Healing Rosie

How to Reverse Weight Loss Resistance - Healing Rosie
How to reverse weight loss resistance - Dr. Keesha Ewers
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How to Reverse Weight Loss Resistance

I have scale trauma.

After years of uncontrollable (and unjust) weight gain and worse – the inability to release the weight (weight loss resistance) with the methods that used to work …

I’m avoidant when it comes to the scale.

Imagine my elation when after Dr. Keesha’s 21-day liver cleanse, I lost 10 lbs …

But that wasn’t the best part.

30 days later, after avoiding getting on the scale again because I fully expected it to start going back up …

I’d lost another 8 lbs.

I was STUNNED.

The last decade, managing my weight has been a struggle. It’s taken all this time for me to deconstruct what’s been going on with my body and weight gain … all along, my body in its wisdom has been saving my life by storing all this toxicity in my body fat.

Toxicity is a tricky thing, because it’s almost invisible … our lifestyles make it SO hard to see.

On today’s show, I talk with Dr. Keesha to unpack how her detox program helped me achieve my weight loss goals and understand why her cleanse is so powerful for helping us to release the weight.

If you’ve been unsuccessfully dealing with weight and fat loss resistance…

Or if you’re looking into detox to jumpstart weight loss, this is a must-listen-to episode!

TIMESTAMPS

5:08
A commonly overlooked hidden stressor that might be causing your weight loss resistance and 2 essential tests to run to confirm toxicity

11:12
The surprising effect of Dr. Keesha’s 21-Day Detox that made Misty ready to walk down the aisle 

14:03
The real reason why your body seems to be working against you and how to effectively leverage its innate wisdom to optimize your health (BONUS: 5 ways your body is telling you something is wrong that you should never ignore)

16:34
How the 21-day detox switches on your liver’s “furnace filter” and what happens inside your body while you’re on the program

18:19
The sneaky way your liver makes you gain weight when you’re on bioidentical hormone replacement therapy

19:47
The truth behind why some women have terrible hormone metabolism and are more vulnerable to autoimmunity and cancer (hint: your ancestors have something to do with it!)

23:32
What does a detox lifestyle really look like and an amazing case study of how someone going through menopause is living it!

23:07
Why you should NEVER start cleansing as soon as you get your detox kit in the mail without doing this

25:22
“Conditions” that prevent you from releasing weight and surprising reasons why intermittent fasting, keto, hCG and other diets aren’t working for you 

29:23
How inflammation causes water weight and the quickest and easiest way you can wring the fluid out of your system

30:33
The truth behind inflammation and why eliminating food sensitivities triggers a rewarding “thank you” response from your body 

33:08
The one and only way you can reverse inflammation and radically heal your symptoms and dis-eases

33:33
The sinister effects of childhood trauma that resurface at adulthood and affect behavior patterns around food and healing

resources mentioned

tRANSCRIPT

Misty Williams  00:23

We are gonna have an epic conversation today with Dr. Keesha Ewers. 

 

Misty Williams  00:28

I have just done her 21 day cleanse. We’re going to talk all about my experience. But today’s episode is going to be all about weight loss resistance. I could fill a book with my experiences with weight loss resistance. I’ve had all sorts of things impact my weight loss resistance. I’ve had hormone issues. I’ve had heavy metal toxicity, mold fungus. I’ve had insulin resistance and all the things that come from that. I beat my head against the wall bloody; trying to figure it all out. I’ve gone through stages of my life where I am not putting a carb in my body. I’m watching every morsel of food because anything I put in my mouth is gonna make the scale go up even if it’s lettuce. 

 

Misty Williams  01:06

It’s been a wild ride. And I’m really grateful to say that I feel like in the last probably six months or so I’ve found the triggers that created this for me. I’m really breaking through and we’re gonna talk all about it because I know I am not the only one. I am not the only one. So this is going to be a really great episode today. 

 

Misty Williams  01:26

Dr. Keesha Ewers is an integrative medicine expert, Dr. of sexology family practice AR NP, certified trauma informed therapist,  a certified death doula, board certified in functional medicine and Ayurvedic medicine and is the founder and medical director of the Academy for Integrative Medicine Health Coach Certification Program. 

 

Misty Williams  01:44

Dr. Keesha, the mother of functional sexology has been in the medical field for over 30 years. After conducting the HURT study in 2013, Healing Unresolved Trauma. She developed the HURT model for understanding how past childhood trauma impacts adult health. This led to the creation of the You Unbroken Online Program for patients to heal their own trauma. And the mystic medicine deep immersion healing retreat. She leads at her home on San Juan Island, Washington. Welcome Keesha.

 

Keesha Ewers  02:11

Thank you for having me. Well,

 

Misty Williams  02:13

I am giddy to have this conversation. I think I’m mostly giddy because I’m experiencing some awesome breakthroughs. And I just want to share with everyone, I did a spontaneous text to you yesterday before saying, I gotta tell you what happened when I did your cleanse, and we need to talk about this on my podcast. So, here we are. I want to kind of give people the backstory, so that you guys will have a good frame for the things that Dr. Keesha and I are going to dive into today. So first of all, 

 

Keesha Ewers  02:41

Hang on.

