Maggie Berghoff on Functional Medicine, Optimizing Your Health, and Raising Healthy Kids

Episode Summary: In this episode of the L3 Leadership Podcast, Maggie Berghoff joins us to share her wealth of knowledge on functional medicine and personalized health.

About Maggie Berghoff: Maggie Berghoff is a visionary entrepreneur with multiple online companies dedicated to improving the well-being of individuals. The journey began as she ventured into the role of an online health consultant, evolving into a substantial educational platform offering published books, online programs, recommended products, and diverse services aimed at helping individuals achieve balance in their lives. In addition to her health-focused venture, Maggie has established a business consulting company. Through this endeavor, she has empowered thousands of emerging entrepreneurs, providing guidance in building, branding, marketing, and scaling their own online coaching businesses. Beyond the professional realm, Maggie gracefully balances the role of a devoted mother to three young children. Her commitment to health, entrepreneurship, and family exemplifies a holistic approach to a fulfilling and purposeful life.

4 Key Takeaways:
1. We delve deep into the transformative power of lab testing and nutrition, where understanding and interpreting your personal health data becomes your superpower.
2. Maggie discusses the benefits of recognizing hormone imbalances and hidden health issues, opening up avenues to longevity and anti-aging that go far beyond what meets the eye.
3. She shares how maintaining a guilt-free relationship with your favorite indulgences can actually contribute to better physical and mental health.
4. Maggie talks about why navigating the supermarket aisles shouldn't be a chore but an adventure in making informed choices.

Quotes From the Episode:
“You can always trust a natural product that is made with real foods and real ingredients.”
“You got this.”

Resources Mentioned:
Order Your Own Labs
Siete Foods
Simple Mills
MadeGood Foods
Lesser Evil Snacks
Eat to Treat by Maggie Berghoff
Yuka App
EWG

Connect with Maggie:
Website | Facebook | Instagram | Linkedin | TikTok

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Transcript

Doug Smith: 0:08

Hey, leader, and welcome to another episode of the L3 Leadership Podcast, where we are obsessed with helping you grow to your maximum potential and to maximize the impact of your leadership. My name is Doug Smith and I am your host, and today's episode is brought to you by my friends at Berat ung Advisors. We also recorded this episode live from the new Birgo Realty Studio. If you're new to the podcast, welcome. I'm so glad that you're here and I hope that you enjoy our content and become a subscriber so that you can also watch all of our episodes over on our YouTube channel. So make sure you're subscribed there as well. And if you've been listening to the podcast for a while and it's made an impact on your life, it would mean the world to me. If you leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcast or Spotify, and we made a really easy way for you to do this. If you just go to the show notes, there's a link called Rate my Podcast and it'll take you right there and give you directions. So thank you in advance for that.

Doug Smith: 0:50

Well, leader, in this week's episode, you're going to hear my conversation with Maggie Berghoff. If you're unfamiliar with Maggie, let me just tell you a little bit about her. Maggie is an American serial entrepreneur with a specific focus in the health and wellness space. She is a leader in helping millions around the world feel their best by healing their body with the strategies found in her book Eat Right for your Information Type, and has also mentored over a thousand health and wellness professionals in voting and growing their own online business. Maggie has an impressive educational background as well, graduating with honors from Vanderbilt University and her undergraduate and graduate careers, and attending the Institute for Functional Medicine and various other advanced curriculum institutions. For her deepened knowledge and functional and integrative health, Maggie has been featured in hundreds of places, including Forbes, Business Insider, entrepreneurial Magazine, Oxygen Magazine, Under Armour, USA Today, local and National Television, and Top Rated Podcast. She is also the mother of three young children. You can visit Maggie and learn more about her story and background at MaggieBerghoff. com and in our interviews. You're going to hear Maggie talk about functional medicine, optimizing your health and raising healthy kids a lot of practical things here and I don't often bring health experts on, but this is an area that I'm starting to focus on and prioritize as well, so I think it will add a lot of value to you.

Doug Smith: 1:59

But before we dive into the conversation with Maggie, just a few announcements. This episode of the L3 Leadership Podcast is sponsored by Beratung Advisors. The financial advisors at Beratung Advisors help educate and empower clients to make informed financial decisions. You can find out how Beratung Advisors can help you develop a customized financial plan for your financial future by visiting their website at www. beratungadvisors. com. That's B-E-R-A-T-U-N-G-Advisors. com. Financial securities and investment products and services offered through LPL Financial member, finra and SIPC. Beratung Advisors, LPL Financial and L3 Leadership are separate entities.

