Behind the Body: Fat Loss, Muscle, & Metabolism for Women Over 40
If you're a woman in your 40s or 50s struggling with perimenopause or menopause weight gain, this podcast is for you.
I'm Andrea Cutuk, MA, MBA, and a NASM-certified nutrition and fitness coach. I lost 20 pounds in my mid-30s and have maintained it for 10 years, through perimenopause, hormonal shifts, and real life. I'm not someone who lost weight six months ago and started a podcast. I'm someone who's lived in this body, tried it ALL, figured it out, and maintained the results long enough to know what works and sticks to become your best, healthiest self today.
Every Monday, Behind the Body covers the real reasons women over 40 gain weight, can't lose it, and what to actually do about it. No generic advice. No extreme diets. Just honest, science-backed strategies and my own experiences, built for your hormones, your metabolism, and your lifestyle in this phase of life.
Topics we cover:
Building a body you're proud of in a sustainable way
Perimenopause weight gain and why your body is changing
Fat loss after 40 without restriction or deprivation
How to boost metabolism and build a stronger body composition
Sustainable weight loss strategies that work long-term
Strength training for women over 40 - where to start and why it matters
Hormone-related weight gain, cortisol, and belly fat
How to lose fat without giving up restaurants, wine, your social life, or sanity
This isn't about motivation or 90-day challenges. It's about understanding the reality of menopause and perimenopause weight gain and building habits that last.
New episodes every Monday.
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🧪 Take the free Metabolism Type Quiz: https://behindthebody.com/quiz
Are peptides safe for women over 40? I spent $1,600 on a peptide that didn't work for me. Before you try peptides for weight loss, wellness, energy, or skin, these are the 3 things I check first.
The peptide I paid for is a genuine FDA-approved drug called tesamorelin. It's proven to work. So why did it leave me with swollen joints, puffy hands, and nothing to show for my money? The answer changed how I look at every peptide on the market, including semaglutide and whatever your wellness clinic is selling right now.
I'm sharing what happened when I ordered NAD+ from 2 different clinics, the purity study that made me stop trusting labels, and the 10-minute background check I run on any clinic or compounding pharmacy before anyone gets my credit card. If there's a vial in your fridge or a clinic's checkout page open on your phone, listen to this before you spend another dollar.
💪🏼 The Strong Core Method: my 4-week at-home core program for women over 40, built for every level, even if you've never worked out a day in your life. 12 guided workouts per level with video demos, 20 minutes, 3 times a week, to build a stronger, more defined midsection.
📝 Grab the FREE Fat Loss Formula Workbook to calculate your maintenance calories, your protein target, and your exact calorie deficit.
🎯 Take the FREE 'What's My Metabolism Type' Quiz to identify your unique metabolism type and get a personalized plan to manage your weight confidently.
💌 Stay connected: join my BTB Newsletter for weekly insights.
If you loved this episode, please take a moment to subscribe and leave a quick review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Every review helps another woman like us find our community of strength, power, learning, and "glowing up." New episodes every Monday.
👋🏻 ABOUT ME:
I'm Andrea, a double-certified NASM Nutrition and Fitness Coach and founder of Behind the Body. For 20 years, I under-ate, avoided weights, and lived on cardio chasing skinny, and none of it gave me a body I was proud of. In my mid-30s, I changed my approach: more protein, real strength training, and a plan that fit my life. I lost 20 pounds, and 10 years later, at 45, I'm still maintaining it through perimenopause. I help women over 40 simplify their approach, build real strength, and get results that last. Every week, I cover the science, the strategy, and the honest truth about fat loss and maintenance for women over 40.
3MEDICAL DISCLAIMER:
This content is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult a qualified healthcare provider before making changes to your diet, exercise, or health routine. Results vary. Andrea is a NASM-certified Nutrition and Fitness Coach, not a doctor or registered dietitian.