 

Misty Williams  02:42

Yes

 

Keesha Ewers  02:43

You need to add my name to everything you’re about to say. Okay. Yeah, we only we only teach what we have to learn and I’ve had,

 

Misty Williams  02:55

Oh, you’re gonna say the same thing that I say? 

 

Keesha Ewers  02:56

Amen!

 

Misty Williams  02:56

Yes, I know. And listen, if you have spent any time in the healing Rosie Facebook group, you know that this is a common refrain. Many of my girlfriends are struggling with this very same thing and the toll it takes on our psyche. When we cannot get our bodies to cooperate when what our bodies are doing doesn’t reflect the lifestyle that we’re living. It’s overwhelming. And we could probably do a whole podcast just on that, you know, because it’s, it’s rough…

 

Keesha Ewers  03:27

put a pin on that thought of getting the body to do what you want. And we’re going to circle back to that.

 

Misty Williams  03:32

Oh, that’d be great. I’m gonna write a little note right now getting everybody to do what we want. Yes, yes, and even the way that I said that haven’t you reflected back to me, I’m like, That is not the way to hold it in mind. 

 

Keesha Ewers  03:42

Right.  

 

Misty Williams  03:47

So anyway, alright, let’s talk about this cleanse. I’ve been detoxing mold for the last eight months. I went to my doctor last April, because I was in a really emotional place. Roderick and I want to get married. And I did not want to go down the aisle with an extra 18 pounds on my body. And so I’m doing all the things. I’m feeling overwhelmed because I know that besides the aesthetics of carrying the extra weight, I know all the health implications of having this kind of inflammation hanging around my body and I’m getting older. And everything about it was just like I have to figure this out. You know, I heard from everyone. Misty, you look great. Misty it’s fine. It’s not a big deal. And it’s like, Roderick doesn’t care what I look like going down the aisle. He thinks I’m beautiful. He is the most supportive, wonderful partner. It’s me. 

 

Misty Williams  04:24

It’s me feeling like my health is the biggest priority in my life. I think if you looked at my calendar, and my checkbook, it would validate that and here I am struggling with something right so I went to my doctor and I’m like, Okay, we’re doing all the things and I’ve reversed some big stuff in my life. Right? I am not dealing with endometriosis anymore. My Epstein Barr doesn’t reflect anymore. I’m energy back. I’m sleeping great. Like I have a lot of good things that are happening with my health but this piece for me is really messing with me.

 

Misty Williams  05:08

 And I said to her there’s something upstream. I know it and I’m not sure We need to do but we need to figure out the tests. So she ran a couple of inflammatory markers and my blood labs that I did, and we did the OAT test and we did a Mold Test, and it came back that I had fungus and mold both and every kind of mold. 

 

Misty Williams  05:27

And it was like a relief to know. Okay, so it’s mold. And we all heard what mold does, I was surprised that I had mold because I didn’t have all the neurological stuff that you hear about with mold toxicity. Thank God, I’m sure probably more time goes on. That could definitely present for me. But we started a detox protocol. So I’ve been taking binders and doing the sauna. I’m doing a lot of stuff to move lymph, right, I’m doing the dry brushing and all these different things to detox the mold. 

 

Misty Williams  05:56

And I reached out to Dr. Keesha, in February? I think it was a few months ago. For my mom. Actually, my mom is on bioidentical hormone replacement therapy and she is struggling with estrogen. It is causing sensitivity in her breasts, which by the way she did the cleanse that you told us to do. I’m going to talk about how she lost 10 pounds, she was able to go back on estrogen for like a week or two. And they’re really tender again. So maybe you can give us more tips. 

 

Misty Williams  06:24

But anyhow, she told me about this cleanse, it’s a liver cleanse that’s designed to really support your body and be able to process your hormones. And in my head, I’m thinking this is probably going to really help with my detox that I’ve been doing at that point for six months, you know, 

 

Misty Williams  06:36

I ordered two kits, one for me and one for my mom and we did it together. It was an awesome cleanse. We got the chocolate kit. So we did chocolate protein shakes twice a day. My mom and I both decided that for the vegetable so that you could tell us more about this. I’m going to give a real brief you can go into more details, because you probably remember it better than I know it from just doing it quickly. 

 

Misty Williams  06:59

But you’re basically eating vegetables the entire time on this cleanse. You’re not doing any dairy, you’re not doing any meat. Obviously no processed food or any of that crap. You know, you’re just putting really good stuff…

 

Keesha Ewers  07:09

for 10 days or the 21

 

Misty Williams  07:12

Yes. So, my mom and I decided that the easiest thing for us was going to be soups. We made a cream of broccoli soup and we made a vegetable soup. I just made a lot and froze part of it, that’s what we ate. It was kind of great because you really don’t have to think about food, which is definitely my preference. I like it being easy. We did the first 10 days without any meat at all. Then I think you can add fish and chicken after you know for 11 through 21. So we did that. And I found that I added a lot of avocado to my soup, just to give me some substance so that I wasn’t hungry; that really helped my mom too. I think we added in tomato soup, we added some chicken to the vegetable soup. There’s a pumpkin chicken soup recipe, you know, we just found soups, that was our thing. 

