Peptides Can’t Replace Sleep, Protein, Or Lifting Heavy

The peptide gold rush promises fast muscle, easy fat loss, and instant hormone fixes. We cut through the noise with first‑principles physiology: peptides are signals, not engines, and they only work when the system they talk to is already strong. If training is sporadic, protein is low, sleep is wrecked, and stress is constant, no vial can deliver the results you want.

We lay out the big myths—why peptides don’t build muscle without mechanical tension and calories, why they don’t override thermodynamics for fat loss, and why most “hormone issues” in young men look a lot like lifestyle problems. We also unpack GLP‑1 medications: how they curb appetite, where dosing goes wrong, and why weight loss without resistance training leads to lean mass loss, “Ozempic face,” and weaker glutes. The fix isn’t fear or hype—it’s smart pairing of tools with heavy lifting, daily walking, and protein targets to preserve muscle and metabolism.

There is a real role for peptides under physician supervision: injury recovery for tendons and soft tissue, post‑surgical healing, and targeted support for clinical hormone deficiencies or aging‑related needs. The keys are reputable pharmacies, limited timeframes, and a rock‑solid base. We share a simple blueprint anyone can follow—lift three to five days per week, walk every day, eat real food with enough protein, sleep seven to nine hours, and actively manage stress—then give it three to five years before chasing “optimization.” Build the house first; tools only help once the foundation stands.

If this resonates, follow the show, share it with a friend who’s tempted by quick fixes, and leave a review with the one habit you’re committing to this month. Your future self will thank you.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Peptides Hype Called Out
• 1:44 What Peptides Are And Aren’t
• 3:37 Myths: Muscle, Fat Loss, Hormones
• 6:32 GLP‑1s, Appetite, And Muscle Loss
• 9:52 Risks Of Unregulated Peptides
• 11:27 Where Peptides Can Help Short Term
• 14:42 Foundations Beat Biohacks
• 17:42 The Three To Five Year Rule

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:23

Peptides are the new steroids of the internet, except most people using them don't lift hard, don't eat right, don't sleep, and don't understand bus basic physiology. And yet they think a vial is going to build muscle, burn fat, and fix hormones they never broke in the first place. Welcome to another episode of Living a Full Life. I'm Dr. Enrico Dolchikorry, and this week we are still hitting the hard-knock truths. I think it's going to be a theme for the whole year of just truths in under 20 minutes to help you make decisions that help you live a healthier life for yourself, your family, and your loved ones. That's what our goal is each and every week. This year, like I talked about last week's podcast of like maybe I'm just that middle age where I'm just like, I don't give two cents anymore. You know, like we gotta we gotta straighten this this arrow here and shoot real facts to help people live healthier lives. And that's what we're gonna do. Peptides are short chain of amino acids that act as signaling molecules, not building blocks. And we're gonna get into a little bit of peptides today. Uh, that's the focus here. But the reason why is because of the Instagram movement of influencers. I don't know, these kids look like they're 25 years old, influencing and trying to tell people what to do. And I showed my wife the other day, I'm like, look, this guy wants you to take a six peptide stack, six to eight, depending on what you were doing. Six, and I'm like, hang on a second. I know one of these is like$400 a month. So I went and looked. So over$2,000 a month in peptides. I was like, wait, you want people to take that much in peptides? I'm sure you could find them off chief knockoff pharmaceutical sites for less, but I would never do that because they're not regulated. So I was confused, and that's where this podcast is coming from. If you're wondering what's going on, peptides do not build muscle, they send signals, unlike antidepressants, uh, blood pressure medications, these pharmaceutical grade chemical synthetics that are made in a lab that we call pharmaceuticals, they act as agents in the body. They're there to go and intercept binding sites, block pathways, and change physiology. That's what their job is. So an antidepressant goes in there, blocks dopamine receptors and um sites to help overactive brains or underactive brains. Uh, beta blockers for blood pressure, whatever it may be. Peptides are just amino acids. You get amino acids in your proteins. When you eat protein, it breaks down into amino acids. So these are just specific chains of amino acids that we make into peptides, and all they do is they send signals. They send signals. If the system they're signaling into is weak, broken, undeferred, undertrained, or underslept, nothing happens. They're not steroids, they are not growth hormones, they are not fat burners, they are not shortcuts. Gen Z didn't grow up lifting, working manual jobs, or eating real