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Katie: Hello, and welcome to the Wellness Mama Podcast. I’m Katie from wellnessmama.com, and this episode is about genetic awakening and how understanding your DNA can transform your weight loss journey and your life. And I’m here with Dr. Phyllis Pobee. She was such a fun guest. She’s a triple board-certified physician and an expert in genetic weight loss medicine. She’s the CEO of GeneLean360, and her specific focus is helping women over 30 achieve sustainable weight loss through personalized genetic-based work. And this is inspired by her own 100-pound weight loss.
And I love how we really get into specifics in this one. She talks about her own journey with losing over 100 pounds after failing many times, what genetic weight loss even is, how genes come into play that can really make or break the weight loss process if we don’t understand them. We talk about detox pathways and cellular health and how both of these can really be important for weight loss and how things that bypass the body’s natural systems, like some of the new drugs on the market, might create problems down the road and how to avoid that. She has an absolute wealth of knowledge. I really, really enjoyed this conversation. So let’s join Dr. Phyllis and learn. Dr. Phyllis, welcome. Thank you so much for being here.
Dr. Phyllis: I’m so happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
Katie: I’m very excited for this conversation. And even just in researching for this interview, found out so many interesting facts already. Before we jump into genetics, which I’m most excited to learn from you about, I would love to just briefly highlight a couple of things. One of which is, according to my research for this, you lost over 100 pounds yourself based on what we’re going to be talking about today. And we apparently share that you originally wanted six kids, and I have six kids. I just wanted to bring both of those up as little bio points. But tell me about your own weight loss and how that came to be.
Dr. Phyllis: Yes. So I found myself after having two children, I was a family medicine resident and I was a hundred pounds overweight. And this was something that was a huge source of embarrassment for me because I’m a physician. I’m giving people advice about how obesity is the next smoking because obesity affects all your organ systems. And I was overweight, and I couldn’t budge the weight. I was working out twice a day, doing all the quote unquote right things and nothing was working until I really just became this expert in genetic weight loss. Really just learning that having a personalized approach would be something that could be beneficial for me.
So just applying it to myself, I start, you know, the first 20 pounds came off and I, I realized I had something. And so ended up losing a hundred pounds in that first year. And from there, working with different patients, GeneLean360 was born, which is my program to help women over 30 lose 50 pounds or more.
Katie: I find this so interesting because that’s one thing I’ve noticed in these past now 15 years in the health and wellness world is that there’s so much personalization and individualization. And I feel like your approach really delves into that. And I’ve seen over the years, I think there’s wisdom in every expert, every approach, every person we meet, there’s always something to learn. But I’ve always said it’s often more the framework and how they figured out what works for them rather than the exact blueprint, because we’re all so different. And so I feel like you’re kind of bridging that gap and helping people build based on their own genetics.
I also know this is a very broad topic and it’s very specific to each person, but can you walk us through broadly what role genetics play in weight loss and maybe touch on a few genes that maybe are especially coming to play with this if there are some?
Dr. Phyllis: Yes. So the biggest gene that most people would know about is the FTO gene. And this is sometimes called the hunger gene or less commonly referred to as the fat gene by some people, because this is a gene that affects satiety, which is how full you feel and appetite regulation. And so this is a very studied gene in terms of weight loss and weight gain. And this is a gene that will come up for a lot of women that have been struggling with weight loss resistance. So my biggest work comes around working with this gene and how to personalize an approach for this gene, because when you understand how to implement your meals around having the quote unquote hunger gene, you realize it’s not your fault. You realize it’s not an issue of willpower or doing more, more discipline. It’s more so about giving your body what it needs.
The next thing, I actually put the women that I work with into genetic avatar. So we put them into specific groupings. And so when someone comes to work with me, we start off with a genetic test just to obviously see where they’re at. And one of the more common genetic groupings that we find is the craving captives, I call them. So craving captives are women that have some type of dopamine, issues with dopamine. And so that means that we’ve seen a lot of women saying, yes, I have ADHD, but they don’t realize that binge eating is a huge component of it because you’re wanting that dopamine rush or you’re wanting that dopamine pickup. And so certain foods or certain things are going to gravitate towards not because you’re hungry, but more because of dopamine dysregulation.
