Today we’d like to introduce you to Debbie Potts.
Debbie, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
Did you know I grew up always fighting my weight and fitting in with others? I moved to Seattle (Bellevue) Washington from Vancouver, B.C. Canada in March of 6th grade – as my mom wanted my sister and I to meet new friends before summer started. I was 12 ½ years old and found it easy to meet friends in 6th grade but it was harder for my sister in high school as she is four years older than myself. I understand why high school was more of a struggle for her now that I look back at my own confidence struggles that started in high school.
As a teenager, I was always taller than others – especially the boys in high school. I wasn’t overweight but I believe I struggled with body-image and self-esteem because I was a little taller than the rest of the kids as they were later bloomers. I wasn’t popular but just not as outgoing or confident as others – so I was more friends with multiple groups and perhaps didn’t quite fit into any specific group. I blamed being taller for not being asked out to dances or on dates. That contributed to insecurity and trying to fit in with the “popular kids”. I always preferred to be friends with friends from each group- the “popular kids”, the “smart kids”, the “rockers and smokers” and everyone else. I didn’t have just one group that I wanted to hang out with – so perhaps that contributed to my lack of self-esteem and confidence growing up.
In high school, I started to feel better about myself once I found the 4:30 PM aerobics class after school. My mom had to drive me to our club (Bellevue Athletic Club) and I started to find my passion – exercise. I used to love hanging out with the aerobics instructor before class and I started being the “class helper” checking in the other students with their punch card (it was the late 80’s!). Then my aerobics instructor tried helping me lose weight as I was exercising doing aerobics classes each weekday after school, but I wasn’t losing weight. Soon I was experimenting with different diets as the “Soup Diet” … I had our freezer filled with vegetable broth and started my long journey of dieting. It obviously didn’t work very well!
My senior year, I remember my mom had me meet with the club’s nutritionist. Soon I was tracking my food on a food log and getting obsessed with dieting, calories and losing weight. I was never fat or overweight but probably had an extra 10-20 pounds to lose. This logging my food was probably the beginning of my obsession with tracking food and counting serving sizes or calories – and why I can never do it again. I find now that counting my calories or macronutrients – or just writing down my food just messes with my head and takes the enjoyment out of enjoying what I am eating and listening to my body. Instead of just going to aerobics class after school, I added in an hour cardio in the evenings while watching T.V. shows as I did two-30-minute sessions on the Stairmaster or alternated time on the Nordic Track. The passion for exercising started – along with eating healthy real food… but how does a passion become an obsession? We will see what happened over the next decade – read more in my book LIFE IS NOT A RACE on Amazon as I shared everything!
My high school graduation was excited…not because of the actual graduation process but because I had lost a lot of weight and felt amazing! For once in my life, I was getting attention from everyone – including looks from the boys. I remember feeling on cloud nine during our graduation all-night party at Wild Waves water park. I was so happy, confident, and energetic. Why the sudden change? Does exercising more and dieting really make you happy? I was feeling amazing at the time and perfect to enter college that fall feeling beautiful and suddenly, I forgot about being too tall for so many years.
During college, I continued to love aerobics and eating salads. I remember my first year in college was spent partying and getting sick – as I was lean, fit and probably not used to drinking all the sugary alcoholic drinks. My body quickly learned it didn’t do well with metabolizing alcohol or sugar! My love for aerobics and exercising continued during college as well as being known as the “Salad Queen” in the dorm cafeteria. I would only eat salads for lunch and dinner as I was afraid of fat and eating meat. My body quickly became a little too skinny as I was getting the reputation for being so “healthy” and only eating “good foods” as well as exercising daily at the aerobics studio. Then I started to eat bagels (best bagels in Bellingham at the Bagelry) as they were fat free and “healthy” – especially if you had the fat free cream cheese. I was really only eating carbs – including my later years in college living in a house with other friends that we ate pasta or rice with some chicken plus popcorn with water sprayed on it to hold the spices or fake cheese. The relationship with food started … as well as my body image and dependence of “looking good” on the outside for improving my self-esteem and confidence.