food. They grew up online. So the culture is very pro presentive right now. They so what they do is they skip the fundamentals, they work optimization before foundation, they believe biohacking is greater than effort, and think hormones are off because TikTok said so. The reality is not just Gen Z, but most of us don't have hormone problems. We have low muscle mass, poor insulin sensitivity, garbage sleep, anxiety-driven cortisol spikes, under-eating protein, overstimulated nervous systems. No peptide can fix that. There's none. The biggest peptide myths, let's go through this. The biggest peptide myths is that peptides build muscle. No, they don't. Muscle growth requires mechanical tension, calories, protein, and progressive overload. If peptides worked alone, bodybuilders wouldn't need to train. Peptides do not replace squats, deadlifts, calories, and consistency. They just don't. And unfortunately, we look for these biohacks thinking we're gonna get to the destination faster and then forget the fundamentals. Number two, peptides burn fat. No, they don't. Fat loss is still governed by caloric deficit, insulin control, movement, and muscle mass. Peptides don't override thermodynamics. They might slightly influence appetite or recover in specific contents, but they do not erase bad habits. The GLP ones and peptides that help with weight loss, what they do is trick the brain. We have one episode about the brain and how it decreases will, and it these peptides intercept and send signals to the brain to be like, hey, we don't want that, you know. But not just food, everything. We talked about it in there, how it decreases will, it decreases libido, it decreases just wanting to do stuff. That's how it does it. But for appetite, it decreases your appetite. If you're overdose on GLP1s, you get nauseous and maybe even vomit. That's how you know the dosing is too high. Can get even cause gastroissues, gastroparesis and stuff like that. So at the right dose, it decreases your appetite, which naturally decreases your calorie intake. Great. When you do that, you start to lose weight. But if we're not doing the movement and the muscle mass and the other stuff, and we're not moving, we also eat up muscle and lean mass. That's where we get into problems by losing that weight. And early on with Ozempic, five years ago, when it was came out, it was going there. We caught called it Ozempic face and Ozempic butt because they were disappearing. People look sunken, their butts were gone because muscle mass, your glutes are the biggest muscles in your body. They're the first ones to just start eating away at. And that's what happens with weight loss with that. So peptides do not override thermodynamics. Peptides fix your hormones. This is the most dangerous lie out there. They do not fix your hormones. Gen Z is going through, especially the men are going through this low testosterone thing. Like they're just, they think they have low testosterone and they're in their 20s. I'm like, this is that's impossible. You can't, you can't be, you can't. Uh low testosterone cases are for people with poor sleep, chronic stress, under-eating, uh, zero resistance training, excessive screen time, porn addiction, dopamine addiction, dopamine burnout. That's where our testosterone starts to go down. It's from really lack of movement and progressive overload. You don't fix that with a vial of anything. You fix it with lifting heavy, eating enough, getting sunlight, getting proper sleep, and nervous system regulation. That's how your endocrine system can work at its best. The unspoken risks no one talks about is that most peptides online are unregulated. That's a little bit of a risk depending where you buy this stuff from. There's some shady pharmacies out there. Dangerous, and that's why they're so cheap. Many are underdosed, overdosed, or contaminated. And long-term human data is limited or non-existent because of how new the utilization is. Kids are injecting compounds they can't explain, and I call 20 somethings kids, but they wouldn't drink tap water out of a filter. Gen Z doesn't even do that. You know, with sorry, without a filter. They won't drink tap water, it's got to be filtered. Uh, but they'll inject themselves with mystery peptides from TikTok. That's insanity. That's really insanity to me. Peptides may have a place for injury recovery. This is where I love peptides. Peptides are great. Let's talk about how great they can be for certain things and how we can use them well. And from a doctor's perspective, injury recovery is my number one for sure. BPC157, there's a couple others for tendinopathy, tendinosis, shoulder rotator cuff issues, knee problems, uh carpal tunnel. I mean, this stuff can really help speed up. And as a chiropractor, doing the work, uh, the therapy, the muscle work, the blood flow work to help the body's natural healing process is a great way to get people better too. We've been doing it for over 100 years, but these peptides speed up that process and actually accelerate it faster than that process, which I'm a big fan of because we want our patients to get better faster. That is