Doug Smith: 2:36

I also want to thank our sponsor, Henne Jewelers. They're a jeweler owned by my friend and mentor, John Henne, and my wife Laura and I got our engagement and wedding rings through Henne Jewelers and had an incredible experience. And not only do they have great jewelry, but they also invest in people. In fact, for every couple that comes in engaged, they give them a book to help them prepare for marriage, and we just love that. So if you're in need of a good jeweler, check out HenneJewe. lerscom. And with all that being said, let's dive right in. Here's my conversation with Maggie Berghoff. Maggie Berghoff, welcome to the L3 Leadership Podcast. I've been looking forward to this conversation and, for those who may not be familiar with us, why don't we just start with you just telling us a little bit about who you are and what you do.

Maggie Berghoff: 3:14

Yeah, well, I'm excited to be here too. I am an entrepreneur in the online space. I actually built my own online functional medicine practice in 2017. And then, a few years later, we also launched an online business and marketing company very similar, related to the wellness space, but helping other business owners, other health and wellness professionals, to build and scale their own online companies. And I'm a mom of three, so I have a lot of different things that we chat through business, wellness, motherhood, all of the things.

Doug Smith: 3:43

Yeah, and the most exciting thing that I think is happening in your life is you're launching a book which is right behind you Eat the Treat and so why don't you just kind of give us a basic overview of why did you write this book and what do you want readers to get out of it?

Maggie Berghoff: 3:55

Well, my favorite thing about the book is that it's not just about eating. Of course it's called Eat to Treat, but it's actually the three step, the exact three step plan that I would teach my private health clients in our functional medicine practice to rebalancing their body and healing. We focus on finding out what's going on to cause your symptoms your nagging symptoms or your chronic diseases and then how to create an environment that allows your body to heal and detoxify. And then, of course, not just what to eat, but also mindset around nutrition. And I just love because, for a pretty, very accessible price, you can grab this book and dive into exactly what I would teach all of our high level private one-on-one clients and get this information implemented in your own life. So by far my favorite part is the accessibility for you to take charge of your own health.

Doug Smith: 4:42

Yeah, and I want to start with just asking really basic questions, because functional medicine, I feel like, is blowing up over the past five years. I'm sure you've seen that too, but I still think there's a lot of people out there maybe listening to this and just saying what is functional medicine and why does that matter? Can you talk to us about that?

Maggie Berghoff: 4:56

That's so true. Actually, when I first started my business my functional medicine business I was like one of the weirdo first ones, especially online, and now, thankfully, it's a little bit more widespread and I also had no idea what the word meant. Actually, I had a health journey in my young 20s which led me to all of this, and I got super sick and all these doctors were telling me that there was nothing wrong with me, my labs looked normal, all this stuff and I was not feeling well. And so an aunt of mine told me to Google functional medicine and she was like Maggie, just get on Google and type in functional medicine, go down this rabbit hole, because this is what you need, this is what's going to heal your body.

Maggie Berghoff: 5:36

And let me tell you, I went down the rabbit hole. I actually went back to school and got certified and specialized in functional and integrative medicine, and so what this means is essentially combining traditional medicine I, of course, have that knowledge too, and I believe there's a time and place for pharmaceuticals and traditional medicine but it's finding out what's actually going on in your body, the actual imbalances and the complications that you are having, and then how to rewire and rebalance your body to actually heal, instead of just give it a pharmaceutical medication to feel better. So we're actually getting deep into your biochemical individuality, figuring out what's going on in your body and then fixing it instead of covering it up with medications. It's really, really about rebalancing and healing.

Doug Smith: 6:26

Yeah, and so to give people a practical idea, so you talked about your healing journey when you got introduced to it. What did that actually look like? Was it literally just taking blood work and figuring out what you need to change, eating wise, or what happened?

Maggie Berghoff: 6:36

Well, ok, first of all, the blood work is different in traditional medicine than functional medicine. So in the traditional medicine model, my blood work was normal at first and that's why doctors were telling me you're fine, even though I was like I was crying and I was so bloated, no matter what I ate, and I didn't have any periods and all this kind of stuff was going wrong. But they were telling me I'm fine because my lab said I was so. In functional medicine we actually have access to more specialty testing where we can find out lots of information as far as detailed hormone pathways, detox pathways.

Maggie Berghoff: 7:10

Do you have a parasite in your gut? Do you have hormonal imbalances and neurotransmitter imbalances? What are your nutrient levels? Do you have heavy metal toxicity All these different things that you can find out through saliva, blood, stool and urine and hair for what's going on in your body. So it was those tests that helped guide my path to healing, finding out what was actually going on in my body and then healing it in that way. So it did matter what types of tests you're running on your body.

Doug Smith: 7:39

Yeah, so you ran these tests, and so what did it actually show and what did you change that made a difference?