Fast forward to post-college years in my late twenties when I discovered my love for endurance events as training for marathons, cycling events (STP and RAMROD) and then triathlons. My vitality and confidence improved when I was spending hours outside training for endurance events – then my confidence increased even more (finally) when I started racing and placing in my age group. Triathlons was my sport – endurance distance as the 70.3 and the full Ironman Triathlon. I felt happy when training with other like-minded endurance athletes and enjoyed the process of training for a race – then thrived on race day – especially when I had a great race!
Early in my athletic career, I was still in the phase (as most of us) eating high carb and afraid of any fat as “fat made you fat”. I also TRIED to follow the recommended fueling strategies for endurance sports as “carbo loading” the days leading up to your long run or bike or race. Also, the fueling strategies we were told to eat and drink around 300 calories per hour of our ride then on a run have a gel every 30-minutes to an hour. Talk about loading on carbohydrates – especially refined sugar carbs as gels, bars, and gel blocks plus high carb fuel replacement. My stomach was a balloon and quickly was curious on how I was to get my body to BURN fat for fuel when I kept eating before, during and after workouts or training sessions. I was fit but still fat…and probably healthy on the outside but not on the inside (but I didn’t figure that out until the past eight years).
When I started racing Ironman triathlons in 2001, I lasted until 2003 with the recommended standardized carb fueling plan for endurance athletes until I figured out this was not the solution for ME. Each season, I would alter which fuel drink I was going to train and race with that season – but I ended up with similar results …throwing up most of the fluid that I consumed during my bike segment of the triathlon. I was training by heart rate and probably great at burning fat for my main fuel but when I started throwing down all these sugary athlete’s “fuel” then I started having problems. BUT that is what I was told to do!
Around 2005, the Zone Diet book was published, and the diet started to get popular. I became interested in nutrition and learning how to burn fat. My morning breakfast of a “healthy” bagel, banana, and orange juice to “wake up my metabolism” then I had to eat again in two hours due to be hungry again. Wow, thought I had a great metabolism -but I really was just stuck on the “blood sugar roller coaster”. I thought I was so healthy eating real foods and eating every few hours to keep my metabolism working right but I was so wrong, and that philosophy was so far from the truth on how our body burns fat. The Zone Diet started to open my eyes to balancing carbs to protein to fat as the “Zone Diet” was 40/30/30 ratio of macronutrients. We were on the right track to lowering carbohydrates and burning fat! I became more curious in the low carb world and started my own self-experimenting as an athlete and coach. My low carb journey began as well as my quest to teach people how to burn fat. At this time, I also started conducting metabolic efficiency exercise and resting tests to determine individuals fat burning points, metabolic cross over point (where they switched from fat to carbs – or some people didn’t even burn fat!) and how life stresses impacted the test (as when running the test on clients after the workday!).
Then fast forward to 2013… after years of training and racing 15 Ironman triathlons plus many marathons, half marathons and 50k trail runs, I was “suddenly” broken and “burned out”. All my body systems seemed to stop “working” at optimal level anymore. I “lived life as a race’ for too many years. The major contributor to my “burn out and breakdown”, I say was probably adding a major source of additional stress to my already busy life – I opened up my own boutique fitness studio in 2010 to offer a top “all in one” personal training studio in a very high rent town (Bellevue, WA).
Chronic stress impacts all – but we don’t know about it until it is often too late. Since my own health journey started in 2013 to find help, get answers and solutions, I have also started down a new path to become a health coach and practitioner. At the time of my own “adrenal exhaustion” started in March 2013 (technically called HPA Axis dysregulation), I was in a health coaching program with Ben Greenfield called the “Superhuman Coach” program online. In February 2013, we had the (one and only) Superhuman Coach Conference in Spokane, WA with now top experts and leaders in our industry as the speakers. Dave Asprey, Jimmy Moore, Peter Defty, and other leaders talked about cold thermogenesis, fat coffee (of course Bulletproof), heart rate variability and more “bio-hacking” methods that we discuss today! We were ahead of the trends in 2013 but I also was learning so much about what was going on with my own body at the time… I was a real-life example of the signs and symptoms of “adrenal exhaustion”.
