Let Your Body Do the Work: Activate Your Naturally Occurring GLP-1 Hormones for Healthy, Sustainable Weight Loss and Long-Term Health

by Anette Sams

A groundbreaking handbook for activating your body's naturally occurring weight-loss hormones without relying on medication, from the former director at Novo Nordisk, the pharmaceutical company behind Wegovy and Ozempic

In 2022, the world changed drastically when GLP-1 medications became popular in the market. But with prices soaring and production restricted, the benefits of these drugs are not accessible to all. The good news is the major component in these drugs mimics the effect of one of the body's very own natural weight-loss hormones—so why not let your body do the work? 

For more than twenty years, Dr. Anette Sams has worked as a pharmaceutical researcher—including six years at Novo Nordisk, where she specialized in and led research on blood sugar, diabetes, and inflammation—and she's now sharing her expertise worldwide. In Let Your Body Do the Work, Sams explains how the naturally occurring GLP-1 hormone works in the body and shares practical, everyday tips on how to activate it through nutrition and lifestyle tweaks. 

This powerful hormone can not only help to achieve and maintain a healthy weight, but also regulate blood sugar and appetite, improve insulin sensitivity, reduce inflammation, support satiety, and support natural prevention of common diseases. An instant bestseller in Denmark, Let Your Body Do the Work is your resource for accessing the benefits of healthy, active weight-loss hormones without the hefty price tag.

"It should never be easier to get expensive injections than to understand our own hormones. The world needs both medication and education." —Anette Sams

169 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 23, 2026

Reviews

[Alicia Bayer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent book on how to naturally trigger the same hormones that make injections like ozempic work, by a Danish pharmaceutical researcher who worked on these drugs. It’s a pretty short book and it’s heavy on the science behind it. The gist of it is that this hormone is made farther down our digestive system and modern ultraprocessed foods are so high in sugars and overprocessed that the lower parts of our digestive tract never get the nutrients they need to trigger it or feed the healthy bacteria who rely on whole foods, fiber and real nutrients. Added fiber does not do the same thing, as real fiber is like a box surrounding the nutritious food, so the nutrients are transported to where they can be utilized, and trigger GLP-1.

Sams recommends eating lots of vegetables along with other real quality foods (nuts, plain dairy, seeds, beans, high quality meat, olive oil, avocados, etc), eating only three meals a day so the body can properly digest, getting enough sleep, getting exercise (any, even raising your heels while sitting, taking exercise breaks and walking), and getting regular exposure to cold to increase your brown fat (which improves blood sugar, metabolism and health).

I was hoping for sample meal plans, full lists of recommended foods and maybe some simple recipes, but those are lacking. If those had been included, this easily would have been a five star book for me. As it is, I will still highly recommend it to others and plan to adopt her advice (which is already very similar to my current plan, other than during the first phase she doesn’t recommend any grains or starches if you are insulin sensitive, which I have become in midlife).

I read a digital version of this book for review.

[Steven · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75 stars rounded up. Look, a lot of this book is filler, but it does contain valuable information about GLP-1 and its production in the body, as well as how to naturally stimulate the cells that produce it. This guide was written by a Danish pharmacologist who studied GLP-1 and its synthetic analogues. I will certainly be abiding by some of this advice in my own life, even though it doesn't present any dietary tips that are entirely unknown to me. Like, of course, it is conventional wisdom that unprocessed food (especially vegetables) will lead to weight loss. However, it helps to know WHY that is the case in order to make better decisions about what you're eating, which is where this book comes in handy.

Did it need to be a *book* though? Probably not--It might have made a good scientific article, but if it were actually written in that medium, it may not have received as much attention. So it's good that it's a book, but the most valuable parts are the parts which explain L-cells and the practical dietary and exercise advice.