Maggie Berghoff: 7:45

For me. I had severe nutrient imbalances. Like they give you all the different nutrient levels, you know magnesium D, all the B's, all everything and mine were like all the way to the left in the tank, red. So if you don't have the right nutrients, your body is not going to be able to do what it's supposed to do. But if you give your body what it needs, it's going to be able to do more than any the smartest doctor in the world or the smartest pill in the world will do. So your body wants to heal itself. We have to give it a helping hand direction. So I had severe nutrient deficiencies even though I already was eating organic and healthy and hitting the gym every day. So that's important to know. I didn't.

Maggie Berghoff: 8:25

I was not like an unhealthy person from what most me would would seem. They would look at me and think I was healthy already. I wasn't. I also had really high levels of aluminum and copper toxicity in my body. That was just, you know, ruining me and I had overgrowth of bacteria, the bad bacteria in my gut lining. That was also causing a lot of complications. So there was just kind of like this perfect storm. In addition to hormonal imbalances I already mentioned, I didn't have a period and I had low thyroid. Now I will kind of explain a little bit of functional medicine versus traditional medicine. So I had low thyroid. Now in traditional medicine they would say you have a low thyroid here, take this thyroid pill. In functional medicine we're saying Whoa, your thyroid is low. I wonder why. Let's figure out why your thyroid might be underacting and what we can do to fix it. That's a really like concrete example of kind of the difference between the two models.

Doug Smith: 9:22

Yeah, so it sounds like. Well, I guess, the way I understand it too, there's also kind of two needs for functional medicine. So one, hey, there's something wrong with my body, which sounds like it was your story. You went and obviously we're able to figure out what was wrong and fix it that way. The other, and I guess I'm just asking, like my view on it I'm interested in this space. I haven't really taken the dive in, but I'm also interested in, like, optimizing my health, and so for me it's like I want to get in the best shape possible, I want to do everything I can to live as long as I can, et cetera, and so that's what I'm looking for. So can people who may not feel something wrong with their body also benefit, like I'm talking about, when it comes to optimizing their health?

Maggie Berghoff: 9:57

Yeah, so actually, that is kind of my specialty. So, eat a tree is written for anyone and everyone in their health complications or in their performance, but most of my private clientele are in your boat of high performance, and we've done lots of episodes of this as well, but what you can do is the same types of things. Your objective for testing your body, though, is different. You want to fine tune and optimize. Just like in business, you want to look at the funnel and fine tune and optimize what's going on so you can get the most of it. Same with your body.

Maggie Berghoff: 10:26

So, as somebody who's looking for more performance, anti-aging, longevity, get the detailed lab testing down on your body at least once a year to figure out where you are. Do you have imbalances that you didn't know about? Did you catch a pick, up, a parasite on that trip to wherever Mexico, wherever right? Like you, want to keep on tracking your body, especially as everybody you know, ages. What are your hormones doing? You mentioned you have four kids. I have three kids. Let me tell you I am not sleeping the best ever, and so I know that my body is not optimized, but what I can do, even though I'm not sleeping well, even though sometimes I do stay up late when I'm traveling or working or something like that. What can I do to optimize regardless so that my body can handle those hits and stay well long-term? And the way to do that is through lab testing and then, of course, the day, like part two and three in the book the daily lifestyle and nutrition needs for your body.

Doug Smith: 11:22

Yeah, I want to get to that, but to stick with the labs because this is interesting to me. So again, most people would be like I'll have to go to the doctor and turn that in. How can people find next steps of that? Like, do they need to find a functional medicine doctor in their area? Do they just like go out to you and they can send their labs to you? Like, what would be the next steps if someone wanted to do that?

Maggie Berghoff: 11:40

This is going to be controversial, because not all functional medicines I'm talking about how awesome functional medicine is and it saved my life, right and not all functional medicine or integrated medicine practitioners are created equally, just like not every doctor is like the most awesome doctor, okay, so I, in my healing journey, I have been to a handful of functional providers that were not good and they wanted to just stick me on like 20 supplements and they gave me this big binder of this one size fits all plan to follow for the next three months. It was not good, so I guess I would hope that you could find a functional medicine practitioner or coach that you love to work with. However it's, the first one is a blow. Don't give up because it's not always so easy, but what I do love nowadays is that you can be empowered and take control of your own health, much like I did as I healed my body and went back to school to learn about how to heal my body. You can do that for yourself now.

Maggie Berghoff: 12:38

So someone like you, doug, or maybe a lot of your listeners if you're motivated to find out what's going on in your body, there are ways that you can order your own tests and the lab can give you a print off of your exact results and you can go down that rabbit hole for your own body optimization. And it's amazing, and you can even. Actually, we have recently partnered with a lab company that allows our followers and audience to order their lab straight from my website, so you can go and just click through the labs I order our private clients and get them yourself, and then you have that power to find out what's going on in your body, not have to hire somebody, not have to wait for an appointment or get off of a wait list. But it's a lot more accessible of a price point because you're not charging for any consulting or coaching. You just get to order yourself.

