EP144 Making it Real: How This Dietician Inspires Clients & Gets To The Root Of Food Sensitivities

Do you have a lot of clients with food sensitivities?

Are you on the hunt for a tool to enhance your client experience?

Then this is the episode for you!

Helping us explore how using a tool like Meal Garden is highly beneficial when working with clients that have food sensitivities is registered dietitian and Meal Garden professional, Marie Murphy.

Marie specializes in integrative and functional nutrition and uses a highly personalized approach to treat and correct underlying health issues so that clients can reach optimal health.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• How Marie’s career took off and when she realized becoming a registered dietician was for her.
• The main fears Marie had when she became an entrepreneur and how she pushed through them.
• The importance of utilizing social media to connect with other entrepreneurs for support and learning.
• How Marie’s approach to clients has changed since she set out on her own.
• Why Marie uses Meal Garden and how it provides value to her clients.
• What it means to be a certified LEAP therapist and how it works to solve food sensitivities.
• The exciting online program that Marie is currently working on to help people improve their gut health.

How did your career first take off?

My career started about 7 years ago.

I started in universities doing nutrition counseling for college students and college communities.

Previously, I had taught yoga for several years before becoming an RD so that inspired me to take a holistic approach to my practice.

A leap of faith…

When the pandemic hit, it provided the motivation and turning point to go out on my own and be ready to help people from this holistic, functional perspective that I’ve had for quite a while and now had the opportunity to share with clients on a 1-on-1 basis.

What was running through your head when you made that leap of faith?

The underlying fear is that I would fail.

I had a lot of support and was able to feel confident by leaning on the support as I needed them. That’s what really helped me push through those times when it got challenging.

That particular scenario that we were in (the pandemic) was a good time to start a private practice online because a lot of people were more open to it and I had found support along the way both professionally and personally.

In terms of your support, was it more in online entrepreneurial communities or leaning on friends and family? What did you find to be the most helpful?

Fortunately, friends and family have always supported me so that was always available to me.  

But what I found that was new to me is the professional support in the entrepreneurial space, especially in the entrepreneurial health space.

With social media, we’re able to connect so easily now, and being part of professional groups both locally, nationally, and internationally is great for online support.  

“There are a lot of folks out there who are doing similar things and who are really willing and ready to support you and provide that sharing of information and best practices.”- Marie

What’s the biggest shift you had in regards to working with clients when you were doing it at an institutional level versus doing it yourself (1-on-1, private practice)? How do you feel like you've evolved and how have you approached clients differently?

Right away there’s a need to deliver per client at a higher level.

From an entrepreneurial standpoint, clients are looking for results so I really had to step up my delivery system to be able to provide clients with all of the things that create a good patient or client experience.

Things like:

• Smooth booking and reminder platforms
• Patient portal
• Onboarding system
• Supporting them as they go through with accountability, measurement, and outcome

At the university level, I had great relationships with people that I saw in that capacity but I didn't have to deliver at quite the same level in terms of that patient experience.

The expectations and relationships were different.

When in your practice did you realize you needed a tool like Meal Garden and how is it providing value to what you're doing now?

A few months into starting I was looking for a way to seamlessly and professionally deliver recipes and meal plans to clients.

"I think of Meal Garden as inspiration for clients. The majority of my clients are looking for increased confidence in the kitchen, and their repertoire of meals.” - Marie

I work with clients that have food sensitivity so with Meal Garden I can exclude ingredients in my searches which is very useful. That is a feature very unique that I haven't seen on other similar platforms.

What does it mean to be a certified LEAP therapist?

LEAP is a dietary plan where a lab in Florida runs a blood test and it comes back with a list of foods ranked by reactivity level from green as non-reactive and yellow and red as reactive.

You go through a dietary approach with them that starts very limited with what they are eating and then gradually builds more foods in so that their symptoms can be reduced.

Essentially, you can become an affiliate dietitian with oxford biomedical labs, and then as an affiliate dietitian, you can become certified as a LEAP therapist where you provide this particular dietary approach that addresses food sensitivities.

The goal is that they reduce their inflammation levels and their symptoms such as:

• Inflammation
• Pain
• Skin issues
• Allergies

It's been great for my practice and I really have leaned heavily on Meal Garden for those clients that are using the LEAP program.

Who or what is inspiring the next stage of your business right now?

I am working on a new online program coming out in January and it's going to be a hybrid model that's going to bring together aspects of traditional nutrition counseling with education and practical skills.

I see this as a gap for patients. Oftentimes they don't have these practical skills and this motivation towards behavior change that is missing in the traditional nutritional counseling model.

The program will be focused on gut health.

Helping me work on this project is The Leveraged Practice which is a group business coaching practice that helps healthcare professionals bring their online programs to market.

Connecting with Marie

For those that learn more about Marie, what she does, or work with her, be sure to check out her website, Instagram and Facebook.

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