So that’s a totally different approach than if you’re dealing with someone that is having weight issues due to hormonal imbalances. So then looking at certain genes having to do with CYP-A1, which has to do with how your body processes estrogen. And so if you’re going through something like menopause, perimenopause, and you’re wondering, why are my symptoms so much worse than someone else? That’s because of genetically how your body is working through the changes of estrogen in your body.
So there’s, like you said, there is so many different genes that come into play, but it’s being able to take women and put them into different groupings where it’s hormone havoc, having to do with your hormones kind of being out of balance from a genetic point of view. It could be women that I call detox bound. So these are women that have issues with GSTM1 gene, and they’re not able to process the toxins that we’re surrounded with daily in a normal way. So imagine just being bombarded with toxins all the time, and you cannot get rid of them. And you’re feeling sluggish, and you’re feeling a weight gain.
And what people don’t realize about toxins and detoxification and is that if your body is not able to detox properly, it will actually store, your body will actually store the toxins in your fat cells, and then you can’t get rid of your fat cells. So that’s a whole nother layer into understanding, really, the root cause of your weight loss. As you can see, it can really be a huge gamut, whether you are either a dopamine driver, or a craving captive. So having the groupings really helps.
Katie: Yeah. And to highlight something you just said, I think this is really important because one thing I try to say on this podcast often is like, the body is always on our side. This was a hard lesson for me. I used to say things like, oh, I have Hashimoto’s, or my body is attacking itself. And I learned to be careful about my language because I realized my body’s always on my side. If there’s a symptom, something’s going on and it’s trying to tell me, but if my body wanted to kill me, it could do it instantly. It does not need any help with that instantly. So my body’s always on my side.
And when it comes to weight loss and fat cells, I think that reframe is really helpful as well. It’s like, sometimes your body is holding onto excess fat to protect you, to shelter those toxins, to keep your organs safe. And yet we’re so harsh on our body when we want it to change or look a certain way. I think that reframe alone helps you sort of become friends with your body in this process versus sort of fighting it. And I love that you’re able to help people get granular and specific to them in that approach as well.
I’m curious if there are anything that emerged as universals or if everything is very individualized and specific. In other words, were there any patterns that came out in all these women that you’ve worked with that are sort of like fit categories of this is almost universally beneficial, especially to women who are trying to lose weight, or this is almost universally not helpful to women who are trying to lose weight.
Dr. Phyllis: Phenomenal question. I want to first go back to what you mentioned about speaking kindly to your body, because that could be a whole topic in and of itself. I think it’s so beautiful and important that we always reiterate that. And I love that about your podcast that you’re always hitting that home. We can’t say that enough because words have power, right? And our cells react to those words and can actually worsen this process of detoxification in our body.
And so that brings me to that point of detoxification. Actually, as I’ve been doing this work more and more, I’ve been seeing pretty much every woman having issues in that GSTM1 gene, having issues with detoxification more and more. We are so overburdened from toxins in our water, in our food supply, the food we’re actually eating being toxic. And so much so that we’ve now integrated it into our hormone program where everyone is going through some type of detox program because it is a huge source of weight loss resistance for all women. It might not be the only issue, but it is something that’s underlying for pretty much 90% of the women that I work with.
And I think I was watching this documentary about someone that was being slowly poisoned. And I thought, how terrifying to just wake up and feel something’s wrong with me, but I don’t know what. And you’re slowly getting sicker and sicker and someone’s actively poisoning you. And that’s what’s going on with us every single day. We are slowly being poisoned. We don’t feel well. We get lab tests. The lab tests look normal. And all of these things are kind of going underneath the surface, not to mention all of the other genetic components that we deal with.