Doug Smith: 13:21

Yeah, and we can include links to all of that in the show notes. So would you still recommend that route to versus functional medicine, or would you say everyone kind of has to figure out what works best for them?

Maggie Berghoff: 13:30

I think everybody learns different and everybody is in a different situation. Also, even financially, sometimes it's a really large investment to hire somebody, or your functional medicine provider in town might have I know. For me, one that I wanted to go to was like a nine month wait list. Don't wait nine months to take control of your health, like, get this ASAP. So it really just depends. I think in general, I want to empower people to take charge of their own health, and so I think you should learn about your body and it's going to help you to help yourself in a better way. If you yourself are getting this lab done and you get the print off and you can read about your body, it's going to soak in and retain more and it's, I think, going to help you get better results than just showing up to an office and being like what do I do? And then then telling you what to do but it's not going to stick the same because you don't really understand the reasonings. Why so really?

Maggie Berghoff: 14:18

I would go the less expensive, easier, faster route and order your own tests and then perhaps hire a coach, a functional medicine coach or consultant or an online practitioner to help you through your journey. So, basically, I really think that to take control of your own health in this accessible way, but I do still see a huge value of working with someone specialized in rebalancing the body and also someone who can keep you accountable to your goals. So I do think it's still valuable. It just depends on your situation.

Doug Smith: 14:46

Yeah. So the first step is to really just take a step and take an interest in your health and get blood work. So you sold me on that. Actually, we put in our health insurance this year like we are going to do that. So my wife and I, we send out our blood work. It comes back. We see the results. Now let's get to the practical. How does this impact our everyday life and lifestyle? What are the steps and what are the next steps after you receive the results?

Maggie Berghoff: 15:10

Well, and it's not just blood. So some of them might be like we have a three day stool exam that I really love to do on clients saliva, a hair test, urine, urine test. So there's lots of different ways that we can test what's going on in the body, but it's all kind of like the hard, concrete information of what's going on in your body right now. Now, based off those results, either the lab is going to tell you or your practitioner or your doctor will tell you maybe some supplements or even medications that you might want to take in this moment. And again, like that's important to know, I'm not against all medications. You might need a medication to get you to that next point of healing as you heal on your journey. It's all about the right time, duration and purpose, but you also might be able to do it completely without medications. But maybe there are some core supplementations that are really going to help you.

Maggie Berghoff: 15:55

For example, I said earlier on I had really high aluminum levels. I needed to detox my body, and eating green leafies wasn't going to do that enough. I needed some help, and so like it is important sometimes to take a supplementation or even a medication in that interim. So you're taking something to help your body, but then you are doing lifestyle and nutrition measures to heal long term. So with that we have a lot of different lifestyle things you can do to detox daily without supplementations or medications, but actually detoxing, lowering inflammation, a lot of mindset strategies and then, of course, nutrition. So we can dive into a lot of different aspects, kind of where do you want to go for your listeners today?

Doug Smith: 16:40

Yeah, I'd love to dive into the nutrition specifically and just lowering inflammation. What are some things we can do every day to do that?

Maggie Berghoff: 16:49

Okay. So obviously I could talk for 10 hours straight on this, but a few core implementation things that you can do today for your nutrition is, I do find, if you are struggling and depends where you are on the inflammation spectrum, we have a quiz actually two quizzes that tells you where you are in the inflammation spectrum and your type of inflammation, as well as another one that tells you what your total toxic burden is. So if you're I want to preface this if you're, total toxic burden level is like crazy high, you've got toxicities coming in at you from all over the place, you're so inflamed and you're feeling crappy. You'll have to be a little bit more straight or have to do a little bit more things in your lifestyle and in your nutrition, whereas if you're coming in maybe like you, doug, you work out, you eat healthy, you're looking to optimize your total toxic burden might be a little bit lower and so you'll want to do some different things. So it really is dependent on where you're coming from, but most clients who are actively struggling feel better when they remove dairy and grains and not just gluten. Most people are like gluten free, but specifically grains because they're hard to digest, so even like organic, gluten free brown rice it's. It might not help your body, but everybody is unique so. But most people feel better if they're inflamed currently to reduce dairy and grains and everybody should focus on more real food, less packaged goods.

Maggie Berghoff: 18:15

So I call this in the book like a refrigerator and a pantry detox. So, looking in your pantry or looking in your refrigerator and get rid of all the things that are expired I promise there are probably things in there that like expired two years ago and you just had no idea like throw those out, make some new space for the new, and then to look at the things that you know are not great for your body and find healthier options for those things. Step one is swapping. I've had clients who love eating starburst every night Swap their starbursts with just the organic fruit juice. So, looking at your pantry, looking at your fridge and finding what could I swap? A healthier version of this Oreo, a better option for my pasta, and you know this. For this, what can you swap? And that's a huge. It's going to take your information down incredibly in just one week.

