Your 90-Day Roadmap to Feeling Strong, Lean, and Restored with Bioactive Peptides
Have you ever felt like you’re doing all the right things - hitting the gym, watching what you eat - but your body just isn’t responding like it used to? Trust me, I’ve been there! In today’s episode, I’m sitting down with my dear friend and certified nutrition coach, Sarah Vogel, to talk about the total game-changer that has transformed my health over the last year and a half: Bioactive Peptides.
We’re getting real about the "midlife funk," why Sarah’s husband (and college-aged son!) are obsessed with these products, and how we finally cracked the code on deep sleep and metabolic health without the "pin cushion" life of synthetic injections. If you want to know how I’m hitting sleep scores in the 90s and feeling stronger at 60 than I did years ago, you need to hear this!
What’s Inside the Episode
Ditching the Synthetics: Sarah explains why she walked away from synthetic vitamins and injections to find a cleaner, all-natural path to wellness.
My "Daily Essentials": I share the three peptides I never travel without.
The Puppy vs. The Husband: A hilarious (but very real) look at stress. I share how I use the "Calm" peptide to lower my shoulders when my new puppy and my husband aren't exactly seeing eye-to-eye.
The Oura Ring Proof: We’re obsessed with the data! Sarah and I compare our sleep scores and talk about why "Restore" is the ultimate secret for anyone struggling with perimenopause or aging.
It’s Never Too Late: I’m training to be the "strong grandmother." Whether you’re doing countertop pushups or lifting a 20lb grandson, we talk about why movement and peptides go hand-in-hand.
Purpose & Community: Sarah opens up about why she joined the Make Wellness mission to find more connection as an empty nester and how you can join us too!
Ready for Your Own Breakthrough?
If you’re tired of feeling "stuck," come join us for the M3 Breakthrough! It’s a 90-day journey where we focus on 3 products (Lean, Fit, and Restore) and 3 simple habits. Plus, if you’re a first-timer, you get an adorable glass water bottle!
Shop the Peptides | Get $10 off Make Wellness| Opportunity Link | Make3 Breakthrough
See the Transformation: Check out Sarah’s "Before & Now" photos in the Facebook group - the inflammation drop is absolutely wild!
Connect with Sarah: Give her a follow @sarahvogel30A for all things wellness and 30A real estate.
Love the show? Don’t forget to subscribe and leave a review! It helps me reach more women just like you who are ready to live a Well and Worthy life
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Deanna: Hello, friends. Welcome back to the Well and Worthy Life Podcast. I'm so excited that you're back today with me. I have got a friend on here with me today, Sarah Vogel. Sarah and I have known each other several years now. We met because my son, CJ, and her husband work together down on 30A, and Sarah and her husband still work on 30A selling real estate. So if you want to buy some real estate on 30A, you need to reach out to Sarah and Mike. A little plug there, Sarah.
Sarah: Oh, awesome. Thanks. No, we love the area, and so it's always fun to help people find where they want to be here.
Deanna: It is such a wonderful, wonderful area. I love it. I've been going down there for years, and if you guys don't know about 30A, it's down in the panhandle of Florida. You think, "Oh, well, that can't be," but it has beautiful beaches—beaches like no other place I've ever been. Don't you think, Sarah?
Sarah: Oh my gosh, they're the prettiest beaches in the United States. Even having been to beaches in the Caribbean, I still think it's hard to beat 30A. It really is.
Deanna: Okay, so we get off topic already. That's pretty typical for me. You guys might remember—and if you hear a little bark in the background, that would be my puppy that I'm trying to contain while we do this podcast. He's a little feisty thing. But anyway, the reason I had Sarah on here was because you may remember my friend Melanie and I did a podcast on the bioactive peptides that I talk about and take. Sarah, how long have we been taking these things?
Sarah: Well, they came out in November of '24, so about a year and a half.
Deanna: I have been really into peptides way before then, but really dialed into these bioactive peptides, and I love them. I don't go anywhere without them. Sarah, I think you feel the same way, right?
Sarah: I do, and so does my whole house. I can tell you a story real quick. My son came home from college, and he's been here two weeks. Normally he orders his own products and they get shipped to his apartment. Well, he hasn't done that since he's been home because his address has changed. He's been taking ours and I'm not paying attention, Mike's not paying attention. He goes into the pantry the other day and he's like, "We're out. What is happening? How do we run out?" Long story short, there was a little bit of an argument on running out of peptides.
Deanna: We can all relate. I'm glad. Nobody else in my family uses peptides. Well, it would only be Jeff, and he can't use them because I'm scared to mix all of his other medications with the peptides. It would probably help him tremendously, but I would have to have his doctors look. He's on so many medications for his heart. So anyway, that's a good problem to have, and I know Melanie has that problem too with her children taking her peptides. I don't like to give any of mine out very often because I don't want to run low. I can't be without my peptides. I had a girlfriend message me today about samples of Restore, and I'm like, "Well, I don't have samples, and I would have to give you some of my own. Why don't you just order some? There's a money-back guarantee here."
