Meet Stephanie McPherson | Health, Worthiness and Empowerment Coach, Cooking Show Host, Cookbook Author

We had the good fortune of connecting with Stephanie McPherson and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Stephanie, what is the most important factor behind your success?
The most important factor behind my success and the success of my brand DeFaRekinLicious is my passion for health and wellness combined with my passion for personal worthiness and empowerment!

I’ve been on the journey of health, wellness, personal growth and empowerment since my early 20’s. It is insurmountable what this has done for me my entire adult life. DeFaRekinLicious’s pronounced, “De Fuh Rick’n Licious” core message is, Healthy IS Delicious! So many people associate healthy food with bland, and mostly tasteless food. Well, that is not the case with my food. How I make my dishes healthy is with the certain ingredients I use in replacement of lesser healthier options; for instance, I use Greek yogurt in things such as my deviled eggs, tartar sauce or anything normally calling for mayo or sour cream. The Greek yogurt, providing those probiotics that are so good for our gut, while there is no compromise in flavor what-so-ever. My dishes are also packed with vegetables, where veggies are not typically used within a dish, such as my Piccata dishes, for one example, are filled with colorful peppers and onions, spinach, broccoli or asparagus, which add antioxidants that are essential in fighting the free radicals we are exposed to every day. My passion is for people to fuel their bodies with healthy food and that is a much easier decision when something tastes, DeFaRekinLicious!

Furthermore, personal worthiness and empowerment come into play when one realizes how “worthy” they are to make the choices that are aligned with creating good health, and personal fulfillment, which lead to a greater sense of happiness and JOY in one’s life.

Overall, the message I have conveyed thru my cooking show, cookbook and “brand” is a message of increased health, while living a fulfilling life… one that is intentional and on purpose!

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
So, it all started when as a child; I was so inspired by my grandma to cook! From helping her make the breakfast biscuits to all the other items my family enjoyed, I was ALWAYS in the kitchen helping her prepare our family meals! I LOVED my grandma’s food. Everything was made from scratch, from her cakes and pies, to her potato salad, jams and jellies, I so enjoyed helping her prepare and eating her food. I also used to play “restaurant” with my mama when I was a kid. My affinity for food and serving it to the people I care about, was paramount in my doing what I am doing today through Healthy Chef Steph. As I mentioned before, my journey started in my 20’s and that lead to a life long passion for preparing and sharing healthy and scrumptiously delicious food.

However, I actually went to college and graduated with a bachelor’s in biology b/c one of my, “career passions” was to be in the operating rooms watching surgery. While getting to watch surgeries, I successfully sold all kinds of equipment, etc. into the cardiothoracic OR’s. While I was extremely successful as a sales person, there were situations that kept happening that eventually led me to wake up and realize I was not operating my life in accordance to my true core values, which is health and wellness and personal empowerment. So in 2015 I started a year long course through the Institute for Integrative Nutrition and became certified as a health coach by 2016. Soon upon receiving my certification, I started my cooking show in my kitchen by merely setting my iPhone up to record and I did my first episode of DeFaRekinLicious! It got over 1700 views in 24 hours and so many comments from family and friends! It was hilarious and FUN! By the second episode of DeFaRekinLicious, I had learned how to edit in iMovie and add effects through another video editing app called Videorama! DeFaRekinLicious came to life!!! One of my heart pounding, laser-focused, PASSIONS is to host cooking shows via a major world-watched network! I have been fire-focused, dedicated to ensuring this happens. I am confident one of my gifts to the world is through my cooking and food based shows.

One thing I have yet to mention is my podcast Empowered Conversations, a podcast I hosted “live” for 2 ½ years via YouTube and Facebook! I spoke with people from all over the world on a myriad of different subjects, from those sharing tools that lead to living your best most fulfilled life, to spiritual mentors, business coaches and health coaches, to as well people who have survived domestic abuse, drug abuse and sexual abuse, and to someone sharing her story of escaping being sex trafficked! My podcast was one empowered conversation after another. In an earlier question you ask who inspired me, well one person in particular is David Chang. David is the host of a Netflix show called, Ugly Delicious. Ugly Delicious is a show where David travels all over the world and through food and culture, connects with people from all walks of life as he sits down with them episode after episode and has real human-connection conversations! After watching this show, I became heart-pounding inspired to combine both DeFaRekinLicious and Empowered Conversations together into a show. I have interviewed so many people from all around the world and I too have appeared on many other people from around the world’s podcasts, sharing my truth, my story, my passions and my gifts with the world.