Doug Smith: 19:08

And I'll speak to that. You know, when I was younger I was I was heavier and always struggled and really had to learn a lot about nutrition and that, like when people come to me and ask me to talk to them about how can they lose weight and get into shape, I said, if you just track what you eat for two weeks, I could tell you. Sub this for this, of this, for this, and you'll see a massive difference. Like I'm shocked. Yeah One. I've never heard somebody starburst every night. That's hilarious. I love this advice. Yeah, just actually looking for substitutes that are healthy and I'm sure you can speak to this too it's not like it's, it's less quality, like the food's actually better taste. Oh yeah, yeah.

Maggie Berghoff: 19:44

It's so. Luckily in today's world there are so many options for these swaps. You can still have the exact same foods you want, whatever you're craving. They're the healthier option out there and it reduces inflammation. You talked about weight loss. For the people like who are coming to you wanting to lose weight, if you had a client tell me after one week or anxiety decreased by 75% just from the food, this is because of the ingredients of the food. It's not that they're not eating sugar, it's that the ingredients are higher quality, better options and they're a healthier swap. So there's less inflammation. It's amazing and it's like you said. It's not like you're not, it's not like you're eating salads every day, like you can eat your favorite foods, just in a healthier way.

Doug Smith: 20:24

Yeah, what is your thoughts on sugar in general?

Maggie Berghoff: 20:28

Well, I think reducing it is best. So I keep saying the word reducing. The reason is that I'm big on mindset around nutrition too. I have worked with a lot of people who have a lot of fear around food or, you know, doing some kind of diet or some of well, a wellness journey throws them into eating disorders or binge eating because they're restricting and then they're going all out on the weekends things like that, starting over on Monday.

Maggie Berghoff: 20:50

I could talk about this all day long, but I really want to focus on reducing, because if you can focus on reducing things and then adding and flooding your body with the nutrients that it needs, when you're adding like what can I add, what can I add and then you're cognizantly reducing the other stuff, your body will start to balance out and you'll start to crave healthier options. So, for your question about what I think about sugar do I think it has health benefits? No, so we can definitely reduce that from our body, and if you are focused on healing your body you know I talked about grains and dairy knock out sugar too, and you're gonna feel better, right. So it's really, where do you want to focus? Do you want to feel really a lot better. Right now, sugar is not going to help you get to that goal, and so we can reduce or eliminate that. And then, when you do eat sugar, there are healthier versions of that, like coconut sugar or fruit sugar, that you can sweeten things with.

Doug Smith: 21:45

Yeah, so your book's called Eat the Treat. So in general and I want you to coach me here like, be strict with me. Whatever you would tell your client, like I'm big on like the 80s, 20s, 90s, 10s I try to eat pretty healthy most of the time but on weekends like one weekend night a week, like with the kids I'm like I love ice cream so it's like, hey, we're all having ice cream tonight. Like in general, we'll once a week offset. You know the results that you've achieved over the last six days. I'm just curious your thoughts on actual days or cheat meals.

Maggie Berghoff: 22:13

Yeah, no, it doesn't. So, just like, eating one healthy meal is not going to heal your body, so you can't expect to eat healthy for two days and then be like it's not working, like you can't expect that. But one ice cream cone on a Saturday night with your kiddos isn't either. In fact it might actually help your body because maybe it brings joy and happiness and memories. So I'm big on that and in fact that it reminds me of a client one time who, like, apologized to me because they ate like a piece of pie at like, this family gathering and I'm like, dude, eat the pie. It was a spell and I just felt, you know, that anxiety and that worry and that stress and the fact that he even apologized to me on a meeting the next week. That causes more damage than eating that pie in and of itself the mental stress and mental inflammation of that. So for me I really like the balance of that, but then enjoying it, it also so say this is, this is all about the mindset around nutrition.

Maggie Berghoff: 23:09

Say, you're eating that ice cream cone if you're like, oh my God, I have to go to the gym extra tomorrow. I shouldn't be doing this. Maggie's going to be mad at me. This is going to ruin all my things. It's probably going to cause your body damage. This also your stress and your causing your body anxiety and your sympathetic nervous system is going off, which causes inflammation. And when your sympathetic nervous system is off, your digestive system or when your sympathetic is on, your digestive system is off and so now you can't even properly digest that ice cream cone and everything's a mess and your stress. But if you just eat that ice cream cone and you're like this is the best day ever, I'm so freaking grateful for my family. Oh my gosh, this is amazing. What a beautiful sunset. You're calm, your parasympathetic nervous system is activated, so you're going to be able to digest that cone properly and you're enjoying your life and your time. So hopefully that explains that. That would be my true advice to everybody in that situation.