One thing that universally, I didn’t find anything universally that wouldn’t work for all women. I do say things like fasting isn’t great for women over 30. From my own personal experience, working specifically with women over 30, I see a lot of women just want to hop into doing fasting and think it’s the best thing for them. But more oftentimes, I find that it spikes their cortisol, they start retaining weight, they might lose initial 10 pounds, and then the weight will stop. So not quite universally, but majority of women, I don’t recommend fasting. There is a small proportion of women that have say the clock gene and time eating works very well for them. So for those women, they’re the exception to the rule.
Katie: I love that. And I know we’re going to get to record a whole second episode, very specific to fasting. So you guys stay tuned for that one cause I’m excited to go deep and debunk some myths. But I think this detox piece is really an important key as well. And just, just echo your point. I know people often think of detox as sort of like an external thing that we do to our bodies by doing a cleanse or taking a supplement. And while certainly like things we can take can help support what I always like to remind people is our bodies naturally know how to detox. We have detox pathways. There’s a lot of genes I know that are tied into this. And it’s about actually supporting our body in those processes that are already natural to our body, working with them.
And I would guess in the work that you do, you probably are looking at things to avoid that are sort of like causing the issues in the detox pathways to begin with and or ways to support the body and being more effective at detox. But can you speak to that? Cause obviously this is your world. You’re much more in depth on this than I am, but I just feel like it’s important to highlight our body naturally knows how to detox. Often in today’s world, it’s just got an uphill battle in that job. So how can we support the body in detoxing naturally?
Dr. Phyllis: And I love how you already kind of broke that down into phases because that’s exactly how we look at detox. It’s so multifactorial. But when you look at it from first a mental point of view, what are the things that you’re stressing out about? What are things that are even just causing your cortisol to be high so that your organs are not able to detox properly? That’s just the initial first phase that anyone could start off doing at home day to day. Doing things to be more mindful and working on their stress, going for daily walks instead of going into the pantry, that’s the first layer.
And then the next layer is going into, okay, what am I bringing in externally? Am I overusing caffeine? Am I overusing processed sugar? Am I really just consuming a lot of poisonous foods in the sense that there’s no benefit at all to your body, no benefit at all to your liver? And the liver is the primary organ, detox organ that we have. But a lot of people don’t realize fructose, the liver is the primary organ that processes fructose.
So when we’re dumping, especially high fructose corn syrup into our body, it all goes to the liver. And the liver gets inundated because it’s never in the history of mankind had to process this level of fructose before. And then that’s when we start to go down this pathway where I start to see children younger and younger have things like fatty liver disease. And just a really quick tangent about that because I’m so passionate about speaking about this because people, women will say, oh, I’m completely healthy, but I have fatty liver disease and kind of brush it aside. Not realizing that this is actually a disease that if the fat within your liver starts to harden, which is what we call, you know, cirrhosis and fibrosis. I actually see patients go down the route of needing, you know, a liver transplant because their liver has gotten so sick. So we do have a lot of control in keeping our organs of detoxification healthy simply by what we ingest.
Now, when it comes to helping our body release a lot of these toxins, it just, it comes down to certain supplementations of phase one, phase two, and phase three detoxification. So phase one is really getting those toxins ready, getting it safe to be exported to the body. And then phase two, moving into making it more water soluble. And phase three is excreting it through your stool or your urine. So this is obviously, like you said, something our body is always doing very naturally, but there is certain supplements that you can take in the right order, making sure that you have phase two done before phase one. And so that this can be, your toxin can be excreted in a safe manner.
A lot of studies have come out now that people are having this rapid weight loss on some of these weight loss medications, not sustainable weight loss, that studies of these toxins now flooding the body. Because as we know, adipose tissue or fat tissue holds onto toxins. So now all these toxins are being released in the body and they’re not bound properly. So now there’s being studies being conducted and how this actually affects brain health with all these toxins now being in your bloodstream.