 

Misty Williams  07:59

We also did a green smoothie. That’s only green stuff. That wasn’t the funnest to drink. But it just made me feel like I’m getting my good fiber and stuff that I needed. I think there was a fiber that went into the protein shake too. And then some supplements to support liver detox. And we did it for 21 days. I think I lost nine pounds and my mom lost ten. 

 

Misty Williams  08:20

And for me,  having gone through this period where like all the diet tricks quit working like I don’t want to ramble on about my misery with what Jesus says. But there’s been a lot, you know. And all the tricks that I used to do to get the weight to come off that nothing was working for me. I was really happy to have 10 pounds come off. I’m like halfway there. Yay, halfway there. 

 

Misty Williams  08:43

My mom was thrilled too. She says she needed a shot in the arm. She’s like, “Misty, I need a shot in the arm,” kind of a little family saying where we just help each other, you know. I did it mainly to support her not realizing how good it was going to be for me too. 

 

Misty Williams  08:56

Then I went on vacation. We went down to Big Bend in South Texas, which is a huge park and Grand Canyonish desert park down there. We hiked and explored for days, and you know I brought my healthy food, but I wasn’t doing any kind of like watching what I ate. My diet overall was pretty clean. But I wasn’t thinking about food. And for the last 30 days, I have felt like my body is slimmer but I have not wanted to get on the scale because I have PTSD from getting on the same scale and seeing that number move up. Like uncontrollably and there’s nothing you could do to get it down. So there is nothing that I could do in those moments. Or maybe I would almost refrain that for myself and say I didn’t know what to do, right? 

 

Misty Williams  09:41

And so anyway, a few nights ago, Roderick and I were laying in bed. And he said “Babe, can I ask you a question?” Like, “Sure.” He never says anything about my weight up or down. He doesn’t get excited when I lose weight. He doesn’t comment. I mean, he’s really supportive and great about it. He said, “how much weight have you lost?” is an uncommon question for him. And I said, “You know, I know I lost 10 pounds during that cleanse but I honestly haven’t been on the scale since.” He goes “You’re just you’re smaller when I’m holding you, I can tell you’re smaller.” 

 

Misty Williams  10:14

So that made me think, you know, maybe I just need to get on the scale and see what I’m doing. I hope I’m maintaining, like I wanted to get on the scale and see the number within a couple of pounds of where I ended the cleanse. That’s what I really wanted. I haven’t been thinking about food for the last month really, as far as like obsessing and the ways that we can do as women when we’re really concerned about what’s happening with our bodies. 

 

Misty Williams  10:33

I’ve just been doing normal clean eating, I will say that during this cleanse really affected my appetite. In general, I just don’t want as much food. Not that I’ve really I wasn’t really an overeater; I don’t think anyone would describe me as an overeater before, but I’m like really not super interested in food. 

 

Misty Williams  10:40

Cravings. I didn’t have bad cravings before. I would just kind of parallel my appetite. My mom did have a really bad craving. She would sit down with the chips and the cookies and she had no cravings after doing this cleanse, and that was really awesome for her. She’s like, I feel like this gave me a really great reset. And I’m like, yeah, yeah, that’s kind of how I feel, too. We got a really good body reset. 

 

Misty Williams  11:12

So, I got on the scale, two mornings ago. And I’m down eight more pounds. I looked at the scale, and I was shocked, kind of stunned. I got off. Let it reset because I’m thinking that could have been an error; got back on the scale, I’m down eight more pounds, I have officially lost all the weight that I gained the last few years. I went into my closet later that day. I can wear all my pants. That’s like you know, the litmus test, I think for all of us can our pants fit; everything fits. Shorts fit, I quit wearing shorts, because I just felt like I was bulging everywhere. I just felt kind of stunned, you know, like just really shocked that on the other side of doing a cleanse like that. Now mind you, I’ve done a lot of other foundational things to set my body up to be able to release and let go. But it’s almost overwhelming to think Holy Cow my body is cleaning itself up on its own. Like I’m not having to do things to coerce it.

 

Keesha Ewers  12:17

A long way to go wedding dress shopping. 

 

Misty Williams  12:020

I’m so ready. Date night last night, and I was like, alright, babe, we need to pick a date. Yeah, I’m totally, I’m totally ready. And you know, there’s probably a little more than I’ve already released, which will be great. But I’ve just felt like holy crap, like, a decade journey, really. There’s been a lot more weight loss resistance challenges besides the last few years. 

 

Misty Williams  12:43

I’ve felt at times, like I found little breakthroughs and to be okay for a while and I would learn the diet tricks that would get my body to come back down. But it’s really different this time. And so, man, I want you to talk to us about this, because I think there’s an explanation you can give contextually that will really help people understand what’s happening not only with your cleanse, but toxicity in general when we have this toxicity in our bodies. I’m going to ask you a million questions. I just think it’d be awesome to pitch and catch around this really complicated topic that you could put yourself right in the middle of two

 

Keesha Ewers  13:18

Fantastic. So since December, I love it when people shift their language from lost to released. Because if you’ve lost something, you can go find it again. Okay, 

 

Misty Williams  13:31

Amen. 