very cool. And I've had nothing but great results from it. So I'm a big fan of that for injury recovery. Short-term use. Once the injury is recovered and you feel good, you do no longer need to be taking the peptide. Very cool. Clinical hormone deficiencies, clinical, clinically hormone deficiencies. So actually low in certain hormones, these can come in and really help. They work really well under direct supervision. Aging populations, I'm excited. I mean, the second half of the runway here in my life is is is up in front of me. And as I age, I'm excited to be alive right now with these things, with the anti-aging, the anti-arthritis uh protocols, the the muscle uh healing, the anti-fatigue. I mean, this is great stuff. They're all options that I will have and have right now, and you have for anti-aging. That's fantastic. It's absolutely wonderful. Post-surgical healing, again, short-term use, absolutely phenomenal for keloid, for scarring, for skin, for organ repair, for some really cool stuff. But the key point between all of those is under physician supervision from good, uh reputable pharmacies. Um, but they are great tools, they're just not solutions long term, they're short term. And tools only help people who already built the house, already did the fundamentals. That's where tools come into play. A hammer and a mill saw and a skill saw and a tile uh cutter and all these things cannot be used until the foundation is laid for the home. It's this, it's just the way it works with everything. So here's the harsh truth about muscle and fat loss. If peptides work the way Instagram says, jails, third world countries, construction sites would be full of shredded people, but they're not because muscle and leanness come from effort, consistency, discipline, time. There is no biological bypass for any of this. That is the truth. And when we try to biohack or cut corners, what we end up cutting is time and effort out of those things. Remember, effort, consistency, discipline, and time. And once we cut the time, try and shortcut time and shortcut effort, and we're like, well, I'm going to the gym five days a week, consistent, and I'm working out, discipline. They're cutting out the effort. They're like, Well, I don't need to put in the effort because peptides are gonna help me look jacked or they're gonna help me cut weight. And then that cuts off the time, but really you can't because effort comes with time, and we have to do all of those things in order to see results, whatever our results goals are. If you're 22 years old and can't deadlift twice your body weight, don't eat over 150 grams of protein per day, and sleep less than six hours a night, you have no business touching peptides. You're setting yourself up for complete failure with all of it and a waste of money. So we have to have the fundamentals in place. Build the founding foundational blocks of strength, appetite, diet, healthy eating, prepping, all of these things. Create those habits first. Test the body, use it, go work out, do things, see how it goes, and then the tools can come into play. So if you want to actually, you know, what actually works across every platform, every personal trainer, every weight loss program, every strength conditioning program, anything you buy online. There's there's people selling high-ticket weight loss and personal training programs virtually online for$10,000. They're like, hey, listen, if you don't make over$200,000 a year, we're not for you. Like they're literally just saying it up front, like, but this is how we get CEOs and high uh executive people to get shredded fast.$10,000, we'll show you the whole program, do this, and we guarantee you're gonna get shredded. And you look at it and you're like, oh, that's just a personal training. It's just a personal training program. It's the same thing repeated over and over, just packaged in a different gift box. That one's packaged with gold and silver and sold for$10,000. The other one's packaged on uh uh in your email with one click for you know$150. What whatever that they're just people trying to make money, repeating the same information that you have accessible on the internet right now for you. You can go to ChatGPT, download your own custom plan, upload your blood work, your age, any risk benefit, any prior history surgeries, you put that in there, it will give you a safe workout plan and a safe diet plan. Actually, quite accurate, quite accurately. So that's the age you're in. Uh, you don't need the$10,000 executive plan. So, what actually works is lifting heavy three to five days a week. Yes, for those of you that are 70 years old listening to me right now, females, yes, you need to progressively lift heavy. So that just means heavy for you. You know, it might be 30 pound weights for you to lift, and it might be 90 pound weights for me. It's two different things, but you know, your arm curls might be 10 pound weights, and for me, they're 25 pound weights, whatever, it doesn't matter, but it's heavy for you three to five days a week. If you do three, I would do three full body uh workouts a week. Full body, two for the legs, two