So doing it safely in a controlled manner before you start a weight loss program is actually what most people should be doing because you want to do it safely. You want to make sure that you’re getting it out of your body, but also making sure that you’re not affecting your other organs.
Katie: Oh, I’m so glad you brought that up because I wondered, I kind of had this theory that we’re going to perhaps in 10 years see like a post-sympaglutide syndrome diagnosis type code because when you’re bypassing the body’s natural mechanism for doing something, like there seems like there would almost have to be potential downstream effects. And I love that your approach goes the other way of like, let’s support the body in these things first, rather than just mobilize all these toxins that the body then now has to deal with, but can’t store in fat. And what is that going to do years down the road?
I feel like when it comes to universal things, it’s like those things to me almost always just center on nature and how we were meant to live more in alignment with nature than we currently do. So that’s the things of like spending time outside in natural light, getting enough sleep, like those kinds of factors. But then there’s so much personalization when we get into the realm of diet and supplements and things like that.
I know for me, just anecdotally, when I started looking at my own genes, I realized I had a tremendous amount of genes that were choline dependent. And I had been intolerant to eggs for about 10 years, I was getting almost no dietary choline and I wasn’t supplementing. And so for me personally, that one thing alone was dramatic in how my brain felt, how my body felt, but that wouldn’t translate necessarily to anyone else. That was very specific to me. And so I feel like genetics gives us this window into ourselves that we might not otherwise know, or we might only arrive at through a really long experimentation. So I love that you help people connect those dots.
I know you also focus on things like cellular health. We’ve talked a little bit about that, but how that can be as important as diet or exercise, or I guess you might even say more important and understanding that. And that like genetics gives an insight into that as well. But can you speak to the cellular health weight loss key as well?
Dr. Phyllis: Yeah. So for the cellular piece, what I’m seeing is similarly to the nephrotoxification, but this increased oxidative stress and also women having issues with methylation. So if there’s pieces in the cell that are not being able to work properly, for example, if you are not able to methylate your DNA, or if you’re needing to take methylated vitamins, doing this spray and pray mentality where you just take a bunch of supplementation and hope that it’s the right form for you is not actually going to be beneficial. It can cause more problems down the line.
And so like you mentioned, without having to do all this experimentation and trying to journal and figure it out yourself, just having a genetic test will let you know, oh, I actually need a methylated version of this vitamin because my cells need it. And that is part of cellular health.
When your cells are healthy, they can do what they’re designed to do. Just like you said, our body wants to keep us healthy. And what our cells want to do is get rid of things like cancerous cells. So for me, that’s why cellular health is so important because women come to me and they’re like, I’m going to lose weight. I want to fit into this dress. And then by the end of my program, they’re like, losing weight was just the icing on the cake or the cherry on top because they got so much more in terms of getting rid of cellular debris, but getting rid of oxidative stress, getting rid of risk for cancer or cancerous cells, improving their risk for diabetes and stroke. So like I said, that all does start at the cellular level and then it starts to show up in the macro sense on the scale and how you feel and in your skin.
Katie: I love that. And like I said, I know we’re going to get to do a whole follow-up episode related to fasting because even though there’s genetic, you mentioned already one pathway related to that as well. You said almost universally for women, this can be a sticky point, or at least we don’t seem to understand it when we just like jump full into fasting, but on the genetic weight loss side, is there anything else related to that, that we haven’t covered that you feel like is especially relevant to women? And, or are you willing to share a couple of things you found out, like as examples from your own genes that were like dramatic and how it worked for you?
Dr. Phyllis: One thing that I think is really important is to talk about gut health and genetics. So our gut microbiome is influenced very heavily by our genetics. So you mentioned a little bit about choline. Choline is very important in terms of like liver health. But when it comes down to someone kind of almost self-medicating a little bit with probiotics or dealing with diagnoses like inflammatory bowel syndrome and just thinking that that’s it for me, I’m always going to feel sick. I’m always going to have bloating. I’m always going to feel overweight. Genetic testing is able to help us and tell us what are the specific variations in your genes.
