Testosterone, not GLP-1s, is what finally let Chalene Johnson lose body fat and build real muscle after 40, and she’s laying out exactly how in this episode.
Chalene explains why her total testosterone always looked normal on paper while she still felt exhausted and stuck in the gym, until a clinician finally tested her free testosterone and SHBG (sex hormone binding globulin) and found the real problem. In her words, total testosterone is the money in the bank, free testosterone is the cash in your pocket, and SHBG is the bank teller deciding how much you actually get to spend. She also gets into why she skipped the growth peptides everyone’s talking about (tesamorelin, ipamorelin, CJC-1295) and switched from monthly testosterone injections to a daily cream instead.
She talks candidly about the mold exposure that wrecked her hormones, caregiving through her father-in-law’s Alzheimer’s, and why she stopped weighing herself and started tracking body fat with an InBody scale instead.
Topics discussed: testosterone for women, free testosterone, total testosterone, SHBG, hormone replacement therapy, perimenopause, GLP-1, tesamorelin, ipamorelin, CJC-1295, HGH, IGF-1, progressive overload, body composition, InBody scale, DEXA scan, mold toxicity, testosterone cream