggling, struggling, struggling. They go to their doctor. They have low iron. I'm like, well, yeah. I know.

Oh, God. This was a complicated one. But iron, listen, iron. Just great. Yeah. So iron impacts your energy probably the most out of anything else. And the hardest part is that if you have low iron, it's either because you're not eating enough iron or not consuming enough, you're not absorbing it or you're bleeding out of

somewhere. Like there's really only those three reasons. For women, often it's a combination of all three of them because we have menstrual cycles, right? So whatever iron you take in, you end up losing. And the hard thing is that you need energy to move. You need energy to cook healthy food. Like you need energy to engage in your program, right? Like you need.

And so I usually actually, when I do a consultation with somebody, one of the first things that I test for is iron. The guidelines have actually changed. You know, when I graduated in medicine, iron stores were considered, quote, unquote normal as soon as they hit 12. And now the guidelines actually recommend that they should be moved to about 100 because there was actually that much of a gap where you would go into your doctor and your iron stores would be at like 13 to be like, oh my God, you're fine.

You're like, but I'm going bald and I'm so tired in this. Girl, it's probably stress. And so I do think that so many of us honestly ended up being gaslighted as a result of it. But iron is so important. And because it's also so important for thyroid, right? Yes. It's such an important test to actually do with your primary health care provider for sure. Okay.

Do you want to talk about insulin resistance? Because like, do we all have insulin resistance? I feel like we all have insulin resistance. I know. I know that Dr. Paul talked about this. But listen, insulin or cortisol. Those are like the two heavy hitters in this conversation, too. I kind of started with thyroid because I know that everybody wants to talk about thyroid.

but I love talking about insulin and cortisol. And I think Dr. Paul has, like, I think it's good to hear from different people, right? Like I know on this too. It's such a huge issue. And I think some people just blow it off and it's a buzzword these days or whatever. Or is there another one that you want to get into besides that? No, because you know what? Because I think that those two are actually very, they probably pertain to like everybody or everybody can relate to both of these.

So insulin, the colds notes in insulin, insulin, insulin. insulin is a hormone that's released by your pancreas in direct proportion to how much carbohydrate or sugar you're eating, right? And so what happens is that whenever you eat something, your body will break it down into little pieces. It will break it down usually into like that, you know, protein and glucose, which is like your main fuel. And so the thing is is that, you know, insulin, whenever you eat something, insulin will increase in direct proportion to that glucose. And then it will actually decide whether you're using that sugar. or that glucose for energy in that moment, or if we're storing it away in your muscles,

in your liver, or in your fat. The tricky thing is that historically, our diet has been disproportionately high and glucose or in sugar or in energy that we're not using, right, throughout the day, because most of us tend to be very sedentary. Like, we're mammals. We're supposed to be just, like, roaming around

and, like, for us, like, looking for food. And food was not supposed to be as available as it is right now. And so the thing is that then our insulin levels tend to be really high all the time because we're eating a lot of glucose and a lot of this fuel. And the problem is that what happens is that you eat something. You already have glucose from something else that you eat before. And so then you eat something your insulin shoots up and your insulin is telling your muscle cells like, hey, you got any room for me? And you're also like, well, she hasn't moved in like three hours. So like, nah, man, we're full.

Exactly. And then your insulin's like, okay. And then it just goes somewhere. else and it's like you got any room for me and it's like no man like she hasn't done anything so like we're still good and so then your body doesn't want to have high sugar levels in your bloodstream and then your insulin's like well i guess i'll just store it around my liver and so then what happens is that that high insulin level will just lock up a lot of that fat and that extra fuel around here around your abdomen and then that's that is that related to non-fatty liver not an alcoholic fatty liver body liver body liver disease yes exactly And so the primary driver for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease is actually insulin resistance.

Unfortunately for all of us, the only cure for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease is actually weight loss and a dramatic decrease in carbohydrate intake. And what I mean by that is that you're eating your carbohydrates from whole foods, right? Because your carbohydrates, when you look at the guidelines, to address non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, you need an intake of carbohydrates that's about less than 40% of your total intake of food. When I actually do like my fitness pal or whatever it is for people that are doing the living method, naturally people tend to be about 30 to 35% in the carbohydrate intake because the carbohydrates typically come from like the fruit that they have in the morning or the sweet

potatoes in the evening or the rice that they're eating to satisfaction, not to fullness, right? And when you're listening to your body, you'll notice that you don't need that much carbohydrate. Like you're not because you're, I mean, maybe you're a marathon runner. And like, good for you. You probably need a ton, but the vast majority of us don't. And if you don't, then that insulin is going to keep on getting elevated higher and higher and higher. Your cells are still not using up that glucose. And so your body's just going to keep on getting the message, like store this away. And then you're just going to keep on getting the message. Like, store this away. And then you're is going to keep on getting that visceral fat, right? Yeah. Well, that's why your carbohydrates,

vegetables, fruits, naturally curing sugar, things that have fiber in them as well. And I think that's where carbs are breads and pastas and ricees and whatever. And that's where people look at carbs. I've actually had people say, well, I don't eat any carbs. I'm like, well, you're eating vegetables. You're eating fruits. You're eating. Yeah. Is there a supplement we can take for insulin resistance? I love that I honestly you guys I every conversation I've ever had with Gina outside of this is like I don't really do supplements you know she's like but what supplement can I take though um listen I don't I I always recommend obviously talking to your healthcare provider about course um before you take anything but there there's some good ones out there right like there's berberine is one that's really really great um the only tricky thing with berberine is that And it also is an antimicrobial. So you have to be really careful because if you take it for a really long time or without proper supervision, you can actually kill a lot of your gut flora. And we need gut flora here, you guys.