SPEAKER_00
I'm Andrea and welcome to Behind the Body. If you're over 40 and trying to lose fat, build muscle, or take better care of your health, you're in the right place. Every week we'll tackle the questions women over 40 are asking about nutrition, fitness, metabolism, and aging, helping you spend less time doing what doesn't move the needle and more time focusing on what does. I spent $1,600 on a single peptide that didn't work for me. The wellness coordinator who sold it to me gave me a laundry list of things it would help with. And it did nothing except for cause extreme discomfort, joint pain, and water retention. And I had no idea why it didn't work or why I was experiencing negative side effects. Because when a peptide is recommended by a wellness clinic and comes from a compounding pharmacy, information is limited. You don't know if the side effects are normal. You don't know if it's just the way your own body processes it. You don't know if what you were giving is impure. You don't even know if the whole thing was just a hoax and was never gonna do anything to begin with, and they're just selling you a product just to sell it. I had no way to answer any of that. And neither do you, quite honestly. Whether a peptide will work for you or is safe for you comes down to whether it was ever approved for a woman like you, what's in the vial, and who sold it to you. Change any one of those variables and what you're given and how your body responds to that also becomes variable. So I want to tell you the three things that I check now before I buy a peptide. The same three things that would have saved me $1,600, and how to vet a clinic and a pharmacy before you purchase anything. And I'm not making this episode just to scare you, but I think knowledge is power. And since peptides are so prevalent, this information is really important for us to know. And before we dive in, I'm not a peptide expert. I'm just a woman who ordered them, took them, didn't get what I was expecting, and went looking for answers afterward. Let's talk about the approval of peptides. The first thing I check is what it was approved for, because most peptides are actually not FDA approved. And even if they are, it doesn't mean approved for you and your needs. It means approved for something and for somebody. And the whole question is whether that somebody is you. Let me first level set by saying FDA approval means there's a very high evidence that it works, there's a high safety profile, and that there are set manufacturing standards, which is really important. And I'm going to tell you why in just a bit. It doesn't mean that just because it was prescribed to you, that it's automatically going to work. There are roughly 30 to 50 peptides used in the wellness and longevity space. And of those, about six are FDA approved as drugs for at least one medical indication. That number varies on what's considered a wellness peptide, but it's ballpark. That means that about 80 to 90% of these peptides are not FDA-approved drugs. The peptide that I took that I wasted $1,600 on is testamoralin. That's a genuine peptide and it's actually FDA approved. It's one of those few. And I want to be fair because it does work. It's FDA approved to reduce excess belly fat in adults who have HIV and also a condition called lipodystrophy, which is where fat accumulates in certain areas. That's the entire approval. That's who it was studied on, and that's who it was cleared for. Now I don't have HIV and I don't have lipodystrophy. What I had was a wellness coordinator who told me that it would help me lose body fat. And that's what I wanted. So I paid $1,600, which for the record was actually 50% off of the list price because it was like a, I don't know, Labor Day special or something. And I just started injecting it. And this was before GLP1s. In about six weeks of starting it, my joints were so swollen that they were painful. My face was puffy, my hands were puffy, my feet and ankles were puffy, and all of it was water retention. I had to stop using it because I was in so much pain. And I never got a single benefit out of it. That money was spent and long gone. The thing that bothers me is that the joint pain and swelling in your hands and feet are actual known side effects of the drug. It showed up in the trials. But when I expressed these issues with my wellness coordinator, she told me that she hadn't heard it before from her other patients. She gave me a different injection schedule to see if that would help, and nothing solved the issues. Should I have done the legwork myself to research the product ahead of time? Yes. And I actually did. I mean, I'm an educated person and I like to research all kinds of stuff, especially what I put in my body. But I also have trust in my wellness coordinator who's advising me. So if you're using an FDA-approved peptide, it doesn't mean it's gonna work seamlessly. What I would do now, looking back in retrospect, is check what it was approved to treat, who it was tested on, and equally important, what are the known side effects? I made a whole video on my experience with Tesla Moralin. I'm gonna link that video on YouTube below. So if you want to go deeper on my experience, you can check that