Dealing with adversity and many, “pull out the rug from under me” situations have been a major part of my journey. However, the floor I hit serves more as a trampoline! I bounce back up, catapulting, even more determined towards my mission. I have learned to never take anything personally; if someone is being ugly to me, it says little if nothing to do with me and everything to do with where they are in their journey. I have learned to keep going and trust my intuition. “Persevering” in the face of obstacles is my nature! When I unapologetically shine in my divine nature, I am giving others the permission to shine in their divine nature as well! Most likely the BIGGEST and most important reason that I am a worthiness-empowerment coach! 😉

I most likely get this mentality and perseverance from my dad, who is a very strong man, both mentally and physically. I watched him growing up dealing with, “life’s beatdowns” as everyone experiences, but he held it together. He ALWAYS worked out or participated in some form of exercise, ate healthily, (fed us healthily) and sometimes worked 3 jobs to keep up the household, while also being a part of clubs like the Lions Club and the Kiwanis Club, to being there for every ballet recital, play or sporting event that my brothers and I participated in. He was also a cub scout leader for my brothers and coached kids’ baseball. Recently at 78 years old my dad was ziplining in the Appalachian Mountains. There is a picture of him sticking his tongue out as he is about to zip away! My dad has been one of the BIGGEST inspiring factors in my life!!!
He is such an amazing man!

DeFaRekinLicous is truly about taking on the personal fortitude to creating your best, most fulfilled life, a life filled with JOY, happiness and prosperity in all forms! We are the creators of our lives. “If it’s gonna be, it’s up to me!”

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Actually, my girlfriend Heather, a Oracle and Spiritual advisor, whom I had only met online through the various meditation and spiritual based social media groups we are a part of, came to visit me, while on a 6 weeklong journey across the country. She too has been a guest on my podcast Empowered Conversations and I a guest on her and her cohosts show, Tuesday Talks. Her and I set out to the art district of NoDa, here in Charlotte. We ate at a local hotspot called Dave’s Hot Chicken in Central and then set out to various places all and around the NoDa and Central areas. We then visited the Bag Lady, a local crystal shop in the Elizabeth area where she got to meet my friend Brenden, who designs his own jewelry and is all around fabulous! One day we hiked Crowders Mountain and then enjoyed drinks and snacks, app style, in Southend. One day we ended the day back at my place with me preparing my Sesame, Orange, Ginger Seared Salmon for our dinner! Heather had seen me share that dish in numerous reels and pictures and she was like you MUST make that for me! And of course she LOVED it!!

However, if a friend were here for a week, I would take them to all those places but include the art galleries around Charlotte, the Bechtler Museum is one of my favorites, as well as the Mint Museum. Oh and how can I forget the White Water Center?! During the summer, every Thursday evening they have live music with the background of the white-water rafting water splashing behind the stage. I love taking people here too.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
Where to start…

In my early 20’s I started noticing changes in my body composition that I was not a big fan of and fortunately I was dating a guy at that time named Tony, who was a gym rat and fitness fanatic and he suggested I go to the gym with him. Tony also taught me how to eat clean and healthy. Tony and his roommates taught me all about physical fitness in the gym, while I also learned the benefits of super clean eating. I was all in and dedicated to this new “lifestyle”. My daily food consisted of grilled chicken and plain vegetables, tuna out of a can with plain rice or pasta, all around clean, but tasteless bland food; I know if you are reading this you may be saying, yuck! Well soon thereafter, I came across Cooking Light magazine; I subscribed for probably 10 years and though cooking so many of the dishes out of Cooking Light, I taught myself how to make healthy food… delicious! Right around that same time I also came across the book, The Empowered Mind, authored by Gini Graham Scott. Through completing the plethora of exercises in this book, I came into my own sense of self power and empowerment through the personal awareness and self-knowledge I was cultivating. I started using these tools that I was learning about in this book, to figure out what my core values were, what I was skilled at and enjoyed doing. This showed me how to live a life being intentional, on purpose and doing the things that lit me up and set my heart on fire! I soon realized I had a heart-pounding passion to share this knowledge and these tools I was learning about with others.

In 2016 when I started my cooking show, DeFaRekinLicious so many of my friends jumped at the chance to be my Special Guest Taste Testers and appear on the show. This helped bring the overall humorous flare I desired to be present in the show, while sharing that message that healthy IS delicious! My cat Salmon was a kitten at the time, and she also appeared on the very first episode of the show and she has been in so many of my cooking reels, etc. since! If you watch the very first episode, you’ll see how she was playing and messing around with the camera, so I pick her up and introduce her to everyone. 💃🏻🐈
She’s quite the little character who has brought so much joy to people through her funny shenanigans during my cooking videos.!

Back in 2019, I started catering dinners for friends, which lead to my friend Theresa calling me up one day and asking me if I would be willing to make some healthy meals for her aging parents, who were no longer physically able to cook for themselves. I was like Y.E.S. and this is how Healthy Chef Steph Meal Prep was born. I soon became an LLC, then became serve safe certified; I then contracted with a local commercial kitchen called Carolina’s Commercial Kitchen. CCK is where I operate my weekly meal prep delivery service, delivering healthy and Scrummmptiously, fully prepared meals to my customers every Monday!

Website: https://healthychefsteph.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/de_fa_rekin_licious/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanie-mcpherson-b5a29b127/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Defarekinlicious/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@StephanieDeliciousConversation

Other: Healthy Chef Steph IG – https://www.instagram.com/healthychefsteph704/

DeFaRekinLicious Cooking show compilations – https://youtu.be/7r-Sa_juXiw?si=0UEMmHP1I5Wmi77r

DFL website – https://defarekinlicious.com/

Image Credits
All images belong to me.