Melanie and I discussed on the other podcast about how peptides have made a difference in our life. Before you did BioActive Peptides, had you done any other peptides before?
Sarah: No. I had looked into peptides, but my husband and I have always worked out. I'm a certified nutrition coach. We've always been in the health and wellness space some way or another. We made this agreement that we were going to get away from synthetic vitamins and just start cleaning things up a little bit. What happened was COVID; we were stuck in the house and we got off track with things. Then getting older, we were in this time warp, I think, with COVID. We turned around and we're like, "Ugh." So we made this agreement that we were going to just get back on track—no synthetic anything.
Well, we went to the doctor, and Mike has also suffered from blood clots for many, many years. They don't know why. Because of the limited research on peptides at the time—there's more and more coming out now—his doctor recommended, "If it were me, I wouldn't, because we don't know why you have blood clots." So we both agreed we're not going to go that route.
Fast-forward, a girlfriend of mine knew that I had talked about peptides. My uncle actually was on some for weight loss, and I was stuck in a funk. She said, "You need to look at this." This was back when you had to sign an NDA to hear anything about Make Wellness, because it was just a thought. I got on this Zoom, and I heard about these all-natural, the first-ever all-natural bioactive precision peptides. I heard about the science behind them. I heard about the company that was making them through AI and all the things. It was about a 30-minute Zoom, and I came out and told Mike, "I'm doing this." He said, "That's all you, babe."
We were just learning about these natural bioactive peptides and could not wait to get my hands on them because they didn't come out until November. By the time they came out, he was like, "Where's mine? You didn't order me any." So that's my journey in the very beginning with learning about peptides.
Deanna: So what peptides did you start with?
Sarah: Right now we have five peptides. There's over 200,000 peptides in the human body. Known peptides, I think, are around 70,000 that they've done research on. More peptides will come, but we currently have five. Before there were only four. I take all of them. We have two support products: one is Hydrated, and another is Calm for cortisol levels. When your cortisol levels are high, peptides don't work as well. Then when you're dehydrated—which is a reason many people on a GLP-1 aren't getting the results they should—you need hydration at the cellular level.
I take every single day without fail: Fit, Lean, and Restore. Those are the three peptides I take every day. Energized, I take when needed. My energy levels are pretty good unless I've had a really long day or I need to keep going longer than I want to. Mike takes Focus every day. I do not.
Deanna: Tell us how old you are so everybody knows, because you're quite a bit younger than me.
Sarah: I'm 45. But I was stuck. I have a nutrition background and I've been in the gym my whole life. My kids are in the gym now as young adults because they've seen us there their whole lives. But nothing I was doing before I found these peptides was working. I was actually throwing out everything I knew because it wasn't working. I was even going to friends saying, "Tell me about this keto you're doing. Tell me about fasting." I was trying them and doing extra cardio, which was then raising my cortisol levels. I was doing all the things that I knew better than to do, but I didn't understand my body anymore. I was frustrated and I just kept chalking it up to, "Well, I'm just getting older. I'm in my 40s now." We hear that a lot, which drives me crazy. "I'm in perimenopause and all the things, and there's nothing else I can do." It's not about that at this stage of our life; it's about finding what we can do.
Deanna: When you started taking these peptides, what did you first notice?
Sarah: It was hard to pinpoint at first because I just felt clearer. It wasn't a zippy energy, but my moods were better. I didn't step on the scale in the beginning because I knew better. This is a wellness company; these peptides are about wellness, not weight loss. Weight loss will happen as you're getting healthy through the journey, which did happen eventually. I just wanted to feel good again, feel like myself, and feel strong. The weight loss on the scale took a few months.
Deanna: It always does when you're doing it correctly. If your weight drops dramatically and quickly, you're not doing it right and you're losing muscle. That's the last thing we want to do at our age because it's so hard to build. Consistency is the key. It's just like everything in life. You have to be consistent for something to work. One of the things I love about them is I don't have to think, "Oh, I can only take these Monday through Friday." It's every day. I'm like you; I take Lean, Fit, and Restore every single day, along with my Hydrated and my Calm.
Yesterday I took two Calms. With this new puppy, my cortisol is off the charts because my puppy and my husband are not getting along. It would be easier to rehome my puppy than to rehome my husband, but I'm not doing either right now. I'm going to keep him around too, but it's been a challenge. I was so uptight yesterday, I couldn't even hardly breathe. So I got my Calm out, I took one, I laid on my sofa, and I just breathed.
Sarah: It is almost like having that glass of wine. It just lowers the shoulders and relaxes you. So many women out there have high cortisol levels. Before Restore came out, I was taking a couple of Calms during the day. A lot of people will take it at night before bed, but I was taking it in the morning because that's when our cortisol levels spike anyway. I was going to the gym and working out, so I took one during the day.
Deanna: Do you take it at night now, or how often do you take Calm?