 

Keesha Ewers  13:33

So release, right? 

 

Misty Williams  13:35

Yeah.

 

Keesha Ewers  13:35

Since December, I released 25 pounds. And it’s been interesting because I’ve gone through menopause in the last year. One of the things that can happen with menopause is we can pack it on. And that was happening, I was starting to notice like, Oh, I’m starting to pack it on, you know. And so when I started sitting with that, and saying, okay, body. And so this is the thing that I was saying, let’s put a pin in.

 

Keesha Ewers  14:03

It’s really important that we don’t say that we want our bodies to do what we want them to do. But that we ask the wisdom of the body, what it needs from us to support it. I always say the body has the most thinkless job of anything on the planet, you know, we put it to bed at night. We think we’re resting it but we’re not. In the middle of the night, it’s lymph is going and picking up all the garbage tax from the outside of the cell wall, the livers detoxing, you know, the heart speeding, everything still functioning, but even at higher level than when we’re up and about because it’s trying to get rid of all the garbage that it’s been exposed to during the day. And then we flutter our eyes awake in the morning. We have these expectations of this body that it’s supposed to do this, this, this this. And then we’re telling it all the time that it’s not doing and behaving what we want, it’s not looking like we want it to; it’s not doing what we want it to. 

 

Keesha Ewers  14:59

And so I’m always inviting people to drop into this curious compassion with it to become collaborative, because the body has its own wisdom. Right? And if we ask; it’ll tell us the scale is one of the feedback mechanisms. We put shame onto the scale, but the scale is not going; “you’re bad,” “you’re stupid.”

 

Misty Williams  15:22

Right.

 

Keesha Ewers  15:22

Like how come you can’t get a handle on this, it’s actually the body saying, “hey, there’s something you’re doing that is creating problems for me and I’m trying to tell you,” right? 

 

Keesha Ewers  15:33

So, weight is one of those feedback mechanisms like the color of your urine, your the coating on your tongue, the shape and color and texture and smell of your bowel movements, the way that your skin looks like all of this stuff is feedback for you, from your body, in its innate wisdom that’s trying to to be on your team with you. Okay? So when you drop into that, then you can start asking the right questions of your body. 

 

Keesha Ewers  16:06

Now the liver cleanse, what it does that 21 day detox is, it separates out the liver’s two pathways of detoxification. So the liver’s big job is to take fat soluble toxins that you’ve been exposed to, and convert them into water soluble. So that you can pee and poop and cry and sweat and breathe them out. And so it’s a little bit like having like an oil stain on your driveway, you can’t just go out and hose that off, you have to put a solvent on top of it, and then the hose will take out the rest of it. 

 

Keesha Ewers  16:34

So the first step, the phase one of that liver detoxification is an enzyme pathway. So you can think of these enzymes chewing up that fat soluble toxin. 

 

Keesha Ewers  16:46

And then the second part of the cleanse is is really focusing on phase two, where we add the solvent to what’s leftover so that your waterworks can take care of it. Now the liver is a lot like you could think of it like a furnace filter. If you turn on your furnace, if you want it to really be efficient, you need to clean it. And so our liver requires that. 

 

Keesha Ewers  17:10

I do genetics on all my patients because I’m looking at these, the snips that go with phase one and phase two liver detoxification on what I find, then I’ve done at this point 1000s of these for people. I always help people reverse their autoimmune disease and so what I’m looking for is one of the patterns with autoimmunity and chronic held on to weight is a mismatch between that phase one phase two pathway. 

 

Keesha Ewers  17:36

And so what you’re experiencing in this particular cleanse is the separation of phase one and phase two, where we’re really focusing on each of them individually and getting them to work together. 

 

Keesha Ewers  17:47

And so when you’ve been detoxing for six months for mold than heavy metals before that, you know, you’ve been pulling a lot of toxins out of stored I call it cold storage, stored tissues, bones, right and you’re bringing it out. Your liver has to filter every thing and so what you’re doing is you’re actually giving it that cleanse that it needs so that it’s efficient. So, weight is one of the signals, we call it fatty liver for a reason non alcoholic fatty liver disease, right? 

 

Keesha Ewers  18:19

So many people have it now; and it’s because our environment is so sick; what we’ve done to it, and then also we’re smearing things that are estrogen mimicking and reproducing and the liver hates to filter hormones. It hates it. 

