S5 Ep22: Healing the Root Cause of Why We Get Sick with Elissa Goodman
“One of the biggest things about being unhealthy is we are so hard on ourselves. We don’t love ourselves.” — Elissa Goodman
There's a lot of pressure to be healthy.
We want to feel better, and we know what makes us feel better: not eating a bunch of junk food that makes us feel like crap. But sometimes, we just don't have it to eat right, hydrate, or exercise enough. And then we beat ourselves up for not being able to do it—for feeling bad about our bodies and ourselves. But it’s not too late for us to treat our bodies with more kindness and love.
In this episode, Justine interviews Elissa Goodman, the creator of S.O.U.P. Cleanse. Her program is a guide to help others detoxify and heal themselves in a natural way. Elissa’s health journey began in her early 30’s when she learned that she has cancer, Celiac Disease, and Hashimoto’s Disease. Her doctors suggested that she start chemotherapy and a host of healing strategies right away, but with her weak immune system, she knew her body would give out. But Elissa is not one to give up. She searched for a way to heal naturally and also strengthened her body along the way. Today, Elissa is cancer-free and has built a business from her passion for helping others heal holistically.
Listen in as Justine and Elissa talk about how pathogens and toxins affect our health, the importance of hydration, how to get started with detox, how our own health journey can impact our loved ones, especially our kids, and how we can find what recipe is best for us.
Connect with Elissa:
Elissa Goodman is the creator of S.O.U.P. Cleanse, a program designed to deliver a gentle cleanse using superfoods, organic, anti-inflammatory, and alkaline-rich food. Elissa has over 10 years of experience as a holistic nutritionist.
Her business is a product of her own healing journey from cancer, Celiac disease, and Hashimoto’s disease. As she noticed a tremendous transformation in her health, Elissa began to share her discovery to help others heal as well.
Today, Elissa remains cancer-free. Her book, Cancer Hacks not only tells her story and that of her late husband but also serves as a guide to cancer patients and their families to overcome their fears and start their own healing journey.
Episode Highlights:
00:59 The Journey to Cleansing
03:22 Building a Passion Business
07:03 Why We Get Sick
10:56 Tapping Into Customers’ Pain
18:17 Celery Juice
21:38 What Recipe is Right For You?
Resources:
Book
Tweets:
Being sick is the result of how we’ve been eating and treating ourselves. But it’s time we take that into a new perspective. Listen in as @jreichman and @ElissaGoodman share how we can detoxify, reset, and heal our body holistically. #podcast #entrepreneurship #socialgood #inspiration #impactmatters #NextGenChef #EssentialIngredients #soupcleanse #holistichealth #toxins #pathogen #cancerhacks #antiaging #nutrition #naturalhealing #passion #womenfounders
Inspirational Quotes:
03:59 “Entrepreneurs can be successful when you really love what you do. It's not work.” -Elissa Goodman
04:07 “Passion drives so many entrepreneurs. And it creates innovation.” -Justine Reichman
07:55 “One of the biggest things about being unhealthy is we are so hard on ourselves. We don't love ourselves.” -Elissa Goodman
14:25 “It has to be a partnership. You have to have a willing client, you have to have somebody that's motivated and wants to have that change.” -Justine Reichman
21:39 “There's no recipe that's good for everyone else. You got to choose what's right for you.” -Justine Reichman
21:45 “There are certain foods that are not right for you. When things do bother you, you should pay attention to them and tune into your intuition.” -Elissa Goodman
Transcriptions:
Justine Reichman: Welcome to Essential Ingredients. I'm Justine Reichman, your host. Nice to meet you, Elissa Goodman.
Elissa Goodman: I'm so honored to be with you.
Justine Reichman: I'm so excited to have you here. I feel like we chatted so many times. I reached out a couple times.
Elissa Goodman: Yes, we did over COVID that we didn't connect.
Justine Reichman: I'm so pleased. There's so much I want to chat with you about. I feel like we got started on so many different conversations. But first, before we even get into that, I'd love for you to introduce yourself to everybody and let them know who you are. You're a nutritionist, you're a mom, you have a product. So many things, maybe we can just let everybody know who you are.