Soon I was searching for answers as I was feeling depressed, tired, and FAT! I literally gained 30 pounds in just a month or so… it felt like overnight. I went from finishing the best triathlon race season of my career in 2012 to starting my worst health condition state in just three months later. I wrote my book “LIFE IS NOT A RACE” on Amazon to figure out my WHY… why me…why did I get fat, tired and depressed and other people could survive the fast-paced life I was living. The biggest challenge for me was to get answers – to find help, solutions, and guidance. The struggle was real. I felt alone and no one could understand my frustrations.
I went to about nine different doctors and practitioners locally as well as online trying to get help and get results. The main weekend when all of this started (March 2013) during a Mastermind Retreat in Torrey Pines, San Diego area, I was scheduled to talk to Sean Croxten at his office before I flew home. Ironically, he was in the middle of taping a video podcast with the found of FDN Practitioner program – Reed Davis. I have listened to them both on Sean’s Underground Wellness Podcast – and I found them “talking to me”. You can read all about my weekend in my book as this experience will never be forgotten in my memory bank. A life-changing experience happened, and my life has never been the same since.
Since that weekend briefly meeting Sean Croxten and Reed Davis, I have continued my own transformational journey in helping my own self-heal but learning how to help others avoid going through what happened to me since that weekend in March 2013. In 2015, I became a CHEK Institute Holistic Lifestyle Coach then in 2017, I became a certified Functional Nutritional Therapy Practitioner. I was involved in the KION Coaching program with Ben Greenfield and Kelsey Hess…then finally I decided it was the right time in May 2019 to take the FDN Practitioner program to become a certified Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Practitioner. I finally started to see all the missing pieces of my puzzle – why I wasn’t getting my body and vibrant self-back. I was always taking one step forward and two steps backward towards healing and rebuilding the WHOLE me. Now I understood the external and HIDDEN internal stressors that we can identify with our investigative process as an FDN Practitioner or as I say, “health detective”.
Why did I wait until 2019 to become a student of Reed Davis and become a “health detective”? I finally closed my fitness studio in October 2019, so I knew after ten years of being a small business owner with a huge overhead that caused me monthly stress, it was time to prepare for my real passion and purpose – to become a health practitioner. Now I am focusing on helping others avoid going through what happened to me over the years – living life as a race. I learned so much about myself the past eight years – my triggers, my red flags, and my chronic stressors on the inside out. If I didn’t run all the five main functional lab tests for my own self then look at the BIG picture – I would never have seen the hidden internal stressors that continued to be re-activated from my crazy fast-paced life and my constant stress as a small business owner in a competitive industry. If I took the FDN Course earlier, I would have been adding additional stress to my stressed business owner lifestyle! In May of 2019, I saw the light at the end of the tunnel, and I knew this was the time to follow my passion and purpose.
My passion is to help solve the unexplained health complaints or concerns clients struggle with each day – and help be that person that will work with them as much as needed to put the missing pieces of the puzzle back together by working on the WHOLE person with the functional lab testing we recommended in our FDN practitioner program but also assess their nutritional therapy needs from our tools used in our NTP program – then I combine other training as lifestyle habits and genetics that I have gained from people as Ben Greenfield and Paul Chek plus DNA Fit and soon StrateGene. Someday I would love to take other programs as Mark Sisson’s Primal Coach but there are only so many hours in the day and days in the year.
