Episode #37:

Weight Loss and Wellness with Dr. Reed Miloy (Part 1)

This week, I’m pleased and honored to be joined by my fellow physician, life coach, and friend Dr. Reed Miloy. Meeting Reed and working with him on my weight loss and wellness has changed the trajectory of my life and transformed the way I work with my patients, so I’m bringing him on the show to share his wisdom with all of you.

Dr. Reed Miloy is a doctor of internal medicine and a life and wellness coach. Reed has an amazing illustrative tool he uses called the Table of Health, working on the body as well as the mind, bringing weight loss and wellness together in a fascinating and effective way.

Tune in this week to discover why Dr. Reed Miloy believes we need less mindfulness and more stillness. We’re discussing the power of awareness, alignment, and meditation, the trends we see in our patient population, and how Reed educates his clients and patients around their weight loss and wellness.

WHAT YOU’LL DISCOVER

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How I found Reed when I needed him and how he’s changed my life.

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What the Table of Health is and why we need to understand it.

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Why Reed believes we don’t need more mindfulness, we need more of an empty mind instead.

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Some of the trends we’re seeing in our patient population, and the world in general.

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What a plant-based whole-food diet looks like and why it doesn’t mean deprivation.

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How Reed meets his patients where they’re at and helps them make the leap toward weight loss and wellness.

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What changes in your brain when you consume a whole-food plant-based diet.

FEATURED ON THE SHOW

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Dr. Reed Miloy: Website | Instagram | Twitter

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FoundMyFitness: Sulforaphane

TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Reed Miloy: Your comment about genetics being your destiny. Somebody said it brilliantly, and I wish I could remember who it was, but they said your genes are the gun, but your lifestyle pulls the trigger.

Dr. Susan Crockett: Yeah.

Dr. Miloy: That's really a powerful way to think about it. So.

Dr. Crockett: Genes are the gun, but your lifestyle pulls the trigger. Wow.

Welcome to Becoming Virtuosa, the podcast with Dr. Susan Crockett. You're listening to episode number 37, Weight Loss and Wellness, part one of a two part interview with physician and life and wellness coach, Dr. Reed Miloy.

Welcome to Becoming Virtuosa, the podcast that encourages you to become your best virtuosa self. Each week Dr. Susan Crockett goes where the scalpel can't reach, exploring conversations about how to be, heal, love, give, grow, pray, and attune. For the first time ever, she's bringing the personal one on one teaching that she shares with individual patients to you on this broader platform. A weekly source of inspiration and encouragement designed to empower you.

By evolving ourselves as individuals, we influence and transform the world around us. Please help me welcome board certified OB-GYN specializing in minimally invasive GYN surgery, internationally in the top 1% of all GYN robotic surgeons, a certified life coach, and US News top doctor, your host Susan A. Crockett, MD.

Dr. Crockett: I am so pleased and honored to have my fellow physician and life coach and friend, Dr. Reed Miloy with us today. Welcome.

Dr. Miloy: Glad to be here.

Dr. Crockett: I wanted to take just a minute with our audience and kind of talk about your background, my background a little bit because both of us are kind of new to this podcasting thing. We're going to talk a little bit about our work together and then where we're going with all of this. So tell us a little bit about your background and why we should even listen to you.

Dr. Miloy: Well, outside of doing heavy quaaludes and mushrooms simultaneously with a shot of whiskey.

Dr. Crockett: Not you.

Dr. Miloy: Maybe everybody, right? Yeah, I'm a Doctor of Internal Medicine, that's my professional role that I play. I'm also a life and wellness coach. That's how we met. I mean, you were seeking out my services. We had a chance for that relationship to evolve. That's had some positive changes and.

Dr. Crockett: Profound changes. It's basically changed the trajectory of my life. Yeah, I'm an OBGYN by background. You know, me, I'm the surgeon. I'm like always trying to cut stuff out. I noticed well into my practice that we were missing so much. We were missing so much in taking care of our patients. It was beyond where the scope could reach.

So I've been interested in a long time about wellness. Like you, I'm a life coach also. I got stuck. I'm like I should know all of this stuff. I got stuck. It was last year, and I was reaching out to you. I needed help with my weight. I was almost 200 pounds and approaching menopause and just nothing was working anymore. I came across your site and gave you a call.