 

Keesha Ewers  18:37

That’s why when you texted me and said Look, my mom’s having breast tenderness and she’s on bioidentical hormone therapy, what do I do? I said, you know, the first thing I do with my patients is I help them clean up their liver first. Because that’s the first and foremost thing like view on bioidentical progesterone and you gain five pounds in a week. It’s not because progesterone makes you fat. It’s because your liver is saying, “Oh, hell no.” You know, like, “I’m struggling over here and you’re adding progesterone?” So that’s what I always take first is that that tenderness that you know, here in the breast, is we go to liver first and that 90% of the time takes care of it. Now when mom’s got breast tenderness back again, by staying on hormones. It’s likely that genetically she has an enzyme pathway. It’s called the CYP

 

Keesha Ewers  19:27

CYP 1B1 snip that makes it so that she doesn’t detox her estrogen metabolites very well. And when they build up, that’s when hormones cause cancer. Then you kind of live on the things that you know those supplements in the cleanse. 

 

Keesha Ewers  19:47

I do, just before you contacted me and said Is today a good day, I had just finished my green smoothie. I actually live the cleanse as a lifestyle because my genetics are horrible for estrogen metabolism. And it’s one of the risk factors for auto immunity which I had rheumatoid arthritis when I was 30. Got it reversed but you know, I have all of these genetics that make it so that my liver really struggles in filtration. So part of what I do is really focused on this. And that’s why that cleanse is so good for me.

 

Misty Williams  20:20

Yeah. Because it was your life too. 

 

Keesha Ewers  20:23

Yeah. Well, I mean, I got my first estrogen metabolite test back the first time I tested it. And I called the company. And I said, I’ve never seen metabolites this bad. And she said, “Dr. Ewers, I’m afraid I haven’t either.” Saying something because we’re talking about an end of a few 100 patients, for me and for you. It’s an international lab, and I’m the worst you’ve ever seen. I am an overachiever. So you know, it’s just like, oh, my gosh, I have to figure this out. Right? 

 

Keesha Ewers  20:51

And I in my 40s did have breast cancer. So this is, you know, my mom’s had it. This is a genetic thing for us. That’s why when I started living this when I went through menopause and just said, “Okay, I’m on this all the time.” Now. I started shedding weight, you know, is like Release, release, release, release. . . that whole closet thing,  I have gone through,  I did another gigantic dump this morning to Goodwill. Like, I probably have a fourth of my closet left. You know, which is really fascinating because never before has that ever happened to me. You know, never! I used to carry. 

 

Misty Williams  21:37

Yeah. 

 

Keesha Ewers  21:37

This is what menopause is the gift of it. I used to have, like, I think most women can identify this. I’ve had four children. I was used to having three sizes to, you know, in my closet at all times. Like it was a huge closet with these different sizes, depending on where my menstrual cycle was, depending on a lot of different variables, if I was exercising really well or not, and now, it’s my body doesn’t change. That’s the gift of menopause. I figured it out. And now I don’t have different sizes in my closet anymore. It’s just one size.

 

Misty Williams  22:15

So when you say that you’re living it all the time. You mean the supplements that are in 

 

Keesha Ewers  22:21

Yeah. And the food. I mean, I don’t drink caffeine. I don’t drink alcohol. I stay off of gluten. I never eat sugar. I live that cleanse. 

 

Misty Williams  22:32

Yeah. 

 

Keesha Ewers  22:32

Yeah, green smoothies. Every day I juice vegetables. soups are my jam. I love them, you know, and, and so I don’t do gluten free bread or baked goods or any of those kinds of things. Like, I just live this way. And then when people come to visit me, my daughters are amazing cooks and bakers and they they cook paleo and, and I’ll eat whatever is there and then when they’re gone, I go back to living my cleanse. Like that’s how I live. Like you said, it’s so much easier for me, because I don’t have to think about it. That’s how I like it.

 

Misty Williams  23:07

Yeah, I think the secret for us one of the things I wanted for my mom, because you know, we took about two weeks to prepare, like alright, we got our kits in the mail. Got everything organized, figured out. And my thing is alright, what are we going to eat? I need to know now. 

 

Misty Williams  23:20

We need a plan, because I am not good with last minute stuff. I personally don’t like to think about like I have other things I want to spend my time on. Even though I there was a time of my life that I really enjoyed cooking. And it’s not that I don’t enjoy it now. It’s just that it’s not the thing I want to prioritize here. I think a lot of time in the kitchen. 

 

Keesha Ewers  23:36

Kinda over it 

 

Misty Williams  23:38

Yeah! So I wanted us to make sure that we were really ready for this. We looked through. Dr. Keesha sends out like a booklet has recipes and all sorts of things. My mom and I looked at them and and I said to her, “I think I just want to find some soup recipes. What do you think about that?” And that’s what we did. We found some soup recipes that were really delicious and easy. That’s the great thing about vegetable soup, I think is that it’s so tasty. It made it super easy for us. 

 

Misty Williams  24:07

All right, let’s I want to ask you a few questions about how this works? Because I have a feeling if I would have done this cleanse, I could be totally wrong about this. But if I would have done this cleanse a year ago, before I knew that I had the mold, toxicity and everything else, I’m not sure that I would have gotten the same results. 

 

Misty Williams  24:23

The way we’d know is if we could go back in time, right? But my body seemed to be really on lockdown. I know that you work with a lot of women. This is a very common refrain. Right. I’d like to just talk a little bit about the kinds of things that create like the gears getting stuck in our bodies that contribute to weight loss resistance. In my case, I was surprised that I had mold toxicity. 

