709: GLP-1 Medications, Gut Health, and Food as Medicine: A Smarter, Personalized Approach for Women in Midlife with Ashley Koff

Energized with Dr. Mariza

Dr. Mariza Snyder

Medicine, Health & Fitness, Alternative Health

4.8 • 974 Ratings

🗓️ 6 January 2026

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Ready for a judgment-free conversation about GLP-1 agonists and what they can truly offer midlife women seeking better energy, metabolic health, and longevity? In this podcast, hormone and nutrition expert Ashley Koff joins me to break down the noise and misinformation around GLP-1s, reframing them as one possible tool—not a magic fix—within a much bigger picture of whole-body health. Ashley shares how to advocate for yourself as an empowered patient, ask better questions, and partner more effectively with your healthcare provider with confidence. We also dive into why nutrition and lifestyle are essential foundations for optimizing hormones, whether you’re using GLP-1s or not. Most importantly, we emphasize listening to your body and making informed choices that support long-term vitality. If you’re curious about GLP-1s and want clear, compassionate guidance for midlife health, this is a must-listen episode! Ashley Koff, RD Ashley Koff is the founder of The Better Nutrition Program (BNP), the Nutrition Course Director for UC Irvine’s Susan Samueli Integrative Health Institute's Integrative and Functional Medicine Fellowship, and a faculty member at the Integrative and Functional Nutrition Academy (IFNA), where she teaches “An Integrative and Functional Nutrition Approach to Obesity and Weight Management.” She’s also the author of the upcoming book, Your Best Shot. As a practitioner for over 25 years, Koff has been recognized as one of CNN’s Top 100 Health Makers, featured in InStyle as “Hollywood’s Leading Dietitian,” and selected as Westin’s Global Nutrition Ambassador. RESOURCES MENTIONED Order my new book: The Perimenopause Revolution https://peri-revolution.com/ Ashley’s Book: Your Best Shot GLP-1 Optimization Assessment The Better Nutrition Program Website Ashley on Instagram IN THIS EPISODE Ashley’s personal experience with GLP-1s and their success Addressing the judgment around GLP-1 usage in society Overcoming the hurdles regarding accessibility to GLP-1s Looking at trends in current women’s health and in children How to reset certain hormones naturally for optimal performance How to cut through the conflicting nutrition advice in the media Why hormones like GLP-1s need to be a part of the midlife conversation About Ashley’s new book and The Better Nutrition Program! QUOTES “That means your weight-health hormones are going to be impacted. And let's look at this whole thing systemically– I think there's a lot of ways we can go in this, but one of the things I'm very concerned about is the way that people are being judged.” “I think in that way the biggest answer I would have for you is for us to stop blaming the medication for working the way the medication is supposed to work. And this is where I think the physician and dietician collaboration, comes in and says, actually, these are all the things that we need to experiment with or we need to explore, investigate if this is what your outcome is on the medication.” RELATED EPISODES #621: The Truth About Metabolic Health, Hormones and GLP-1s with Tyna Moore #647: Hormone Optimization Therapy (HOT) Isn’t Your Mom’s HRT + It’s One Of The Best Strategies For Longevity with Dr. Amy Killen #605: Breaking the HRT Confusion: The Truth Behind Hormone Replacement Therapy for Perimenopausal Women with Karen Martel 656: The Dangers Of NOT Prescribing Bioidentical HRT + Migraines, Testosterone and Mitigating Inflammation with Dr. Louise Newson

Transcript

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0:00.0	All the people that had been telling me to stop eating when I felt full, and my response was, I don't feel full. Like, what's wrong with me? Like, why am I not feeling full? You know, understanding, you know, our blood sugar and understanding for someone who might feel insulin resistant that it's not about insulin. There's a hormone before that that's telling, or they're two, that are telling insulin, you know, to go to work.
0:21.6	So all of that changed the game for me.
0:24.3	Welcome back to the energized with Dr. Marisa podcast.
0:28.5	I'm your host, Dr. Marisa, and I'm here to help you rock your hormones, optimize your metabolic health, and feel energized in your body so that you can age powerfully and
0:39.0	wake up feeling amazing in your body for many years to come. Let's jump on in.
0:44.5	There's a question that I hear all the time from my women in midlife. Here it is. Why does it
0:51.4	feel like my body isn't responding anymore, no matter what I do?
0:57.0	I know that you're eating clean, you're eating right, you're working hard to balance your
1:01.2	blood sugar, you're watching your portions, you're doing all the things you were told would
1:06.0	work.
1:06.8	And yet your energy feels depleted, the cravings can feel out of control. And the weight loss
1:11.7	feels harder than ever. It's like climbing Mount Everest, especially that visceral belly fat that
1:18.3	seems to show up out of nowhere. We know that there are changes that are happening in midlife that are
1:23.6	impacting our weight and our long-term metabolic health. So when medications like OZempic and Wigovie and Tresepotide started exploding in popularity,
1:32.9	many women, many people, thought finally an answer.
1:37.5	But what if those medications are actually pointing to a much bigger conversation,
1:41.9	a conversation that we're going to have today about hormonal
1:44.8	dysfunction, gut health, and how disconnected we become from personalized nutrition.
1:49.7	That's why I'm excited about today's conversation. My guest is Ashley Koff. She's a registered
1:55.2	dietitian and a true pioneer in functional and integrative nutrition. Ashley is the founder
1:59.9	of the Better Nutrition Program, the Nutrition course director for the UC Irvine's Integrative and Functional Medicine
2:05.9	Fellowship, a faculty member at the Integrative and Functional Nutrition Academy. She's been
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