Doug Smith: 24:02

No, I think that's so good and, taking mindset into account, enjoy as well. You mentioned we've been talking we both have children. Now this is really important. So like I had no boundaries growing up, like I remember if you ever seen Home Alone when Macaulay Culkin eats like 10 scoops of ice cream with everything on him, like I used to do that, which is terrible. So I feel like you know, for my wife and I, you know we value health, we want to make sure we raise healthy kids, but I'm sure it's the same with you, the on the go lifestyle, like four kids under seven, this one's got to go, like it's insane. And I'm just curious what advice do you have to parents out there, like how can we really set up our children for success when it comes to health and nutrition?

Maggie Berghoff: 24:38

Yeah, so for for me, I also have three kids and they're all. I had three kids within three years, so they're all very young. Yes, so, but for me it was a little bit opposite is that when you grew up, you had no boundaries. When I grew up, I saw a mom who was always on a diet, to be honest, and always wanted to lose weight and always was frustrated or thought the ice cream code was bad Right, and so I had kind of an opposite effect where I viewed food as bad or good, or if I wanted to be skinny, I needed to eat less things like that. So for for me, in general, I feel with our children, I'm very balanced around it. I'm big on the mindset around nutrition.

Maggie Berghoff: 25:18

We only we really only buy organic. I'm grateful we buy organic. Our whole house is gluten free, dairy free, except for some goat cheese, and that is just our norm. And we have candy, but we don't have that. And we have candy, but it's the organic, healthier versions of candy, and that's our norm. We make cookies and muffins and brownies. It's the healthier versions of those things. Now, so our kids inflammation is automatically lower, but they're still eating this brownie. They don't even really know the difference. They love this stuff because it's so good.

Maggie Berghoff: 25:50

But the key thing is when they are out, if they're at a birthday party, if we're out to eat, I'm not judging or telling them what they should or shouldn't have. So if they are wanting to order mac and cheese off this menu, I'm like amazing, that looks so good. How is it I'm not telling them? You know, you shouldn't really have it if it's not gluten free. So I'm really balanced around. I don't want them to binge eat, I don't want them to fear food and I don't want them to have a negative mindset towards this. But of course I want them to be healthy because I care about them. I don't want to flood my children with food ice and artificial flavorings and things like that. That is a very standard, for the American diet at least. So I care about them. So I don't want them to eat those foods, but I also want their mindset. That's my approach to things. We have healthier swaps, but I'm not freaked out if they eat Domino's pizza on this Friday school day or whatever it is.

Doug Smith: 26:40

Do you have any favorite like go to snacks, or like quick on the go foods before school or anything? I would love to hear.

Maggie Berghoff: 26:47

Yes, this is like one of my favorite things because we are so we're so. I feel like, I guess, normal in the sense of busy on the go, you know, grabbing the snacks but healthier options. Some of my favorite brands Siate is a great one, so S I E T? E. They make a lot of great condiments, as well as wraps, like our kids love their Siate wraps. They have crackers. They have all different things.

Maggie Berghoff: 27:13

We love simple mills this is a shout out to all. My favorite ramp. Simple mills is great. They have great cupcakes. We do birthday cakes with them, brownies. We also have crackers that our kids love. Made good. They love their granola bars, and so do I. They're so good. So, yeah, made good is a good brand too. They've got granola bars, They've got little balls cookies. And then I would say the last most common one in our household is a brand called Lesser Evil, and Lesser Evil we love their popcorn, and they have lots of other snacks too, like puffs for the kids, and our babies grew up on Lesser Evil. Little like the little puffs, but they're the healthier versions that actually have good things in them. So there's some good brands I love. I could go on and on, but yeah, we have a lot of resources for your people.

Maggie Berghoff: 28:00

Obviously you're interested in this too. There's so many. We have like a whole huge like non-toxic pantry swap list linking all of our favorite stuff that you can get access to for free on our sites.

Doug Smith: 28:09

Wonderful. So, yeah, we'll include links again to that all in the show notes. I want to talk a little bit. Yeah, there's so much I could go on for like two hours of this Talked about on the food side. You talked about eating real food. What should people be looking for, like, if they have no idea what any of this means? Like, what should they start to look for in their food to tell whether or not what they're eating is healthy when they go grocery shopping? And so do you have any hacks for them?

Maggie Berghoff: 28:33

Yes. So if you have no idea, like, where to start, at the grocery store, most of the real food best options will be the ones that are in the refrigerator or with, like, the fruits and veggies section, so actually a real apple and real chopped veggies and things like that, and then in the refrigerator section, because that means it doesn't have preservatives and chemicals, most likely. So, for example, if you're getting salsa, the salsa in the fridge section is probably more fresh and better quality than the salsa at the grocery store, and then the salsa expires in three years from now. Right, because that makes sense, because it's like food, but it lasts for three hours. It doesn't make your three, three years. So so that's a baseline.