Today, what drives me is knowing there are not many people out there that understand what is like to not get results and treat each client as an individual since most practitioners or doctors seem to just look at my lab results and give me supplements. We are all unique bio-individuals with different genetic makeup, microbiome, food sensitivities, lifestyle habits, families, work schedules, exercise goals and sleep routines. My happiness is found when I can help guide an individual who was lost and not getting results by doing all the “right” things told from others and help them find the right transformational path so they can love who they are and be the best version of themselves. One of my biggest pet peeves, or two, is when people blame the aging process for how they feel and accept this as their new “normal”. You don’t have to settle for mediocracy – you can choose to strive for excellency, vitality, and resiliency. We have a choice… I know I want to live my life to the fullest. I want to be traveling around the world when I am 70 plus years old and walking up the hills without assistance! I want to wake up with energy and thrive each day.
Now fast forward to the past six months, I have followed my purpose, passion and mission by moving to North San Diego – thanks to CV for “allowing” us to work online and coach clients virtually! This past April, my husband Neal and I realized we could finally move anywhere we want to -as long as close to a main airport for his new job (based in New Zealand) when travel started back up in the future! Fortunately, I closed my boutique health and fitness studio in Bellevue, WA October 1st 2019, not knowing what our future would bring to us – but I was ready to follow my purpose and passion of being a Health “Detective” Coach using my training as a certified Functional Nutritional Therapy Practitioner, Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Practitioner, CHEK Holistic Lifestyle Coach, Kion Coach (Ben Greenfield’s Team) and 28 years of being a personal trainer -into my online coaching business.
We frequently came down to San Diego for a long weekend over the years for various events as my IDEA Fitness Conventions, Todd Durkin Mastermind Retreats and FDN Practitioner Conference. For almost fifteen years, I have coached a group of walkers and runners over the winter to race the Carlsbad Half and Full Marathon in January – as well as to have a fun “spa” like California Coastal Get-Away long weekend in the winter when we need it the most! In recent years, we came down for a long weekend in Solana Beach for our anniversary or for work – including this past January with some friends.
We never knew in January 2020 that we would be selling our house in April 2020 and moving June 2020 to Northern California! My heart has always been down in Southern California since I was a kid as we came down to Santa Monica area every summer growing up to my relative’s house plus a trip to Disneyland was always included! As I graduated from college, I would always find ways to come down for a long weekend from Seattle to get some ocean, beach and sun time. I love the sunshine, warm weather and spending quality time in the outdoors!
My life as I knew it drastically changed in March 2013 from living my life as a race. Chronic stress accumulated and resulted in a domino effect of internal breakdown of body systems – or as we say as an FD Practitioner – I was experiencing “METABOLIC CHAOS®”. I didn’t change my life around enough, as I am discovering now during “Covid-19” what “slowing down” really means and living life as a journey! I shared my personal experiences, struggles and learning opportunities in my book “LIFE IS NOT A RACE: It is a Journey” back in 2015 so I could help other driven and ambitious high-performing individuals avoid becoming broken and burned out from the inside out.
In the past ten years, I began my health-coaching journey in different programs including Functional Nutritional Therapy Practitioner and the most recently becoming a Functional Diagnostic Nutrition (FDN) Practitioner. For years, I was inspired to enroll in the program as I understood the frustrations of not getting answers and “quick” solutions to getting my body and vibrant life back. I went to multiple doctors and practitioners trying to get the quick fix but only felt more lost, alone, and depressed. I just wanted to feel myself again …and to be able to race in my favorite endurance events again! My purpose and now my mission are to help individuals feel better, move better, and perform better from the inside out. As a personal trainer and coach for so many years, I knew my clients were not getting the results they were striving for by only training one to two times a week. They needed more… so based on my experience and education, I created “The WHOLESTIC Method” which includes eight key elements to transforming the WHOLE individual from the inside out to burn fat, optimize health and improve performance.
Clients were always struggling to lose (fat) weight and improve their health with exercise alone. Frequently, clients thought they were doing everything “right” to burn fat and to be healthy.