For example, a T2 gene telling us about the actual lining of the gut and giving us a specific approach so that if we can support the lining and get rid of things like leaky gut and figure out your specific sensitivities to certain foods that you might be eating so much of. I know you mentioned taking eggs out of your diet. Focusing on those gut-friendly meals and specific probiotics for the strains that you need is really important. It can actually streamline that approach for gut health and in terms of genetics.
Another thing that I was seeing come up a lot more is histamine intolerance. So some women not even realizing that, oh yeah, when I drink alcohol, I don’t feel great. That’s a really big indicator. If that sounds like you and you just feel terrible with alcohol, alcohol is the worst for histamine. I’m seeing a lot of women who might have a little bit of seasonal allergies here and there, and then they come back, and they have the genes in terms of DAO. And that is a huge indicator to me to let them know that they need to get rid of foods that are high in histamine.
So really just understanding that it can influence not only on the foods that you eat, influence your gut and your specific organs, but also influence things that you’re doing day to day like sleep, right? I think a lot of women just assume that if you’re really tired, it’s just part of being a mom. We just got to muscle through. But no, I mean, poor sleep not only makes you tired, but it can lead to weight gain. And especially if your genes are predisposing you to poor sleep quality, then this is actually exciting for me because now we could fix this. And so I had a client, she was exhausted all the time. She was struggling with the late-night cravings and doing her genetic testing, we were able to really pinpoint where that sleep disturbance was coming from, really address her lifestyle and improve actually her food timing so she could have better sleep, wake up and really just be the best version for herself and for her family.
And then one last thing I definitely wanted us to touch upon is exercise. So a lot of women, when it comes to losing weight, feel that but let’s go, let’s hit it in the gym. Let’s give it everything we’ve got. And I was doing that, you know, working out twice a day and still 100 pounds overweight. And yes, of course, some women have genes that make muscle building much easier. And they should take advantage of that to burn fat. Those are the genes like ACTN3. And that is how your body loves exercise but loves like HIIT exercises and sprints. But some women actually will respond to that in a high cortisol, high stress manner, and they will start to retain weight. So I think that’s really major because when women want to lose weight or anyone in general, they’re like, I just got to hit the gym. But doing the right exercises is really going to shape and inform how effective that process is for you.
Katie: I love that you brought that up because that was one that I found I was surprised by is that I, like I had that myth in my head for a long time of like do cardio, do go for a run, all these things. Turns out my body loves like power-based things like sprints and lifting and that takes less time. So that was a great thing for me to figure out.
Dr. Phyllis: ACTM three for the win.
Katie: Yes. But I love that. Like, like you just illustrated, this gives you the insight into you. And I’ve been a big proponent of learning that for yourself for a long time. And I love that you make it if you really walk people through the process and I’ll of course link to your website, cause I know you have very specific resources for this, especially for women, but, those links will be in the show notes, but where can people find you online and keep learning from you?
Dr. Phyllis: Yes. Head to genelean360.com where you can just watch a really short video, free video to learn more about this in depth. And then I’m always posting on Instagram at genelean360 on Instagram. You can always shoot us an email or a DM. We’re just happy to answer any types of questions. I’m always talking with women about feeling stuck or they’re blaming themselves. Please don’t do that. There’s resources.
I love how Katie mentioned that the answers are pretty much inside of you. That’s how I feel. And I went so many years feeling not enough. And literally I had the blueprint, and you have the blueprint, you are enough. You just need to unlock the key. So I’m ready to do that with you together.
Katie: I love it. Well, I will put those links in the show notes. This has been an awesome conversation, Dr. Phyllis. Thank you so much for your time. And you guys stay tuned for conversation number two about fasting. But for today, thank you so much for your time.
Dr. Phyllis: Thank you. Thanks for having me.
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