Elissa Goodman: Yes, I'm Elissa Goodman. About 10 years ago, I started the nutrition business. I'm a holistic nutritionist. I had gone back to school, I would say in my late 40's to get certified in Integrative Nutrition, Eastern and Western. My husband passed away at 45. And just to tell you, I had cancer at 32 as well. So to parents who had cancer, and the reason why I went back to school to get certified was just because I wanted to know more about getting healthy and strong. I also wanted to be healthy and strong for my girls. I felt like we really needed to know what we needed to do to persevere through this trauma. And also to have them feel like they weren't automatically going to get cancer because their parents had cancer. So it was really fun because I loved what I was doing in school.
And then right after school, I got hired by Cafe Gratitude to put a food delivery program together. It was called Cleanse. I knew nothing about cleansing nor did I want to because I love to eat. So deprivation wasn't in my forte. But I did that for about four and a half years. And then M Cafe a year after it. Cafe Gratitude hired me to do their macrobiotic food delivery service for about six and a half years. And then I did some food for the airport for Earthbar and a bunch of other restaurants, which I loved. And then clients were saying, why don't you make a cleanse for us just with your own food. And I had a wonderful cook that was working with me. She was so talented, so we put a Cleanse together. We're now in our eighth year.
Justine Reichman: Wow, that's amazing.
Elissa Goodman: It's just in LA, and it's all fresh and organic. It is plant based for five days, and we give them a lot of guidance and help just to really reset their body. That it's the most incredible thing I could ever do. I also wrote a book called Cancer Hacks. So it's my story because I healed holistically and did some Western. And it's my husband's story as well. And now, I'm working on anti-aging hacks turning back the biological clock.
Justine Reichman: So an author, a mom, a nutritionist, a founder. So many things. Always dream, yeah. I think that's always great. Always true. I'd love to just start with the founder story. Were you a founder always? Did you always know you're gonna be an entrepreneur?
“Entrepreneurs can be successful when you really love what you do. It's not work.” -Elissa Goodman
Elissa Goodman: I grew up with a very entrepreneurial father and family. He was the real entrepreneur. In the early days, he was in the marketing advertising business, and he grew a communication company. So I was very in awe of him. I knew that he was such a people person, and I loved people. I was in the advertising business as well for years. I knew that I always wanted to do something on my own, but I never dreamed it would be nutrition, or helping people heal or get healthy. So it all just happened naturally, because I had a passion for it. And I think that's what helps entrepreneurs who really can be successful is when you really love what you do. It's not work.
“Passion drives so many entrepreneurs. And it creates innovation.” -Justine Reichman
Justine Reichman: It really isn't. I think passion drives so many entrepreneurs. And it creates innovation. It supports innovation for so many people.
Elissa Goodman: And I was lucky I got into the nutrition business early. Kind of early was 10 years ago, 11 years ago, and it was just Erawan hadn't even come about yet. We all know how fabulous Erawan is in terms of the number of products. What they're offering people is just way ahead of most places in the country or the world. But I always shopped at Erawan because I lived here. I always went to Beverly Hills juice, was the only juice place in town. That's where I went. I juice my way out of cancer really that day. I've been juicing ever since. I'm a huge juicer. I also work with a Medical Medium. I have healed myself from hyperthyroidism and Hashimotos. I'm just obsessed with health.
Justine Reichman: Okay, so let's talk about that. I'm really curious. So you Hashimotos, I also read celiac too. So when you did that, are you now in a place where you are so healthy and you do this? Is it to support you not to have it again? Are you now?