It's been such an incredible journey. I have incorporated so much of this into my work with my patients already. I continue to enjoy our conversations and see where this is all going. I wanted to give you just an opportunity to talk a little bit about specifically your coaching and your take on that and why it is so different, why I was looking for everything and ended up having to – How did I end up here? Why did this work?

Dr. Miloy: Yeah, it's a great segue. It's a little counterintuitive what we did, right. Basically, we're living these crazy lives. The human brain physiology is not meant to take in all of this stimulus, and all this overwhelm that we have. Basically what I coach up front is we try to get the body straightened out first. We talk about emotional well-being, adequate sleep, good nutrition, exercise, and we call those the four legs of the table health.

One of the things that you brought up right off the top before we even got started was you needed alignment. You needed alignment with your lifestyle, that table of health if you will, and what was going on with you internally. Spiritually, physically, emotionally, all of that stuff, right, had to come together and kind of be attuned is the word that you use as a musician, which I love. So basically what I try to coach is after we get the body kind of tuned up, we try to get the mind out of the way.

Dr. Crockett: Yep.

Dr. Miloy: Socrates said it brilliantly over 2,000 years ago. He said, “Your mind is your predicament.”

Dr. Crockett: Oh, yes it is.

Dr. Miloy: We human beings, we're an interesting animal. So we've got this deep conditioning of our minds that happens before we even have a say in it. Most people go through life, and they never really question that conditioning. Yet most people are going through life just as an automaton, and they're reacting to what's happening around them as opposed to responding.

Dr. Crockett: Yeah.

Dr. Miloy: Deciding who's in charge here? Who's running the operating system of my mind?

Dr. Crockett: Yep. So in my coaching circles, we talk about the lizard brain and then the upper brain. So we have that subconscious, it's programmed. It’s that part of your brain where it knows where to drive even if you aren't thinking about it. It knows where to work when you're driving. You know that thing?

Dr. Miloy: Yeah, absolutely. You can lose a full minute or so and look up and go wow, how did I get here?

Dr. Crockett: Yeah. So I started talking with my patients about being able to watch their thoughts or become the watcher of their thoughts. It is such a foreign concept to so many Americans. We don't realize that we aren't our thoughts, or we aren't our Earth suit or body. So when we start having those conversations with our patients, it starts giving them the aha moments to carry them down this road into better attunement with both the mind and the body.

Dr. Miloy: Yeah, that's a great way to say it. If we can create some space between the thoughts, and between ourselves and the thoughts, now we're no longer consumed by our thoughts, right. That's really the whole practice of detachment. Detachment doesn't mean not caring, or checking out. Detachment actually is like an immunization against being overwhelmed by our thoughts. It allows you to actually have intimacy with any situation and not being consumed by that situation.

Dr. Crockett: So, we don't mean detachment like psychopath detachment where you're not influenced by, what we're talking about just finding that stillness.

Dr. Miloy: Unfortunately, we live in a culture that doesn't emphasize the awareness around watching our thoughts. The word mindfulness has been overused, I think. Frankly, we need just the opposite. We don't need a full mind. We need more of an empty mind. Yeah.

Dr. Crockett: Yeah. You call that stillness theory.

Dr. Miloy: I call that stillness. Yeah.

Dr. Crockett: Yeah, that's beautiful. I want to talk a little bit about trends that we're seeing in our patient population and kind of our world in general. So I kind of mentioned that our patients, just for a while, didn't have the idea at all about awareness or alignment, mindfulness, meditation. I get asked all the time how to meditate and what that is. Does it go against their faith? So there's a lot of education going on.

But when you and I first started, and we started going down the food route, even a year ago, things were a lot different than they are now in my office. So the whole food, plant based thing, the first time I heard that, I'm like oh, that's a vegan. I'm not doing that. I need my meat. I need my protein. A lot of my patients kind of hit that barrier too.

I remember you told me at the beginning, you couldn't hit them too hard with it because it just couldn't sink in. Like there needed to be a softer way for them to get the information. What I've noticed in the last month, as a matter of fact, is all of a sudden, a lot of my patients are really open to that, a lot of them. I think there's an information explosion happening, especially in women of midlife mid-age where we're starting to tune into the benefit of eating clean and eating a whole food plant based diet. So I just wanted to ask you a little about your experience with how you educate patients and that what you're seeing in your office.

Dr. Miloy: Yeah, that's a great question. I mean I'm seventh generation Texan, by the way. We got started off in the cattle business in 1840s. All the men on my mother's side of the family in their mid-50s, kapoosh. You know, heart attack, stroke.