Sarah: I don't take it much anymore.
Deanna: I still take it every single night with my Restore. My deep sleep ever since Restore—I would hate to go without any of them, but Restore and Calm would be the two that I cannot be without. If I run out, I'm going to be calling you or Melanie going, "You've got to FedEx me some overnight." My sleep is so important to me. I wear an Oura Ring and I have noticed my deep sleep is so much better. I'm getting scores in the 90s sometimes.
Sarah: I have a girlfriend named Jill who is 69 and she is loving the peptides. Jonna is 58 and also loving them. Jill and I were chatting because she is dealing with her grandkids. Those kids get up in the morning and they're just ready to go. They aren't saying, "I need my coffee." We get out of bed dragging and saying, "Don't talk to me until I've had my caffeine." Now when I take Restore in the mornings, I don't need caffeine to function.
As we age, we lose the peptides that we have in our body. Peptides are naturally occurring when we're born, but as we get older, stress, age, and environment make it so we don't have them anymore. People need to better understand what peptides are. Give yourself some grace. Love yourself enough through the journey. You can't think, "I'm just going to take bioactive peptides and not do all the other things." You have to have the basics down: eating your protein, prioritizing your sleep, moving your body, and strength training.
Deanna: Consistency is the most important thing. I know some people use synthetic peptides—the ones you inject—and I have used them before. But to be honest, I got tired of being a pincushion. You can only do them for five days, then two days off, and you can only do them for three months. They're very expensive and you have to have them shipped in. I'm not saying they're bad, but I love these bioactive peptides because they are plant-derived. They are a capsule or powder form. They're easy to travel with and I take them consistently every day. I don't have to remember what day I missed or if I have to go off them for a while.
Sarah: My mom’s husband plays a lot of golf and they were in Palm Springs. She was talking to these golfers who travel a lot and take synthetic peptides. She wanted to offer them these because they're easy to travel with, they're convenient, and they taste good. They aren't super expensive and can be taken in conjunction. It's not work; it's fun. Sometimes people hear they have to do all these things and they think, "I'm so busy, I can't do that." You can still find ways. I could be doing squats or a wall sit right now. I've seen you walking around your house on the phone getting your steps in. It's nothing crazy. When I was stuck, I thought I had to go all out for results, and I was hurting myself even more.
Deanna: That's a big mistake people make—thinking it has to be all or nothing. I did a podcast recently on training to be a grandparent and how important it is to stay strong. It's never too late. Doing squats or pushups off your countertops is so important. You have to have the energy to keep up with these little people. My grandson, who is eight months old, is over 20 pounds. Trying to hold that boy—I am so glad I am strong.
Sarah: How old is he?
Deanna: Eight months. He's starting to crawl. He doesn't even have the core strength to hold himself up yet, so he really is like dead weight in your arms. I was so thankful that I was strong enough to get down on the floor with him and stand up from the floor with him in my arms, which I think at 60 is really important. I want to do that at 70. What you're doing right now will prepare you for being an active grandparent.
So, Make Wellness is an affiliate marketing company. I found out about it because Sarah called me with this opportunity. I said yes because I knew how much peptides can make a difference. This company is fabulous. If you want a business opportunity to make a little extra cash or even just to pay for your products, this is an option. I got into affiliate marketing years ago just for fun and I have loved it because of the people you meet. If you are interested, you can contact me or Sarah. But first things first, you should try the product.
Sarah: Honestly, when I decided to join, I was looking for something I could use on a daily basis. I was looking for accountability and connection. My kids were about to go off to college and I was purpose-digging. I knew I would get the accountability here along with products I could trust. It’s free to join, you only pay for the products you use personally, and then you get to help others. It fits perfectly alongside what I'm already doing.
Deanna: I felt the same way. If I'm going to be taking the product, why not share it with everybody? I cannot stand it when people won't tell me what they're doing to look so good. Sarah, do you share your before and after pictures?
Sarah: I do. I have them here in my phone. If you're watching on YouTube, you'll see. This is me before I started. Actually, this was me five months on the peptides. I was feeling good, but I had full inflammation. I had a lot going on internally before my body could lose the fat. My metabolism had to turn on. A lot of people misunderstand muscle; women think they don't want to get bulky, but that muscle is going to help turn on your metabolism to burn fat.
Deanna: Tell them about the breakthrough package because that's a great way for accountability.
Sarah: It’s the M3 Breakthrough. It stands for three months, making three changes, with three products for three months. The three changes are: less sugar, walking more, and getting more sleep. It includes the three peptides Deanna and I both take: Restore, Fit, and Lean. I also highly recommend adding Hydrated. You have the accountability and you see what it does for you in 90 days. The very first time you order it, you get a really pretty glass water bottle.
Deanna: Sarah, thank you so much for taking the time to be with us today and sharing your journey. I'll link Sarah's Instagram profile so you can reach out to her. If you have any questions, you can always reach out to me.