out. Okay, let's move on to what's in the vial. Given that 80 to 90% of the peptides that we use for wellness are not FDA approved, the second thing that I check is what's in the vial that showed up at my front door. Because even the same peptide from two different places is not necessarily the same product. I learned this one with NAD Plus, which I know isn't technically a peptide. It's a coenzyme that your body makes from vitamin B3, but a lot of clinics sell it right alongside of peptides and everybody kind of lumps them together. So NAD plus, not a peptide, but for the sake of this video, it's lumping in that category. And there's decent science behind what NAD plus does inside your cells. So I thought, okay, I'm gonna give it a try. When I injected it from the first clinic, I felt it. It's hard to explain, but there's like this rush that moves through your body within like the first 30 to 60 seconds of injection. And you know, like something's happening. But then that clinic became unresponsive. They were taking days to answer me. There were long delays, like barely any communication. So I left and went to another clinic that came highly recommended. And I ordered the same thing, NAD plus. But upon receiving it and upon injection of the NAD plus from the second wellness clinic, I felt nothing. No rush, no feeling, like nothing at all. Same name on the label, same dosage, different reaction. Now, I'm not telling you that one of them was fake because I actually don't know that. It could have been a different concentration, a different formula, a different literally anything. What I do know is that I felt a clear difference between two vials with the exact same name on them. And there was no way for me to find out why. And of course, when I asked my new wellness coordinator, there was no answer, no reasoning. She didn't know why I wasn't experiencing that same body rush. I had two completely different experiences and no explanation for either of them. That's the position that you're in with every vial that comes from a compounding pharmacy. And here's a not so fun fact that supports just how incredibly important it is to know where you're getting your peptides from. A group of researchers ordered semiglutide, which is the weight loss drug, from online sellers that don't ask you for a prescription. Every label claimed 99% purity. When they tested the vials in a lab, the purity came back under 15%. One five, 15%. And every single vial had bacterial contamination in it. So when you're injecting something in your body two or three times a week and you're paying attention to how you feel, keep in mind that the label tells you what was supposed to go in that vial. It doesn't tell you what actually ended up in there. So here's what I do now. First, I find out who's actually making it. Neither of the two wellness clinics I work with list their compounding pharmacy on their website. I personally think that's super shady, but I also know it's common. They may use different pharmacies for different medications. Their partnership can change over time. And a lot of them treat their pharmacy network as like part of their business model. You usually only see the pharmacy name after a prescription is issued. With my first clinic, that's how I found out who it was. When it showed up at my door, it said the pharmacy on the box and on the prescription label. With that second, I asked my wellness coordinator in advance who they partner with to dispense my medication so that I can Google them. Then I checked the pharmacy. It has to hold an active license with the pharmacy board in your state and not just the state that they ship out of. Your state board has a search page and the license is either in there or it isn't. Then I look at the PCAB accreditation, which I verify myself, or the NABP accreditation. And I'll link both of those websites in case you want to verify your own pharmacy accreditation. Both of those accreditations mean that outside trained inspectors walked through the facility and inspected it. A lot of these compound pharmacies don't have a website or they don't post their accreditations. So I don't take anyone's word for it. It's public and it takes me two minutes to verify, and it's so worth it. Then I take it a step further and I ask for a certificate of analysis. That's the lab document that says that the ingredient is in there at the dose on the label. A legitimate pharmacy will send you one if you ask. And if asking turns into a problem or they don't have it, then you have your answer and I would stay far away from them. And I want to be honest about what that gets you, basically. Both of my pharmacies had accreditations and they looked good to me. The second one was as legit as I know how to check. And that's the one that I had that NAD plus in which I felt nothing from. It's a lot of gray area, okay? You can't verify or validate every single thing. You can't guarantee what you ordered is what you're getting. And you're not going to be standing there overseeing the compounding. But asking who feels it and looking them up is a due diligence you actually can do. And it's more than I did the first time. But when you're injecting something in your body and when you expect to do that