Dr. Crockett: Gosh, that's not funny.

Dr. Miloy: My brother and I used to joke around when we were like 16/17, we're a third of the way through this gig. We had no idea that it was nutrition that was driving that. So we were raised on southern fried everything. So I get it.

Dr. Crockett: Yeah.

Dr. Miloy: As a second year medical student, I started experimenting with changing how I ate. The thing I learn real quickly is that our tastebuds are the dumbest part of our body. They will lead us to premature demise. That old saying that it's an acquired taste is true. It doesn't mean that you have to get used to eating cardboard. I mean, a lot of people when they think about eating plant based, they think it means deprivation.

Dr. Crockett: It doesn't. Like I thought that at first too. I'm gonna be eating two pieces of asparagus and a pea. Now all of a sudden, we're eating this smorgasbord of foods that are full of color and I've never tried before.

Dr. Miloy: It's life giving food, right? So you asked me, “Well, how do I approach it with my patients?” The first thing is to say the most critical thing is to enjoy what you eat and then to enjoy a whole food plant based diet. Getting them from where they are to that place is as much art as science. But it's becoming a lot easier today. We have all these incredible resources out there. Social media, you can internet search that stuff, YouTube, recipes, podcasts. Like it's incredible what we have.

You do see the food manufacturers responding. There is a disruption underway in our food supply. We do have a lot of startup companies that are putting out healthy food alternatives for the public. If you just look at your grocery store, people know what I'm talking about. There's more and more options, it seems like, every single week that you go to the grocery store.

So I think the first thing is to meet the person where they're at. I like to say there's the standard American diet, aka SAD, and it is sad what it does to people's bodies. Then there is a whole food plant based diet backed up by thousands of research papers and tens of billions of dollars of evolutionary biology.

If you look at yourself, and you really want to ask yourself who are you biologically, you're a great ape. They're plant eaters. So we have to meet the person where they're at and give them choices. I say to folks look, the best and most impactful thing you can do and get dramatic results is to go where you are now and just take the plane, just jump all the way over across and jump in with both feet. Go big.

The other alternative is to try to help people make that that walk or that journey on the ground one way or another. I've done it both ways with patients. So you have to meet the person where they're at. But I'm a big believer in making the big leap just upfront because you get an impact immediately. Within days a person starts to feel better. Blood pressure is going down. Blood sugars are going down. Quality of life is improving. Energy level goes up. You experienced all of those things, right.

Dr. Crockett: All of it. Yeah, especially the mood thing, which surprised me because I thought of myself as a pretty happy person, pretty optimistic. But my anxiety level has, it's almost zeroed out. It's been a hectic year. It's been a lot, no lie. But I was just thinking about it the other day in the operating room with my team. One of my team members, they were like, “Who are you and what did you do with Dr. Crockett?”

Not that I ever was one of those like knife throwing surgeons, instrument throwing people, but just my patience and calmness in the operating room. It just made it so much more pleasant, and I hardly feel that anxious twinge anymore. When I do, it's super noticeable. I'm super aware of it. Then I just go right to that still place, which is really cool.

Dr. Miloy: Yeah, it's a whole new area of science is opening up. What we eat has a massive impact on our brain neurochemistry. There are bacteria that have been making the journey with us for tens of millions of years. We call that the microbiome. People have heard about it, as far as our gastrointestinal tract is concerned, but it really is for the bugs all over your body.

But serotonin, as most people know today, is that mood elevating neurotransmitter. If you're eating the standard American diet, you're more likely to be sad or to be irritable or to be angry. I've had many times patients who go plant based and then they come back into the office six, eight weeks later, and they'll say things like my road rage is gone. Or I'm a kinder person. My wife likes me better. She smiles at me more. Our relationship’s improved.

All of these things are not an accident because most of the serotonin in the body is actually made in the GI tract. So if you put the right fuel in, you get the right neurotransmitters out.

Dr. Crockett: That's not something we were ever taught when we were going through med school.

Dr. Miloy: We just didn't know.

Dr. Crockett: We didn't know. So I want to go back to something you said about genetics and a conversation that we had earlier before the show. I want for you to take the example of the broccoli sprouts.

Dr. Miloy: Oh, broccoli sprouts.

Dr. Crockett: I want you to talk about that a little bit and how important that is.