 

Misty Williams  24:49

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon actually told me in September of 2020, I happened to see her in San Diego and she said “I think you should get tested for mold.” And I remember hearing her say that and thinking any other mold like symptoms except the weight right? And you know, six months later I actually get tested and she was right. 

 

Misty Williams  25:11

So there’s a lot of things that contribute to this, maybe you could help us understand what you’re seeing in your practice. So that the people listening to this might see themselves in what we’re saying and have a better understanding of what’s going on in their bodies.

 

Keesha Ewers  25:22

Well, the number one things that I see that causes trouble for people is intermittent fasting. Isn’t that interesting? So, fasting out of alignment, I intermittent fast, I don’t eat until noon. But what I’m going to say next is don’t do that at home, right? Until you’ve done the proper testing. 

 

Keesha Ewers  25:44

So fasting out of alignment with what your body’s asking for, it’s coming from that place of I want my body to do this instead of body, what do you need from me to be supportive? You’ve been carrying me around all these years, and I really want to help you as much as I can. So then I call that testing, not guessing. Right? 

 

Keesha Ewers  26:05

And so I do a Dutch test with my patients when they say so what do you think about like seven day water fasts? Or what do you think about intermittent fasting? And what do you do? You know, and I eat in an eight hour period, and I’m off for 16 hours, so that my body can do it’s clean up, and that works for me. But if I had done that, last year, after my dad died, and my adrenals tanked, I couldn’t have I would have gained weight. The thing to remember is that your body has very specific needs at very specific times, and you need to be asking, and so that’s one thing. 

 

Keesha Ewers  26:42

Another one is the Bulletproof Coffee thing. You know, having people drinking coffee with butter in it, and other than that, all the healthy fats. That also, ketogenic diet is sometimes genetically out of alignment with people. So in your genetics, we can see if you metabolize caffeine, well, if you don’t metabolize caffeine, caffeine causes inflammation. So then when you’re eating, you know, caffeine in whatever shape you’re eating it in or drinking it, then it’s causing trouble. 

 

Keesha Ewers  27:17

And people will say to me, Well, I only have one cup a day, you know, that doesn’t matter. It’s like, if if you can’t metabolize caffeine, and you’re chugging it, one cup is going to be rat poison for yourselves, 

 

Keesha Ewers  27:30

And they blow up. So healthy fats, like you know a ketogenic diet that works for most people right away. But long term use of it for people that are APOE 4 snip carriers in their genetics, that is one of the worst things you can do. And it puts you at risk if you’re APOE4 carrier for Alzheimer’s and heart disease and will eventually blow your liver up into fatty liver.

 

Misty Williams  27:58

Right.

 

Keesha Ewers  27:59

So, the carnivore diet, you know, if you haven’t asked your body what it needs, and you just read what somebody’s waxing philosophically about, because it worked for them. Then, it you might be doing more harm than good in the long run. 

 

Keesha Ewers  28:17

HCG diet is another one, any of those kinds of diets that I get people washing up on my shores all the time post HCG, or severe calorie restriction, where it has worked. But now you’ve blown out your thyroid, you’ve set your leptin and your ghrelin. And now, you’re not doing anything different, but you’re gaining weight. It’s so very important. You’re talking about toxins, toxins, definitely gum up the works to use your language; so do hormones; as I gave the example earlier. 

 

Keesha Ewers  28:56

Viral load, anything that’s causing your immune system to go off. I had a book in my clinic when I had a brick and mortar clinic called your hidden food allergies are making you fat. The premise of it is is absolutely correct, which is if the same thing with the coffee. If you’re eating something that your body is triggering to and it’s causing an inflammatory response, the lymphocytes that get delivered to an inflamed place, like a cut on your finger, come with plasma, they go in plasma to that area. 

 

Keesha Ewers  29:23

So, you have all this extra fluid, extracellular fluid, interstitial fluid, we call it, that doesn’t belong there. So, you do an elimination of some of those foods that are causing sensitivities to you. And then walleye, you dump a bunch of weight, which is what happened with you. It’s like you’re wringing out the sponge and people will often come back to that and say, “Oh, that’s just water weight,” right? But you’re not supposed to have that fluid out there. That’s not supposed to be there. 

 

Keesha Ewers  30:00

And so when Roderick is holding you and saying you feel smaller, what he’s commenting on when that came off so quickly, is that you’re not are holding your fluid,  you’re not puffy outside of your cell anymore. The way you’re not supposed to be. So you wrung out a sponge. Now it’s a normal shaped sponge instead of a bloated one. So I never want to hear people say, Oh, well, it was just water weight it’s like, “Yeah. What do you think it is?” 

 

Misty Williams  30:31

Yeah, 

 

Keesha Ewers  30:32

Doesn’t belong there, right? 