I always knew there had to be something more that was stopping clients from getting their desired results – and I knew from my own healthy journey that chronic stress impacted everything (even when you were eating “right” and exercising daily!). Through the FDN Practitioner program, combined with my other nutrition and health coaching certification programs, I learned a WHOLE new way of looking at chronic disease and health, from a functional and casual level. When I started to dig deeper in my clients, as well as my own individual health investigation, I collected multiple clues of hidden chronic stressors as cellular damage, hormone imbalances, gut dysfunction, and digestion issues. I discovered we could positively impact the aging process instead of blaming the process as a client “new normal”. The struggle is real, but we can resolve and restore our imbalances with a throughout investigation. My mission is to help other individuals get their body and vibrant self-back by optimizing our health, improving our performance in life, and enhancing the aging process!
As I set out on my own health journey, I discovered how many people needed help as I did. Few coaches or experts were looking at the WHOLE picture and working on the lifestyle behaviors. Being “healthy” is more than just exercising more and eating right “most” of the time… which I really learned from being a personal trainer for 25 plus years! We have to make a shift and create new sustainable habits, including nutrition, exercise, stress management and sleep! I was eating all the “right” things when my health, fitness and well-being collapsed – but I overloaded my external and internal sources of CHRONIC stress. Health imbalances and symptoms are never from “one” thing but an accumulation, contributor, or a result of METABOLIC CHAOS®.
I love to share my own personal story and journey with our community as so many of us are struggling with unexplained fatigue, weight gain and odd symptoms -even when doing all the “right” things as myself. For years I was trying to get answers and find a solution to my main health complaints and imbalances – but I never found any help until I became an FDN Practitioner and ran all the main labs to see the WHOLE Picture so we could reveal the HIDDEN internal chronic stressors that didn’t show up on other lab assessments as looking at the GI Map, Organic Acids Test and Gut Microbiome. To my surprise, MOLD toxicity (and Mycotoxins) were hiding in my body for perhaps ten years but no one ever looked at multiple labs and connected all the pieces together of my health puzzle. I was always feeling better but not 100% – I continue to investigate what was actually going on inside “under the hood” as I knew something was hiding and throwing my cells out of balance and into constant chronic stress/inflammation … METABOLIC CHAOS®. I didn’t put all the pieces of my puzzle together as my fitness studio always had leaks in the ceiling from the yoga studio and restaurant above – end result, I was inhaling mold all day when I was working, training and coaching clients! You don’t know what you don’t know so TEST and not GUESS! Invest in your health – lesson learned.
The struggle is real – and now I believe that it is my purpose to help others from becoming broken down and burned out. My mission is to help other driven, ambitious high performers, who believe they are doing all the “right” things, get their body and vibrant self-back again by conducted a full investigation to collect the missing pieces of their mysterious health puzzle. Life is not a race but a journey. Strive to improve our quality of life to enjoy the ride!
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I have learned from my own experience how to avoid taking one step forward and two steps backward. I need to avoid multi-tasking as I have always struggled with doing “too much” and focusing on just ONE thing! Now I am following my true passion and purpose, as I share my personal story and struggles with other ambitious, high performing individuals who share similar challenges. External stressors accumulate and overfill our “beaker of stress” when combined with our hidden internal sources of CHRONIC stress! We can’t out supplement poor lifestyle habits – nor can we out exercise poor nutrition habits. Finding our own method to strive for consistency and sustainability is the key as we are all unique individuals but we must implement lab testing and running a full investigation if we want to live our best life and feel our best each day – strive to thrive each day rather than just survive the day.
We can’t feel better and get our desired results by doing the same thing over and over again – expecting different results (INSANITY Definition)…and we can’t really feel our best if we don’t know what is going on “under the hood” and how to improve (restore) our body back into balance (homeostasis). I would never know the main culprit (never just one -many root causes) to my internal domino effect, breakdown and burnout of body systems if I didn’t run all the main functional labs to start seeing what was actually causing constant stress to my cells – that is trouble as we are built on cells!
