Maggie Berghoff, author of the national best-selling book Eat To Treat: A Three-Step Plan to Reduce Inflammation, Detoxify Your Life, and Heal your Body, is a functional medicine nurse practitioner and an entrepreneur. She is the founder and CEO of Celproceo, a health consulting company rooted in functional medicine and founder of the supplement line DETOXDaily. Disillusioned with the traditional medicine system, Berghoff found her calling as a health consultant, mentor, and wellness entrepreneur. Here, she shares how she overcame her own health issues with effective lifestyle changes.
What does wellness mean to you?
To me, wellness means truly feeling your best, inside and out. It’s being at peace and having joy in your life and a sense of fulfillment. It’s loving yourself and your life undeniably. Wellness is feeling mentally, emotionally, and physically well.
What are your favorite things to do to maintain your personal wellbeing?
I’m a busy mom of three and own a few online companies. To maintain my wellbeing, nutrition is where it’s at for me. When I eat and drink things that are nourishing and anti-inflammatory, versus highly processed foods, I feel my best physically and mentally. It’s essential for me and such a natural part of me now. It took some time to get here where I genuinely crave and desire the more anti-inflammatory options and no longer enjoy the more standard American diet foods. It took healing my body from inflammation and rebalancing my gut and hormones, reducing stress and a negative mindset toward food, quitting all diets and cleanses, and focusing on only nourishing myself. Now it’s so simple to maintain my wellbeing with food, and I love it.
Another thing I do is rest. I am a high performer at heart, there’s no doubt about that, but I also prioritize rest. Rest can be taking time off, such as a rejuvenating vacation, time in an infrared sauna or an Epsom salt bath, or a good massage or facial. These things really activate my parasympathetic nervous system and allow me to maintain wellness.
Lastly, I rarely stress out. I used to, and it took time to really embrace a more carefree and flexible mindset, but truly not stressing the small things and having a positive and more flexible attitude toward everything will transform your life.
What is your favorite healthy food, and do you have a favorite way of preparing it?
I love a warm veggie bowl with a few cold things on top. I will put a little bit of oil in my cast iron pan and add spinach or kale and sea salt. I let that get super soft and wilted down. Then I put it in a bowl and will add cold avocado (I store these in the fridge once ripe) and a protein. Protein is usually salmon or some sort of meat (chicken, turkey, or goat). I’ll add some cold cashews on top, too, and maybe some goat cheese. I crave this simple bowl all the time!
What is your favorite healthy beverage (alcoholic or non-alcoholic), and do you have any insider tips for preparing it?
Hands down, matcha tea is my favorite healthy beverage. It’s jam packed with antioxidants, has no sugar, and gives you natural sustained energy. I don’t like it at all with just water, though. You have to make it creamy, in my opinion. I’ll pour whatever milk I’m using into a cup, usually almond, cashew, or coconut. Then I’ll add ceremonial grade matcha tea powder, some high quality unflavored or vanilla protein powder, a few drops of stevia, and my vitamin D3+K2 drops. Sometimes, I’ll add my powder probiotic. I whisk it up with an electric frother, and it’s the most dreamy drink.
If I’m drinking alcohol, I’m always wanting to make it healthier. I even included a section about how to do this in my book Eat To Treat, as I think it’s important to be able to make healthier choices regardless of what you’re doing. So, for alcohol, I like a tequila or gin with fresh squeezed fruit—lemon, lime, or orange—and some other fruit, perhaps raspberry or pomegranate juice or syrup. There are some great syrup options without the added cane sugar, artificial sweeteners, food coloring dyes, and chemicals. Check ingredient labels and find a few go-tos. Shake it a ton, and pour yourself a little cocktail.
What is your greatest wellness achievement?
My greatest wellness achievement is healing my body fully from polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), hypothyroidism, chronic constipation and bloating, food intolerance, postural tachycardia syndrome (PoTS), unexplained infertility, severe immunodeficiency, and major abnormalities in my laboratory test results. All my doctors said everything I was experiencing would be life long and I would need to be on medications and even IV therapy for the rest of my life. My doctors said there was nothing they could do for me aside from medications to assist with symptoms. They all said there was no explanation as to why my body had all of this going on, and there was no way to fix it.
This was in my young 20s. I was a traditional nurse practitioner at the time. Luckily, I didn’t accept this as my story and went back to school to learn more about functional medicine to try to heal myself. After learning what I did, I implemented some changes in my lifestyle, my mindset, my nutrition, my supplements, and I fully healed everything. Not only that, but I ended up feeling better than I ever had before. All my labs returned to normal. I got off all my medications. I had three babies naturally. I lost the weight I had gained from the inflammation and have never had a health decline or abnormality in my labs since.
What do you think is the most exciting wellness innovation you have recently discovered?
Access to your own functional medicine testing is such an exciting wellness innovation that is still pretty unknown to the general public. I wish so badly that I had had that when going through my health journey. I would have to wait on seven-plus-month waitlists, pay double what a lab test costs from practitioner upcharges, and rely on my doctor’s knowledge around specialty lab tests. Sometimes it was frustrating, too, if the doctor didn’t believe in advanced testing or had partnerships with the companies to order the tests I was interested in getting. Of course, it’s helpful to work with a knowledgeable expert around your testing and health, but for some who want to dive into their health information on their own and do the research into their labs, this is just so cool. All the tests I’d run on my private clients in my functional medicine practice you can now get access to yourself.
What is your favorite place for a healthy vacation or escape?
My favorite place for a vacation or escape is anywhere with an ocean. There’s something about the ocean that truly makes me feel so at peace and expansive at the same time. I’ve had the honor of traveling all around the world, even at a young age due to my father’s love of history, culture, and travel, and I have loved every place I’ve visited. The world is truly so amazing, and the most restful places I’ve been all have views of the ocean.
What is your favorite self-care routine?
Every so often, I’ll spend a good chunk of time pampering myself head to toe with the best steamy shower, body scrub, shave, and hair mask. Then, after the shower, I’ll lather myself with lotion and put on some cozy loungewear. After that, I do the ultimate skincare love. Face wash, face mask, dermaplane, facial serums and oils using a gua sha tool to drain my lymphatic systems and decrease any puffiness in the face. I don’t dry my hair, just twist it into a clip, and ah, I feel like the most refreshed and rejuvenated glowing and at peace person.
What wellness-related books or authors do you recommend, and why?
Well, this is biased, but I wrote a wellness book called Eat To Treat: A Three-Step Plan to Reduce Inflammation, Detoxify Your Life, and Heal your Body. Part one is all about identifying your unique inflammation type; part two is about creating an environment to thrive and detoxing your mind, home, and life; and part three is about nourishing your body with an anti-inflammatory diet and mindset. It came out in fall 2023 and is still on the top best-selling lists internationally.
What brings you joy?
Little things bring me the most joy: A cute moment from my little kids, time with my extended family, a delicious healthy meal, a new cafe that makes its own organic nut milks for their lattes, being at the ocean with no agenda at all for the day, the seasons changing, a self-care pamper moment to myself, and working toward an exciting new business project. I find joy in every day and genuinely feel high on life!