 

Misty Williams  30:33

Yeah! I’ve been I’ve been really digging in on this the last year of this journey into this idea of like, inflammation and what is inflammation? And, you know, why do we get so inflamed? I remember  my doctor looking at my labs; and I wish I would have been prepared and brought the name of the labs that I had run, because it’s the first time I run them. So I’m not very familiar with them yet. But there was two labs that were just inflammatory markers. And I was like, 2500, for one of them. That’s supposed to be you know, 100. So I was like, super, super inflamed and

 

Keesha Ewers  31:08

That’s usually food. 

 

Misty Williams  31:10

Really? Yeah, I don’t think it wasn’t my case. I mean, it could be. I mean, it’s hard to, you know, speculate, but, and she’s got . .

 

Keesha Ewers  31:17

One of the reasons that food, the liver detox works in the way it does when you dump that much weight in a short period of time is because you’ve eliminated something that your body’s saying, “Thank you. Finally, you’re getting a message.” It’s why I like to do food sensitivity testing every few months with people because it’s, you know, it’s one of those things where we’re asking the body like, Is this okay with you? 

 

Misty Williams  31:44

Yeah. 

 

Keesha Ewers  31:45

And no, then you just say, okay, I won’t get in there, then.

 

Misty Williams  31:49

Yeah, well, we’re not we for in my case, we saw these markers. And she’s like, we got to figure out the stressor and then we found the mold right after. But anyhow, I started really thinking about this idea of inflammation and toxicity, which is not a new concept to me at all. But, you know, I, I was looking at my body, I remember looking down at my belly, when I found out that I had the mold toxicity. I started rubbing it. I just think to my body, like, I know that this is happening, I’m swelling up like this, because you’re trying to get all these toxins out of my bloodstream and places where it could really hurt or kill me like I wanted to honor and acknowledge my body, right? For what it was doing and have some gratitude for it. Because it’s really easy to go the other direction, very easy, you know, especially in the Western society that we live in that project, so much shame, you know, on on the size of our bodies.

 

Misty Williams  32:44

But anyway, this idea of inflammation I started getting a lot more curious about and thinking of the weight as this is all inflammation I’m carrying, why is my body inflamed? You know? And I started asking a lot of questions about that. It connected some dots for me, in my mind. I have a pretty deep education in our space, getting to interview amazing people all the time reading all the books, trying to figure out you know, what’s going on with my own body. 

 

Misty Williams  33:08

But it was the inspiration for the masterclass that I just completed. This idea that stress, internal stressors and external stressors are what’s causing our inflammation and the inflammation is what’s making us sick, ultimately. I love the idea that we can actually reverse all of this by uncovering what our stressors are. 

 

Keesha Ewers  33:33

I’ll tell you, there’s another one Misty, and you know, it was accurate for me for sure, and that is the ACEs study, the Adverse Childhood Experiences study that was done by the Centers for Disease Control and Kaiser Permanente in 1995 and 1997. You know, that started because of a weight loss program at Kaiser. As you know, people are losing weight successfully. It’s a great program, but a certain percentage of the clientele was dropping out before they got to goal. 

 

Keesha Ewers  34:04

The clinic director, very lovingly, you know, I’m so happy he was curious. You started calling them back in and asking what was going on because they were successfully losing weight, you know, releasing it, but they were finding it again. When he started interviewing them, he started discovering that most of them had a history of sexual abuse. 

 

Keesha Ewers  34:28

Weight, when we talk about gumming up the works and we talk about stress, oftentimes, you know, I talk on all the summits about the effect of childhood trauma on our adult lives and behavior patterns and food, as an emotional, soother and also weight as a barrier or a protective mechanism is also a big piece of it. I use plant medicine and do immersion retreats with people and you know, like, some deep work on that part of it. Also, right that becomes a huge piece of a puzzle. I call trauma the missing piece of the puzzle.

 

Misty Williams  35:12

Yeah, we could probably do a whole talk. Yeah, trauma. I’m thinking about my cousin Jan, who I’ve spoken about a lot, who died a couple years ago. In her 50s. She had rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia. These things developed after her kids left home. So she, she and my cousin, my actual blood cousin, you know, she was his wife got together when they’re 15 years old in high school, and got married after they’ve been together, really, their entire adult lives, and even some of their childhood. They had kids, young. They were young whenever they had their kids. As soon as her kids left, they she was kind of alone with herself. And that’s when everything started coming back. She developed the autoimmune disease. She developed diabetes. 

 

Misty Williams  36:05

I remember about a decade ago, maybe it was about a decade, probably nine or 10 years ago, she had testified when she was a kid, at a jury trial against a man when a man had murdered someone in the home that she is a little girl, I think she was eight years old when this happened. She was in the bathroom, and she witnessed the whole murder. So she testified in this trial, and put the guy away and he was getting out. You can imagine her now this guy that she put away as a little girl, and probably the outsized, it’s already witnessing a murder, I imagine for all of us is going to be a really, really big thing. 