Elissa Goodman: That's a great question. Because it's the same thing with cancer. We all have toxins in our body. I think why I love the fact of this whole cleansing lifestyle that I've created for myself and for people out there in LA, or for people outside of LA to lower the pathogen loads. All these illnesses are cancer, autoimmune diabetes, it's inflammatory heart disease. So you really just need to lower the pathogen load, rebuild the immune system, and get yourself hydrated. It's not that hard in terms of, it's pretty simplistic. Eat real food, get nutrients at a cellular level. That's sort of what I preach, and that's how I was able to do it. I was able to lower my toxic load in my body by juicing, by eating real food because it lowers inflammation. And by doing certain herbs that really do help antiviral and antibacterial. But it is still in me. I still have Hashimotos. My antibodies are way down, but it doesn't mean that if I had some trauma or some stress that happened in my life, and I started eating not so well, sleeping not right, it could raise it's ugly head. I think that's always the case. So they might not come to fruition or lifetime. Hopefully not.
Justine Reichman: That was a question I had. I was really curious. I was reading a little bit about you, and I was wondering if that's possible. As a nutritionist and as somebody that has clients, I imagine that you have a variety of clients. Are the majority of your clients looking to be healthy? Do they come to you because they have specific issues like cancer? Or are they anti-aging? I'm curious, who are the bulk of your clients if I could ask them. I don't want to pry.
“One of the biggest things about being unhealthy is we are so hard on ourselves. We don't love ourselves.” -Elissa Goodman
Elissa Goodman: Another fantastic question, because that's what makes it so fascinating for me is that I actually get to help all of the above. I help a lot of cancer, I even do a lot of stage four cancer which is very heart wrenching, I have to say. I've seen them heal, actually. Have you seen the Heal Documentary? I'm sure you know about that. There's so many different modalities that are at our access now. Absolutely just meditation and all kinds of breath work, energy healing, and plant medicine. I'm a big plant medicine girl. You never know it at 62 years old, but it has changed my life in terms of releasing subconscious thoughts that are sort of down regulating our immune system that are negative. We all have some stories that we carry with us, and I think that's one of the biggest things for being unhealthy is we are so hard on ourselves. We don't love ourselves. We have the stories that, I've created some anxiety or fear based where we live in a fight or flight mode. And that is so detrimental for our overall health, really. And then it comes in, it becomes the food, and all in the sleep and the exercise that we maybe don't get. But I get menopause, and I get all kinds of cancer and autoimmune. I get a ton of anti-aging. I'm now obsessed with anti-aging because I did a biological test to see what my age was, and it was 51.4.
Justine Reichman: Wow, good for you.
Elissa Goodman: Yeah, hopefully it stays that way.
Justine Reichman: As a business person, you built this business to be able to heal yourself and also for your kids. And you didn't do it necessarily. You weren't going in it to look at a business, you were going in it out of passion. But you've built a successful business. That just came out of it.
Elissa Goodman: It did. Because a lot of people contact me to ask about how you got started, and how to get started and all of this. If there is a passion for something that you do, most of the time if you're a hard worker and you sort of know how to market yourself, that's a big thing. I was in the marketing business so I was lucky. I didn't know how to market myself and all of that. Like I said, I love people. So it was about meeting all kinds of people to learn as much as I could. That's the best thing about all this. I feel like I've really made my girls proud. I could cry because that's probably the coolest thing that's come out of all this. They were so proud of the fact that I built this from scratch. They don't always eat so healthy, and I don't either. Oh, I definitely love to live life. And I now don't give them a hard time as much as I used to, but I think that just to show them what we're capable of as women as well in this day and age. And then to find a path shinned that they love and not just to be in a job that is just a job.
Justine Reichman: And to have an impact. Think about the impact you're having as a woman, as an entrepreneur. You did this as a single mother originally. It's crazy. You took something that came from your heart that you believed in to support your family, your children from a place where you were probably scared to death. You did this to heal yourself and save your family, and you built a business. And now, you're growing this. But I heard you say that you didn't want to grow it anymore, that there was a finite place it was going. So talk to me about what your plans are for this, because you built this as you went back to school. So you're originally a nutritionist, but now you've built it. It's more of a business, not just a nutrition consultant. Talk to me about that a little bit.
Elissa Goodman: Well, the Cleanse is quite a business. We actually serve about 75 people per week in LA, and we deliver to them twice during the week. So the food is super fresh, it's all in glass. I want to actually teach people how good it feels to eat plant based. I'm not against animal protein at all, like someone like cleansers do add animal protein to the program because they can't sustain without it. But to get all these vegetables, and vitamins, and minerals, and antioxidants, and polyphenols to lower inflammation in five days, you can totally reset your body. So these people are experiencing energy, better sleep, better skin. Digestion is a huge one. Their digestion is working better. They're going to the bathroom more. That's huge.