for the shoulders, two for the chest, two for the back. Perfect. That's a full body day, and that's great. Uh eat real food. If you do eat real food, eat protein, enough calories every single day based on your goals. Calorie deficit for fat loss, calorie target for maintenance, calorie increase for muscle growth. Walk every day, non-negotiable. You have to get up and walk and get those steps in. You have to. It's just the way our bodies were made to move things, uh, lymphatic flow, circulatory flow, blood flow, venous flow, cerebrospinal flow. Everything flows with movement. If you're stagnant, everything gets stagnant, causes big issues. Sleep seven to nine hours every night, non-negotiable. Manage your stress. Please manage stress. Everyone is stressed. We all have things on our plate. I've got three kids. I'm married, I got two businesses, I got adjust people every week. I uh doctor patient care. I hear you, I hear you, I can feel you, I walk with you, I understand. Uh, but manage your stress. It's either reflections every night, talking to your spouse or a partner about your stress, getting it out. Because what we end up doing with stress is we hold it, we put it as a bag on our shoulders and we walk with it. And because we, you know, no one cares. If we complain, no one's gonna care. And that's true, but wearing it all the time wears us down and it just deregulates our nervous system. So by getting it out, even therapy, I feel like Tony Soprano right now, but I even go to a mental health counselor at least probably once a month. I've gone probably 12 times last year, and just to just to vent for an hour to go through and they help me work through things and they help give me tools to manage stress, to manage it. And my temperament's been down, I control my emotions better, I control my I regulate better, my nervous system feels calmer, I sleep better. It just it's just there. I mean, the stress, I still wake up Monday morning and still do what I need to do. The stress hasn't changed, but I just deal with it better. Like I just don't give two Fs about that anymore. I'll still do it. I have to do it, gotta pay the bills, but I just don't give about I don't care about that as much as I care about this. And it just makes you happier to do that. So speaking about it, and there's tools out there for you, and I highly, highly recommend that. And be patient. Good things come, good things are always coming. You have been blessed your entire life up to this day, and I promise you you are going to continue to be blessed for the rest of your life, just not on the exact day that you were hoping for. I've realized that. You're like, oh, you know, by the end of the year, I'm gonna be at my target weight goal, or in six months, I'm gonna be at my weight goal. Yes, if you're consistent, yes, you'll get there. And if you miss the deadline, don't worry about it. It'll just be a little bit after that. Maybe it wasn't July 1st, maybe it'll be September 1st. It's okay, but continue and be patient. Do that for three to five years, then we can talk about optimization. Ooh, you weren't waiting for that one, right? At the end to close out the whole podcast. Three to he's like, wait, wait, three to five months, three to five weeks, three to five days. No, wait three to five years of that type of consistency, then we can talk about optimizing because you built the foundation. If you didn't build the foundation, there's nothing to optimize. There's nothing if you didn't build the car, there's no engine to optimize and make it faster or more efficient. You have to build the foundation first, then you can get into optimization and whatever biohacking. These are just stupid words for doing good things for yourself, like trying to try to make yourself better. There is no biohacking. You're not hacking any biology by doing this stuff. Peptides or amino acids, you get amino acids by eating protein. Eat a chicken, eat a chicken breast, eat it, boom, you got amino acids, eat some beans, you got amino acids. It's just they're sequenced amino acids to signal the body to do stuff. So you take a um semimarelin or a CJC, you inject it subcutaneously, and it sends signals to the muscles. They're like, hey, lift something. We're gonna grow a little bit faster, but you don't lift anything. And they're like, Okay, I'll talk to you next week. Like that's it, they go away. They have to be signaled. So that's a signal like, hey, muscles grow, but the only way to grow muscle is by lifting weights. Yeah. Make sense? So build the foundation. That should be your 2026 goal, whatever that foundation is: a healthy mental state, a healthier diet, uh, healthier sleep schedule, uh, being more energized, losing weight, getting more fit, getting more endurance, running the half marathon sometime this year, whatever the goal is, build the foundation to it. And that's how you'll get successful at it. Peptides did not replace work. They just gave lazy people something new to blame when results don't come. You don't need better chemistry, you need better habits. Go get it, all the best, stay well, stay healthy, catch you next week.