I know. I know. And you also need to be careful if you have gallstones because sometimes it can be tricky with that. My anacetyl is another one that we use. Myonacetol is something that we use often for insulin resistance in women with PCOS that are trying to conceive. And there's a lot of data actually for my noncatoil. myinacetool for women in that menopausal transition. Gymnema is another one.

And gymnema is really interesting. It actually blocks sugar absorption. Like if you have a really good quality gymnema product, it's an herb, and you put it on your tongue and you leave it there for about 30 seconds. And then you have, you know, maple syrup or honey or whatever. You won't be able to taste any of the sweetness because it actually blocks the receptors, which is great. And then, yeah.

And then chromium is another mineral that tends to be very deficient in people with insulin resistance that we sometimes give, but I don't recommend you trying any of these far without medical supervision for obvious reasons. Don't sue me. Well, and again, people are already doing so much with the program, right? And if you're really finding that your body was resistant to fat loss when you are doing all these things, managing your stress and moving your body and, you know, trying to get better sleep and eating healthy and drinking your water and all those things, absolutely. This is where you want to go see your doctor and natural pathic doctor making appointment with Dr. Lincoln and our team. Okay. What do you want to talk about next?

Um, oh my God. I know. I'm like, I'm like, oh, my God, my, my song is going to start soon. Cortisol, honestly, because I think that cortisol, uh, um, yes, cordon. Yes, less are with cortisol. Yeah, the stress hormone. So, you know, I think that we, we've, we've probably exhausted the conversation on cortisol, but I do think it's so important, um, for all of us to get a, a really kind reminder that your body was never meant. to deal with the amount of stress and the amount of load that we all have on our plates right now. It wasn't. Your stress response was meant for short bouts of stress that you would literally see a bear, you run away from a bear, you make it to safety, and you go back to just like chilling with your girlfriends.

And so the problem is that in our environment now, there isn't really a beginning, a middle, and an end to that stress. You're constantly being bombarded by different kinds of stress that simulate, either that stress response to a small degree or to a really big degree. And so I think that the problem is that we live in a world where our fight or flight response is constantly on all the time, all day long. And we think that that's normal. And I also think that we live in a society where we glorify being busy and we glorify being, like, you know, having the hustle and like having all of these things. And then we feel guilty for taking rest and we feel guilty for, you know, wanting to or feeling that we need to because we feel like, you know, our list is never going to end.

And I mean, it's never going to end. There's always going to be other things that you need to do, right? It's true. So. Well, and I just want to talk about your cortisol is supposed to be high in the morning and then supposed to like decrease as the day goes on. The problem is, you know, we start with our cortisol high because we got to get out of bed. We got to do things. We got to wake up.

We got to go, you know, whatever. and then we're constantly just piling on our stress throughout the day. And then you add anxiety on top of that. It makes you humming and humming and humming and humming. What do we do about that? See a therapist. No, I'm just talking. I mean, no, I love therapy.

Yeah, 100%. Yeah, like legit. Yeah, go sit down and talk to somebody. Yeah, I mean, physiologically, you're right. Physiologically, your body is supposed to have this biarrhythm that is supposed to be elevated at times and lower. different times. And I don't think that any of us respect that because most often what happens is that when the kids got home from school and you get home from work, that's actually the highest

stress for most people, right? And then your cortisol gets elevated at like 7 p.m. when it was supposed to be really low getting down for bedtime. I think that a lot of the things that we talk about in this program are actually really, really important. One of the most important things actually for your stress response to help you and allow you to move through that process of stress and close that cycle of stress so that your body feels like you've made it to safety. It's actually movement. You know, the other one is going to be mindfulness and taking those micro breaks through the day, whether that is to do the tense squats, whether that is to do a little bit of deep breathing. Honestly, sometimes doing the journaling that we do through the app, right? And a lot of the,

and I think that that's actually the very interesting thing about, I think, some of the features of the app, you don't even realize, you guys, that she's trying to bring mindfulness into your day or little micro breaks through the day, but there's a reason for that. And the reason is so that your body at least has little breaks through the day where it feels like it's needed to safety and it doesn't have to continue increasing that cortisol. That's also why the sleep hygiene, right, that Atlanta talks about is so, so important because your body needs a period during the day where it just, it has that cortisol being low enough that then your melatonin can increase and it can kind of move through its own.

and buy a rhythm and start the day all over again for sure. Yeah, like that sacred evening routine that you have going for walks after dinner. That's a good one too. Like it's such a good one. Yeah. Or after your bigger males. All right. You know, again, this conversation on hormones is an awareness conversation. You want to dive deeper into it. God, I'm such a big believer of deeper level of understanding of things like to understand why you are doing these things that you are doing. You're already doing so much when it comes to following the program. Just stressing the importance. It's not always about the food at the end of the day. Can we just Jody throw up Dr. Alenka's information again?

So you can reach out info at Dr. Alenka.com. If you want more information on her hormone course that she's offering, when does it start? Start the first week of May. First week of May. Oh, that's a good time for that. Yeah. I'm super pumped.

Final words about hormones? What do you want to say? Come balance them with me. Honestly, hormones are your friends. Like we, you know, we just, sometimes we just have frenemies with like our hormones, but they're, there are friends. They want to help us out. So can balance them with me.

Yeah, your body is on your side. It's not trying to screw you over and make you fat. It's just trying to cope the best it can with, you know, what you've done and the resources you give it. And this is all about really understanding where you're at and what your body needs. Brilliant conversation. As always, Dr. Alenka. Thanks everyone who joined us live for listening after the fact.

If you missed it, make sure you go back. back and listen to part one of this. Dr. Linkel, always a pleasure. Thank you so much. Love you. Have a great day. Bye.