I get these text messages, but I feel like we were at 75. It's pretty like it runs on a really well oiled machine. I feel like the money is great. I don't do this for the money. I just do it because I want people to heal and be healthy, and I want to give them hope that they can get past their health issues just like I have. That has been the biggest thing for me and my goal. What I want to do is write another book about how we still can heal and how we can age gracefully. We don't have to live with these menopause, or sleep issues, or stress. We have all these issues or weight that we carry we can't get rid of. There's all these things that are happening. We're nutrient deficient and we feel foggy headed. I mean, it's crazy. And we don't have to be. It's not supposed to be like that. We're supposed to be energized, feel good and look good. We have another many years to live, especially like at 62.
I hope I live 30 more years at least. So that's a lot of years that I want to spend healthy and motivated. So I think I don't know what's going to happen with the Cleanse. And then if I find a partner that might partner with me and grow it in a way that we can still have it be fresh and taste like it's homemade, and farm to table, that would be the ultimate. The Bars do sell across the country so that probably would be an option for me to go bigger with the bars, but they're very temperamental because they're fresh and frozen. So that can be tricky in the summer when it's like degrees. I love my clients. I love being able to work one on one because I can tap into their places where they're at, where they're not feeling that even the Sage work answers. I can tap into their pain and give them hope, which is the most incredible thing. Even the other clients that I have are feeling hopeless with maybe a little bit of blood sugar issues. I've been there. I've had all the health issues except for diabetes.
Justine Reichman: I'm curious, I'd love to just maybe share with some of the people watching or listening. What are some of, maybe you can share a story of the impact you've seen with one of your clients. We're not mentioning names, of course. How it's impacted their lives by being able to integrate this into their diet, into their life. I hate to use the word diet, but I'm into their regimen.
Elissa Goodman: Yeah. There are so many because, like I was saying earlier, this isn't rocket science of what I'm teaching them and more. What we talked about was also great. There are all the things that we know, but we kind of forget along the way. What's really important, I would say with the many clients when I tell them to hydrate and properly hydrate now, there's one thing with height. We have an epidemic of dehydration so our organs are dehydrated. We detox consistently and mostly through the night. So when we wake up, we're massively dehydrated. So most clients go right to coffee, right to tea, or right to breakfast. So when I tell them to drink two cups of water even, how easy is that? It is life changing for them. They feel energized, they actually rehydrate before their coffee. They'll go to the bathroom. I mean, some are a little constipated.
I have a powder that I love, it's a hydrating powder called Ultima Replenisher. It kind of lived in this cell for 10 years, and it's full of macro minerals. Minerals are what help water go into your cells. We always drink electrolyte drinks with sodium, but what really is important is the balance of magnesium, calcium, and potassium. All of those things. So that stuff is incredible to energize people to get mental alertness to also go to the bathroom regularly. That's huge. If I can get people to hydrate, that's massive. And also detox. And the first line of detoxing is going in the bathroom like full elimination. We talked about a lot, sorry about that. That's the first line of Dan. You can't believe how many people don't go to the bathroom regularly. And going once a day is considered constipated, which I did not know that. I know my clients hate me when I say that. You're supposed to go after every meal, two to three times. It's like dogs. We take our dogs out every day, and they do. They do or as long as it works. But it's all about moderation and real food. We eat all this processed food, we eat all these fillers and chemicals. We even take them in our supplements, and it is wreaking havoc with our digestive system.