Dr. Miloy: Well, Rhonda Patrick kind of turned me on to this. She's got a podcast out there, YouTube video, and I think she put it out about six years ago. She brought the viewer’s attention to a compound called sulforaphane. Sulforaphane is –

Dr. Crockett: Sulforaphane.

Dr. Miloy: Sulforaphane. Yeah, we'll have to spell it.

Dr. Crockett: Put that up on the screen.

Dr. Miloy: So people know how to Google. But in cruciferous vegetables, there is a compound called glucoraphanin. In cruciferous vegetables is an enzyme called myrosinase. So when you chew and eat something like broccoli.

Dr. Crockett: Or cauliflower.

Dr. Miloy: Watercress and those kinds of cruciferous vegetables, what you get is you're gonna get a release of the myrosinase. The myrosinase converts the glucoraphanin to sulforaphane. Now sulforaphane is this incredible compound that really regulates hundreds of genes, turns off inflammatory genes, turns off oncogenes that cause cancer and so forth. So, this is something we want to be getting into our body.

In her video, Rhonda goes into the dosing, how much is really ideal. John Hopkins did a ton of research on this. The highest containing, shall we say, glucoraphanin, myrosinase, sulforaphane food is broccoli sprouts.

Dr. Crockett: Sprouts.

Dr. Miloy: Yeah.

Dr. Crockett: Which I think is completely fascinating. When we were in medical school, we're taught that our genetics drive our risk of cancer. It's only recently that we're discovering epigenetics that what we do or what we eat, our environment, how we think are all things that can influence the gene switches going on or off. It matters 90% of the time, and our genetics that were born with really are only like 10% at the time. So who knew broccoli sprouts.

Dr. Crockett: Broccoli sprouts have about 100 times more sulforaphane. The key thing about the cruciferous vegetables and the broccoli sprouts is you cannot heat them above 60 degrees centigrade, or you destroy the myrosinase, and it won't make that conversion of glucoraphanin over to sulforaphane.

Dr. Crockett: So you’ve got to eat the raw little sprouts like in sandwiches and salads. Raw is best.

Dr. Miloy: You've got to eat raw sprouts. Absolutely. Your comment about genetics being your destiny. Somebody said it brilliantly, and I wish I could remember who it was, but they said your genes are the gun, but your lifestyle pulls the trigger.

Dr. Crockett: Yeah, wow.

Dr. Miloy: That's really a powerful way to think about it. So.

Dr. Crockett: Genes are the gun, but your lifestyle pulls the trigger. Wow.

Dr. Miloy: Yeah. In our culture, of course, we're living in a culture of big food. People don't realize because they're just born into it, and they get you in the cradle. All this franken food and fake food and fast food that has been just sort of built into our lives is something we don't think about.

Dr. Crockett: No. It's just what's around us.

Dr. Miloy: But the movement towards eating healthier and a whole food plant based diet has really gained a lot of traction over the last five years.

Dr. Crockett: What I'm seeing is my patients just want to feel better. In GYN and OB-GYN, I deal a lot with endometriosis and fibroids. What we're discovering is how estrogen dependent those things are and how the plant based diet can actually help reduce all that inflammation, but also balance out the estrogens. So.

Dr. Miloy: Yeah. The other thing I would say, Sue, is there basically are three things that are going to take out most people. Number one, cardiovascular disease, heart attacks, and strokes. Number two is cancer. Then number three is neurodegenerative disorders, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, etc.

When we look at those diseases, all of them are powerfully influenced by what we eat and, of course, by our quality of sleep, and exercise, and our emotional well-being. All of these things factor in in this whole paradigm of inflammation. As we get older, our inflammation levels go up in the body and inflammation is driving all of these diseases.

Dr. Crockett: So we're back to the table health again. We're back to where we started.

Dr. Miloy: Yeah, yeah. It all comes back to the table every single time. That's a very powerful model that anybody can use. Leg one is exercise. Leg two is adequate rest, adequate sleep. Leg three, emotional well-being, and then leg four nutrition, not in any order of importance. They're all critical.

Dr. Crockett: Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for chatting with us today.

Dr. Miloy: Oh, you're welcome.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Becoming Virtuosa. To learn more, come visit us at DrCrockett.com, or find us on YouTube for the Dr. Crockett Show. If you found this episode helpful or think it might help someone else, please like, subscribe, and share. This is how we grow together. Thanks, and I'll see you next week. Love always, Sue.

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