As I continue to learn and grow as a health and fitness coach (never ending), I strive to focus on ONE area and not spreading myself out too thin – as I love learning so many different areas. Hosting my own podcast, “The Low Carb Athlete”, allows me to have different experts educate myself and listeners on health building habits so I can focus on my niche. What is my niche? Those over 40 something who are similar to me…those ambitious, high performing individuals who get caught living life as a race – instead of a journey! We share tendencies to burn the candles at both ends and don’t stop moving from the time we wake up in the morning until we hit the pillow at night! I learned the hard way, with many setbacks over the years since my health issues obviously “appeared” or revealed themselves in 2013. I actually thank CV for forcing us all to slow down, live in the moment and take inventory on what is important in our lives. I was not actually slowing down until this past March when I didn’t have the gym to go to at 5:00AM and I didn’t have clients starting at 6:30AM! Life is different but in a good way… if you look at the positives and re-structure your life to allow for a new sense of gratitude, joy and happiness.
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about The WHOLESTIC Method – what should we know?
I help driven, ambitious, high performing individuals, who are trying to do all the “right” things, get their body and vibrant self-back again by investigating what is actually going on with functional lab testing, and putting the missing pieces of the puzzle together to restore vitality!
My history is a small business owner and competitive endurance athlete but my clients are all different and unique but share a similar story… unexplained weight gain, fatigue, poor recovery, struggles with sleep, food sensitivities and all sorts of symptoms of “METABOLIC CHAOS®”! They have tried everything and still continue to struggle to feel, look and perform their best in life. Common emails as “I have multiple ongoing health conditions that I have sought help for over at least a decade. I’ve used Adrenal Fatigue protocols, multiple eating programs including the current very restrictive elimination diet and supplements without success. Conventional doctors have been completely useless. I am not an athlete, due to an injury earlier this year I am quite the opposite at this time however would like to get back to a more healthful lifestyle including regular workout.”
I am most proud of my Fitness Forward Studio I created over the past ten years and the community I started clients became friends and our family. I strived to always keep one or two steps ahead of the trends as offering TRX circuit training, “all in one” workouts, Nutritional Therapy, Sunlighten Infrared Therapy, Massage, Acupuncture, yoga, Pilates, Sugar and Liver Detox, Seminars, Health Fairs, Burning Fat events, run and triathlon clubs. It was a lot to do on my own – part of the reason I became exhausted, burned out and broken but everything happens for a reason! Now I am happy to be living in an amazing “Hilltop Sanctuary” west of Escondido and east of Rancho Santa Fe…close to the mountains to bike ride and close to the ocean for coastal runs, beach picnics and to watch the sunsets. We have the most special hilltop glasshouse and pergola to coach clients, host wellness events and watch the sunrise and set each day! We look out to Lake Hodges and Elfin Forest. Everything happens for a reason right!?
My journey has lead me here… the place where I belong to focus on helping other people who are like the old me so I can help them avoid struggling for 5-10 years trying to get the right solutions to feel their best self. My experience with my struggles and lessons learned has brought me here today to be a better coach to help others burn fat, optimize health and improve performance in life – while improving the aging process, quality of life and enjoying the journey!
Now the program and manual I created in 2015, The WHOLESTIC Method, eight elements are everything we should ideally be working on now to GET healthy and take ownership of our health.
Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
I walk the talk. I have been there and now share my personal journey to help others. I can relate to the struggles and the frustrations of not getting the desired help as well as any answers to your questions – and solutions! I believe that we are able to restore our vitality and strive to thrive each day – and not blame the aging process or use the excuse of this is “my new normal”. Don’t settle. We can transform ourselves with the right investigative process to look at the WHOLE picture rather than being stuck in the ongoing “cycle of Trial and Error” that most people are in. Don’t throw away money and years of trying one thing out then something else. My success is following my passion and mission since I defined my purpose.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.debbiepotts.net
- Phone: 425-466-3653
- Email: debbieepotts@icloud.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lowcarbathlete/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lowcarbathlete/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/thewholeathlete
- Other: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thewholesticmethod/
Image Credit:
Neal Potts
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