“It has to be a partnership. You have to have a willing client, you have to have somebody that's motivated and wants to have that change.” -Justine Reichman
So when I put people on a hydration program, when I maybe start them juicing, I've had clients, a lot of clients use just simple juices. Even just cucumber juice is full of minerals, it lowers inflammation, intestines, it's life changing. And then I get them on more of a plant base, but not reckon that in itself is incredible because it has lots of fiber. So it's helping push food through this small intestine, because it takes a long time for food to go through their digestive issues. I worked with this one client. It's on my blog today. We did an interview with her. It's been about two years now and she lost like, I think it was 26 pounds. She had a lot of health issues. She was low energy. Weight was an issue, mental fogginess was an issue, menopause. And she's just a dynamo now. So she's a totally different person. I did put her on a ton of supplements. I just changed her diet and guided her along the way and told her that you can get past this. You don't have to feel like this just gave her hope, and it was not that hard. But she also was willing to do the work.
Justine Reichman: It has to be a partnership. You have to have a willing part. You have to have a willing client, you have to have somebody that's motivated and wants to have that change. I'm curious because I don't know if anybody's ever asked you this before. But I've heard that sometimes people say, when we choose, we have too much of that cucumber or too much of that celery, we wouldn't actually eat that much. Has anybody ever asked you about this before?
Elissa Goodman: No, absolutely. It has been fascinating because the medical media made juicing celery so infamous. There are probably billions of people around the world (inaudible) because I've worked with him for a year and a half. I was part of his practitioner group. It was one of the most fascinating and exciting things I've ever done. He is a little crazy, but he has great habits in terms of like, he's the one that talked to me about lowering pathogen loads. And celery juice can do that. A lot of clients who have acid reflux, and GERD, and digestive stuff going on the celery juice was really game changing and help them go up all their acidic romulus, and also help their digestive, help SIBO and things like that. If you juice cucumber, you just can't get enough nutrients. Isn't that right? The answer to your question is you can't get enough. So really, you can't overdo it. You can overdo sugar. We go into the store, you even can go into some juice places and there's an apple in your juice, and it's 16 ounces. And it can be up to 18 grams of sugar. We only need 25 added grams of sugar a day, but one juice can be three quarters of what you need. And that's fat.
Justine Reichman: Yeah, I don't like the really sweet ones. So I just want to wrap up by asking you, what's new and what's next in the space of building a better food system?
Elissa Goodman: Good question. I hope what's next. It's sad to say that a lot of people have had a very tough time with COVID. It's been a pretty fabulous time for me because it's the first time in my entire life at 60 that I got to get off the treadmill. And then over the two years, I took really good care of myself, and I got to eat at home and cook real food, and bring in vegetables and be really conscious of it. I'm noticing more and more people are really interested in their health and want to get healthy, but don't want to have to take a lot of supplements. Or some of them don't even want to have to juice. I feel like if people are aware of getting hydrated with good water and filtered water, drinking enough water to make sure that they stay hydrated to detox their body, and eat real food, 8 to 10 vegetables a day, people are going on that bandwagon. They want to get healthy. So I feel like, hopefully, they're not going to be eating as much processed food or junk, and maybe not drinking as much alcohol, things like that that will keep them on the track sleeping better, because they maybe got to sleep better. The stress over COVID, that's huge. But with the food system, I think Erawan has done a beautiful job of exposing what is available that can be overwhelming in terms of all the superfoods and healthy stuff. But I feel like going back to the basics of real food and hopefully going more organic. Like I said, staying hydrated, eating real foods, sleeping, just distressing, figuring out those ways. Hopefully, really honoring who you are and taking care of yourself and picking the right food for yourself.
“There's no recipe that's good for everyone else. You got to choose what's right for you.” -Justine Reichman
Justine Reichman: I think that that's the point because there's no recipe that's good for everyone else. I think you have to choose what's right for you.
Elissa Goodman: There's certain foods that are not right. Like you were saying earlier, not right for you that I could eat when things bother you and you should pay attention to them and tune into your intuition.
“There are certain foods that are not right for you. When things do bother you, you should pay attention to them and tune into your intuition.” -Elissa Goodman
Justine Reichman: I think that you got to pay attention. If it doesn't make you feel good, don't eat it. Thank you, Elissa, so much for joining us. I really appreciate it. It was great to have you.
Elissa Goodman: It was such an honor.
Justine Reichman: And thank you to everyone that tuned in today for our podcasts and our video tasks.
