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There are a bazillion different diets out there, and no wonder. When it comes to weight loss, diets work differently for everybody (and every body). So it makes sense that you’d want to customize your weight loss strategy in a way that makes it perfect for you.
One woman did just that. She used genetic testing to find the one item in her diet that was preventing her from losing weight.
According to Prevention, Joanne Laird used the 23andme Health + Ancestry test to learn about how her genetic factors were impacting her nutrient intake. Through this process, she discovered that she has a variant — called the GG variant — in the APOA2 gene. The APOA2 gene is known to play a role in weight gain. According to The Tech Museum of Innovation, “Scientists showed that the APOA2 gene can significantly affect how a person’s body reacts to what they eat…”
The GG variant, specifically, causes weight gain to occur if there’s high saturated fat content in a diet. With this information, Laird was able to see that the amount of cheese she ate could be the cause of her weight problem. Cheese and other dairy, as well as meats, are high in saturated fat. The American Heart Association recommends eating no more than 13 grams of saturated fats per day.
So Laird nixed cheese from her diet completely, and the results were incredible. She lost 61 pounds in eight months.
“I started losing immediately, and it just continued. I feel so healthy and good,” she told Prevention.
Laird could be onto something.
“When you give up just one diet-sabotaging thing, you can save yourself hundreds and hundreds of calories a day,” nutritionist Lauren Slayton told NBC News.
As for whether genetic testing is worth it, Sherry Zhang, the creator of DNA testing service GenoPalate, thinks that knowing your genetics plays a major part in weight loss strategy.
“All these fad diets … are produced on certain generalized knowledge. That knowledge can be very good, but the difference we bring into the picture is how does it relate to you,” Zhang told WTMJ.
The GenoPalate service costs $299, and the 23andMe service that Laird used costs $199. There are other companies such as Helix and DNAFit that offer similar services.
What do you think? Is this the thing that could finally make weight loss work for you?