Today we’d like to introduce you to Jenn Malecha.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Jenn. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
From the outside, I looked like your typical healthy person. I ate “healthy”, meaning I ate lean meat such as boneless, skinless chicken breast and vegetables. I worked out every day of the week and had a muscular build. I was a personal trainer after all, and from the outside I definitely looked the part. Even on paper, I looked perfect: normal cholesterol, heart rate and blood pressure levels. My doctor commented at every annual physical how I was the “picture of perfect health” but I didn’t feel that way on the inside. Over time I began to feel more uncomfortable in my body. I questioned my health as my allergies grew increasingly worse every year and I struggled to keep my eyes open in the afternoon while training my clients. My skin cancer diagnosis was the BIG red flag I needed to understand something deeper was wrong. Around this same time, I had an ear infection that took me out of commission for days, I was experiencing more aches, pains and migraines. It was becoming clear there was more to health than just diet and exercise.
Shortly after my diagnosis, I enrolled in the Functional Diagnostic Nutrition® Course to dig deeper into my own health issues, to get to the bottom of them once and for all. And that’s exactly what I did. As I sit here writing this, I am grateful to say I haven’t had an ear infection since that last one, seasonal changes and pollen are a blip on my radar these days, I have more energy than I know what to do with sometimes, the cancer has never come back and I feel more at home in my body than I ever could have imagined. I made the impossible possible. With my newly acquired knowledge as a Functional Diagnostic Nutrition® Practitioner, I aspire to help others struggling with their health, even though they were “eating right” and working out. My training gave me a whole new way of looking at disease and health.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
His journey has been hard at times, inspiring at times, and above all educational when it comes to learning about what my body needs. As an FDN Practitioner, I run all kinds of simple at-home lab tests for my clients so we can take a deeper look at their health to figure out what’s holding them back from living their fullest life with their ideal health and weight. The biggest lesson I teach my clients is… “Your health is a journey. It will change direction as you learn more and you will evolve with it, so don’t get frustrated, just hold space for patience and the potential for change. What you once thought was healthy might look different once you understand your body better.”
I have learned to embrace this myself. I no longer chase the ideal 125-pound frame because I feel good in my body, just the way it is. Because my energy is endless, my hormones are stable and I feel limitless as a result. When I look in the mirror, I can appreciate my body for how she supports me. But I have to say that although I have adopted a more holistic version of a healthy lifestyle, and I teach others to do the same, it still hasn’t been peaches ‘n cream all of the time. In 2016, my health went haywire again. In May of 2016, I opened my guest room closet door and spotted mold growing on the ceiling. It was a day of great relief and fear for me. On that day, everything that I had been experiencing leading up to that moment came into focus.
Exposure to toxic mold in my home over an unknown period of time resulted in cystic acne, irregular and unusually long periods (12 days to be exact), weight gain again, bouts of depression and anxiety that ‘snuck’ up on me quickly for no previously known reason in 2016. And ultimately mold was likely one of the largest environmental factors leading to my diagnosis of Hashimoto’s at this time. All after I had restored my health once before. Thankfully my knowledge as an FDN Practitioner came in handy once again. I knew exactly what to do with my diet, sleep, exercise and self-care to support my healing process. I took action to reduce even more stress in my life, to support my body even more and implement the right supplements that would speed up the detox and healing process. I’m happy to say that within just six short months after finding the mold, my Hashimoto’s was in remission and I was on my way to feeling 100% like myself again.
Please tell us about (W)holistic Health Boss.
I support busy, health-mind professionals in taking back control of their health by giving them access to the right lab testing to find the missing pieces of their health puzzle so they can actually fix what is wrong and get back to feeling like themselves again. I empower clients by teaching them a model of self-care to relieve a variety of health complaints and improve overall wellbeing. Using a functional diagnostic and holistic approach, I help to identify healing opportunities (within the hormone, gut and immune systems, etc.) that are creating dysfunction or imbalance in the body. Then, we work together to restore balance in the body using tools to improve diet, rest, exercise, stress reduction and natural supplementation to promote the healing process.
To help you better understand my process, here are some insights into my functional health coaching approach:
How: A series of lab tests and questionnaires are used to uncover hidden stressors and identify healing opportunities. Most of the lab tests are self-administered and are saliva or urine based, and some require a stool or blood sample (and a possible trip to a lab for the blood draw). Based upon the client’s main health complaints, I will recommend specific lab test(s) to do the detective work.
What: Using the results from the questionnaires and lab tests, we can identify:
How well the body is responding to stress (or in most cases, how it’s NOT responding at all).
How the body is robbing itself of hormones to create other hormones that it is lacking.
How healthy the gut is (or isn’t); if parasites, bacteria or yeast are present and creating toxic overload.
How clogged the liver might be creating a backup in all the bodily systems.
And which foods you may be intolerant to which are creating an inflammatory response.
Why: In my past experience as a personal trainer, I have worked with many clients who have struggled with weight loss among other personal health issues preventing them from reaching their optimal health and enjoying life to the fullest. I have even struggled myself with weight loss in the past- lack of energy, low libido, seasonal allergies, and chronic muscle and joint aches. You don’t have to live this way!!!
Most of your “common” symptoms/aches/pains aren’t “normal” or a “part of getting older” but a result of some type of imbalance or dysfunction occurring in the body. Once balance is restored, those symptoms/aches/pains will disappear altogether, or at least diminish, making weight loss and optimal health a reality!
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
One of the biggest actions I’ve learned you can take is relaxing more (aka working less) to allow your body to enter the rest and digest or parasympathetic state. This is when healing really happens allowing you to take more steps forward even if your choices or environment took some steps back.
Scheduling time away from my computer, being outside and trading perfectionism for presence are some of the ways I manage my urge to work too much.
Here are 10 of my favorite ways to stop and shift from work-mode to relax-mode that instantly flip the switch in the body from fight or flight (sympathetic and stressed) to rest and digest (parasympathetic) mode:
Lay down and prop your feet up for 10+ minutes.
Take a breath break; inhale 5 sec., hold for 5, exhale for 7, repeat 5-10x.
Eat meals outside and/or away from your computer and phone.
Schedule time to explore the outdoors and disconnect.
Create a nightly wind-down routine and be asleep by 10pm.
Set Do-Not-Disturb on your phone daily 9pm-7am.
Spend quality time with furry family members or friends (dog, cat, etc.).
Find a hobby that entices you and brings you a bunch of joy.
Engage in therapeutic mental challenges such as puzzles, crosswords and painting.
Put reminders in your calendar to stop working and do something relaxing such as read a book, watch your favorite TV show, do arts and crafts or just sit and stare out at the world.
Even with these tools in my back pocket, that little voice inside my head still tries to encourage me to keep working to reap the rewards of my labor, but I know better now. I know what it feels like to feel at home in my body, to wake up rested, to feel strong, and to never ever get sick – this is way more worth it than that extra hour or minute of work I think I should put in.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://wholistichealthboss.com
- Phone: (619) 800-8384
- Email: jenn@wholistichealthboss.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wholistichealthboss/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wholistichealthboss
- Other: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/Mytravelfit
Image Credit:
Julie Magnussen Photography https://www.juliemagnussen.com
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