over an extended period of time, it is absolutely worth validating everything that you can. Okay, the third thing that I check or actually just consider really is who is selling it to me. Because a person deciding or helping you determine whether you need a specific peptide is usually the person who makes money when you buy it. The US wellness peptide market is estimated at about two to three billion dollars annually. And it's expected to easily double over the next several years. And we, as peptide consumers, are spending an average of three to six hundred of our hard-earned dollars per peptide vial a month. Now, I don't think my wellness coordinator was a bad person. I think she believed what she told me when she prescribed me testamoralin. I think she believed it could genuinely help me. But she also worked for a company that sells peptides. And I walked in asking about body fat, and she had something to sell me for body fat. And because we do this with wellness and clinic coordinators, we kind of feel like it's medical guidance and medical treatment. So we tend to trust them. They're kind, they're knowledgeable, they answer our questions, and it feels like somebody's taking care of us and our best interest, which in most cases, they genuinely are. But I think that unlike doctors, it's important to consider that they're also trying to sell us products to make money. Those are two separate things, and they're totally allowed to do both. So here's what I check on the clinic before I give anyone my credit card. This is how the process is supposed to work. You have a consultation, then a licensed medical provider, who's usually a doctor or a nurse practitioner with a license number, writes you a prescription with your name on it. That prescription gets sent to the compounding pharmacy and the pharmacy fills it and ships it to you. So I check for two things. There should be a prescriber with a name and a license number that you can look up on your state licensing board, like an actual person that you could reach if you needed to. And then there should be a prescription with your name on it before anything ships. If you can buy it with no consultation andor with no prescription, then there is no prescriber, which means nobody is responsible for any adverse reactions that you could have. Then I would ask who they partner with to dispense it. And then I run those pharmacy checks that I mentioned. The clinic and the pharmacy are two separate businesses in almost all cases. The clinic sells it to you and they write the prescription, and the pharmacy is who makes the vial. You can check both. All of it is public information and you can work through it in less than 10 minutes. And there's one caveat that I just want to mention. If the label says for research use only or not for human consumption, then that's not a pharmacy and you are not a patient that they're making it for. I know there are so many people that are using these, like, I don't even know what you call them, peptide distributors, I guess. But considering the high risks with contamination and all sorts of variables already, that's a hard no for me. Even though they are super cheap, they are a fraction of what you can get at a wellness clinic, you are injecting this into your body. So I just urge you to do a little bit more research and perhaps invest some money in a higher safety profile. All in all, I love peptides. This is not an anti-peptide video. I am all for them for longevity, health, wellness, weight loss, skin, hair, energy, muscle retention. Like there seems to be a peptide for everything and anything. And I feel like they have so much benefit and so much value when you're getting them from the right place. Like, I and I think we're just scratching the surface with that. I hope that they become FDA approved. I hope that there's more that come to market that can help with a million different other ailments and things that just help us feel and look our best. But it's so incredibly important to understand to the best of your ability whether the peptide itself is safe. You can find that out by checking the three things: what it was approved for, what's in the vial, and who's selling it to you. When I ordered mine, I hadn't checked a single one of those three. And a $1,600 mistake later, I understood why they mattered. If this episode was helpful to finally make sense of the peptide market or how to vet your peptides, please subscribe to the show. And if you have an extra second, leave a review. It's a single biggest factor that helps other women like us over 40 find this podcast. And also subscribe to the show. I put out a new episode every Monday. And if you want more on all things diet, nutrition, fitness, lifestyle, and basically everything else that goes into losing weight after 40, come and join the Behind the Body newsletter. Every week I'll send you something straight to your inbox to help you keep making progress. And you can sign up for free at behind the body.com forward slash newsletter. And if you want the full story on my experience with Tesla Morelin, I'm gonna link that YouTube video below and you can watch that next. Thank you so much for tuning in, my friend, and I can't wait to chat with you next week.