Maggie Berghoff: 29:13

So if you flip it over and you can't understand these ingredients, it's probably not the best option for your body if you're on a health journey and you can't put in your body. So look at the ingredient makeup Also, like the length will make a difference. For example, I mentioned made good granola bars. Their ingredient length, their list length, is way, way smaller than the other options of granola bars or breakfast bars, and so that indicates that it has less ingredients, better quality ingredients and real things for your body.

Doug Smith: 29:41

Yeah, I know there's an app I use occasionally called food jacate. Are there any other apps that are like helpful, that you would recommend people, whether it's tracking and looking for substitutions, seeing what's healthy and things, and to even bring in you know another part of your book, the environmental things? There's some environmental products we have in our house that could be damaging us. Yeah, I'll just go off on that.

Maggie Berghoff: 30:01

Yeah. So a newer app that I've heard of recently is Yucca, to say, like what the ingredients are about. Ewg is kind of what I was initially into. So EWG it rates the items, say it's a shampoo and it tells you how toxic it is. So I'm going to focus on the lower levels of the EWG. There are items for your household that are EWG certified, mean they're like the cleanest of clean, and then I personally would try to get everything as a level two or lower. Again, it depends how serious you are about this. When I was first healing my body, let me tell you I would do anything to heal, I was so done. So I only use EWG certified stuff for a very long time. I'm going to do a little bit more flexible here and there and I'll do an EWG two item. You know, just like a little less. A little. Not the best option, but definitely a much better option in certain situations.

Doug Smith: 30:58

I kind of dived into this already, but this is, this is crazy, you know, for people who may not be aware of these things. So you know, I think everyone in general is aware of. Like, hey, I could eat healthier, choose healthier foods. But you know something, you know when I first started learning like, hey, the items in my household household can be impacting my health, such as you know, I used to burn Yankee candles all the time. I don't know if Yankee candles themselves are bad, but cologne, like, can you just talk about regular household items that could impact health, because I think it's mind blowing for a lot of people. They never think about that.

Maggie Berghoff: 31:28

Oh my gosh, it's completely mind blowing. And it's mind blowing to me now that, because I've been in this world for so long, it feels like everybody should know this now. But I still have people who have no idea that the lotion that they're putting on their body every single day is completely toxic, or the makeup that they're using, or that candle that they're you know they have, or the plug in their wall that is putting fragrance and toxins in their air every day. Yes, so it's so bad. This is all about part two in the book of environment detoxification, and it's one thing that definitely helped me in a huge way when and actually it's one of my favorite parts to, because it doesn't really require much discipline to throw a Yankee candle and to replace it with a more toxic version.

Maggie Berghoff: 32:12

You write that that doesn't take life A lot of revamping in your life. It's an easier swap. Same with household cleaners. Instead of using the household cleaner you usually use, swap it with a non toxic version. It's an easy win. It's an easy win. So what you can do is you can look in your house and make a list of all the things that you use on a daily basis for your household cleaning items, things that are going into your air, like fragrances, the water that you're using today, things that you're putting on your body it's not just what you're putting in your body and eating, it's what you're putting on as well Make a list and then again, just like the pantry, swap those things out with an easy and easy swap.

Doug Smith: 32:54

I'm just curious like how, how big are the consequences to some of these things? You know, like a long time when we bought our first house, like I didn't know what radon was. I didn't know it was a big deal. I didn't know radon was the second leading cause of cancer and lung cancer. And so when I started learning these things like hey, if we have high radon levels in our basement, like we need a radon medic mitigation system you know to clear that out. Like a lot of the things we're putting in our body have the ability to cause cancer and have consequences like that. How serious is this?

Maggie Berghoff: 33:22

Yeah, I love that you're so into this because it's extremely serious.

Maggie Berghoff: 33:26

I mean, people die from radon poisoning if they're, if they're, if they don't know about it and it's in their home or what in the ground that their home was built on or whatever it is, and it's extremely important.

Maggie Berghoff: 33:36

And it's proven that certain chemicals have led to cancers and those chemicals are now banned from our food and from our items. But there are still things on the market that are newer, that know they're not banned yet and, yes, they're approved. But that has happened in the past and now those items are proven to cause cancers or to have health complications and you know, infertility, things like that, and so that happened once before and it would be silly for us to think that it might not happen again with some of these newer ingredients and newer things that are artificially made. So you can always trust a natural product that is made with real foods, real ingredients, but I would not always trust the chemicals, especially the newer ones, because you just don't know what's going to come out in 40 years from now, because we definitely have proven that in some situations, entire product lines have been recalled and taken off the market because, of that.