 

Misty Williams  36:47

But the outsize when you’re a little kid experiencing something like that. She had she experience a lot of sexual abuse by her family,  by her father, her adopted father wasn’t her natural born father. She just a lot of abuse in general emotional abuse. You can imagine how her mother treated her knowing that things were going on with her husband, and in Jan. So there was just so much that she had never dealt with in process that kind of came back to haunt her, so to speak. And in her case, the really sad part is that she didn’t want to come off the opiates. She wanted to get better, right. But I think the drugs were numbing more than the fibromyalgia pain for her, 

 

Keesha Ewers  37:32

Of course, 

 

Misty Williams  37:34

She was really scared of not doing exactly what the doctors told her to do. She ended up passing away was unexpected, we all knew that she was dealing with autoimmunity and all that, you know, she was drugged out all the time on like a dozen different prescription medications, opiates, and, you know, all sorts of things, but nobody expected her to die. Right? 

 

Misty Williams  37:54

There wasn’t like a time with the doctor. But trauma was her big inducer. This comes to haunt us at different times in our life. For her, it was so big and so overwhelming. She just did not have the resources to deal with it. I would say the trauma that’s affected me the most of my life is the little T trauma. You know, I had sexual abuse, and I was younger, too. But I was fortunately able to really process a lot of that out when I was in college. I had a really great therapist there were able to process through a lot of that pain. But it was a little T trauma for me that made me overly responsible and basically drawn to take on stress, right? I was programmed from a very young age to be able to manage a lot of stress and that felt very normal to me. I just didn’t know any different. But all of these things add up for us as women and contribute, as you said to what we’re experiencing…

 

Misty Williams  38:44

And they form a weight. Like there’s a weight to them.

 

Misty Williams  38:46

Yeah. Yeah, I was talking to Katie Wells from wellness mama, and she has recently lost 100 pounds. She looks amazing. She was doing all the health stuff too. Her body just was holding on. Right? She had, I’ll let her tell her own story. But she had an amazing somatic body experience that basically she describes like a psychedelic like response, even though she wasn’t using psychedelics to this interaction with another coach and she shook for a couple of days, probably just shaking all that trauma off. She lost eight pounds in a day and that was the trigger for her to be able to basically release everything that she had been carrying. She had Hashimotos and a few other diagnoses too. She’s completely normalized. She can eat. I think she said she can eat everything. Now. she’s not sensitive to anything anymore, you know, but her big trigger was trauma. Yeah, releasing that trauma.

 

Keesha Ewers  39:42

It’s a big one. It definitely gums up the works. Yeah.

 

Misty Williams  39:47

Yeah. Well, this has been awesome. I would love for you to tell people how they can find your cleanse. I know that you do a lot of work with people around weight loss resistance and you’ve got some really awesome programs and so make sure everyone knows where they can find you.

 

Keesha Ewers  40:01

Drkeesha.com. There’s a tab that says Education and there’s a free masterclass series that I offer every month. One of them is overcoming weight loss resistance. It talks about all the hormones leptin and ghrelin and the hormones that have to do with your weight. 

 

Keesha Ewers  40:22

There’s a special on a lab that’s offered in that too. I work with people on the trauma piece, also, as well as the hormone the microbiome, we haven’t touched on, but that’s another big piece. All of this, all of these are pieces of the puzzle and genetics. I like to take it from that whole, you are an individual puzzle, right place.

 

Misty Williams  40:49

Yeah, awesome. All right, drkeesha.com. And where they find your your cleanse?

 

Keesha Ewers  40:44

The cleanse is in the store under kits. That is the first thing, there’s a vanilla and chocolate version. I mean, I don’t know if you can put the link in there. 

 

Misty Williams  41:04

Yeah, we will totally put all of the links in the show notes to. .

 

Keesha Ewers  41:06

Okay. 

 

Misty Williams  41:09

All of the different courses that you’re talking about here and also to the cleanse. I did the chocolate kit. I do the chocolate. My mom. She had the choice to pick chocolate. I would imagine you sell more chocolate than vanilla. It’d be interesting to look at those.

 

Keesha Ewers  41:22

You would be surprised and really, a lot of people love vanilla they don’t like chocolate. It’s shocking to me.

 

Misty Williams  41:30

Does not compute. exploding head emoji, right? 

 

Keesha Ewers  41:33

Right. 

 

Misty Williams  41:36

Well, thank you so much, Dr. Keesha. Love, love, love that you’ve put this together. That cleanse is really special. I haven’t seen anything like it in our space. So thank you for taking the time to synthesize something that would work so wonderfully for us and we’ll see all of you guys soon. 

 

Keesha Ewers  41:50

Bye, everybody. 

 

Misty Williams  41:50

Bye.

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About Misty Williams
& Healing Rosie

Misty Williams spent years struggling to reclaim her health and vitality after surgery to remove an ovarian cyst, life-threatening complications and an endometriosis diagnosis sent her into a brain fog and fatigue tailspin.
Her doctor told her that the only remedies for her issues were drugs and surgeries, that her labs were “normal” and she could “google” to learn more about what was happening to her body.
At 35 years old, Misty embarked on the fight for her quality of life, enduring many more challenges on her road to healing, including an unexplained 45-lb weight gain, debilitating brain fog, fatigue, hypothyroidism, and premature ovarian failure.

She founded HealingRosie.com to provide high-performing women with the resources an community to successfully confront the unexpected chronic health issues that women often experienced as they age.

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