Doug Smith: 34:30

Well, thank you so much for writing this book. I'm definitely going to be reading it and hopefully people were inspired by today there's. I could dive into all these subjects and mindset. Is there anything else related to the book that you would just leave listeners to?

Maggie Berghoff: 34:44

Well, the biggest thing to know is obviously, we could both chat about this for days on end, but that's really what the book is. It's a one stop shop for all of your wellness needs. It is not just about what you should eat, I mean, it's really about mindset around eating, anti inflammatory eating, healthy swaps and environment detoxing, lifestyle, functional medicine. It's a one stop shop to your healthiest self and I'm just so excited for y'all to get it.

Doug Smith: 35:11

Yeah Well, thank you so much for your journey. Thank you for writing this book to help so many people. I know you've helped hundreds and thousands of people already, so again will include links to everything in the show notes. We have a few minutes left. I would love to. We won't get through all the lightning round questions, but I would love to just ask you a few, just get to know you a little bit better. The first one is what is the best advice you've ever received and who gave it to you?

Maggie Berghoff: 35:31

My friend, JJ Virgin, who is also in the wellness space, gave me this advice once I was having a tough run in my journey of entrepreneurship and I texted her and asked for some advice and she told me CEOs, this is tough love. And she told me CEOs don't curl up and cry when things get tough, they keep on moving. And I was like I needed to hear that I'm not gonna curl up and cry, I'm gonna keep on moving. And I really think about that often and I'm like you know what CEOs don't curl up and cry, like let's keep on going. And that helped me a lot.

Doug Smith: 35:59

Love it. If you could put a quote on a billboard for everyone to read, what would it say? You, got this let's go. When you get to spend time with a JJ, virgin or other leaders that you admire, do you have a go-to question or two that you always ask?

Maggie Berghoff: 36:13

Well, whenever I'm around people who are doing bigger things than me and have more experience than me, I'm really kind of asking what some main differences in their business growth was. But specifically for me, in my interest right now, it's team growth. That's one area that I'm always learning more about and I'm curious about how are you managing your team? Who are you hiring? You know all the different things, for team and leadership is really my biggest interest right now.

Doug Smith: 36:39

Yeah, and we didn't even get to touch on any of your business acumen and everything you do and coaching people there. But just to summarize you basically yeah, well, it's a whole other.

Maggie Berghoff: 36:48

we can come on up for part two. But yes, I own another company in the business space, so I'm myself an entrepreneur and we teach others to build and launch their own companies on the wellness space. So in that I obviously have team members and I hang out with a lot of entrepreneurs in all different industries, and so I'm always asking them about their team growth.

Doug Smith: 37:06

What's something you've done in your life that you think everyone should experience before they die?

Maggie Berghoff: 37:11

Oh gosh, oh my gosh, I would say. I guess travel. I've been really grateful to be able to travel abroad to many different places, even as a child. My dad loves traveling and so I was fortunate to get to go to really cool places like Ireland and Italy and all these really awesome places with my siblings growing up. So if you never traveled anywhere, I would say that put that on the bucket list.

Doug Smith: 37:35

All right, and if you could have coffee with yourself at any age and you would have actually listened to yourself, what age would it be and what would you tell that version of Maggie?

Maggie Berghoff: 37:41

Oh my gosh, eighth, grade, eighth grade going into high school.

Maggie Berghoff: 37:47

I would tell that version of Maggie to care less, focus on yourself, build your own internal confidence and be you. And because I feel as if those years going into high school and then college, it's easy to be formed by the people you're surrounding yourself with and we talk a lot about. When you're older you can kind of fine tune your circles, but when you're in high school, going to school with kids the same, like every single day in college, it's a little harder. So you really have to find that internal motivation to be yourself, to be confident, and that's what I would tell myself more confidence and to be me.

Doug Smith: 38:23

Anything else you wanna leave leaders with today.

Maggie Berghoff: 38:26

Oh, I'm just really excited for all of you guys. I hope this inspires everybody to live healthier, happier lives, because it's gonna help impact every aspect of your life.

Doug Smith: 38:34

Maggie, thank you for your book, thank you for your time and we'll do the skin sometimes.

Maggie Berghoff: 38:37

All right, talk to you guys soon.

Doug Smith: 38:39

Well, hey, leader, thank you so much for listening to my conversation with Maggie. I hope that you enjoyed it as much as I did. You can find ways to connect with her and links to everything that we discussed in the notes at L3leadership. org/ 406. And as always, leader, I like to end every episode with a quote, and I will quote Brian Tracy, who said this. He said "'Leaders think and talk about the solutions. Followers think and talk about the problems. Which one are you and where do you find yourself most often". Well, leader, I hope you enjoyed this episode. I hope it encouraged. You Know that my wife Laura and I love you. We believe in you and I say it every episode but don't quit, keep leading. The world desperately needs your leadership. We'll talk to you next episode.