Why I created Living Better with Jen
There was a time when I was doing everything right… and still didn’t feel like myself.
From the outside looking in, nothing
looked particularly wrong.
And honestly, nothing felt drastically
wrong either.
It just didn’t quite feel right.
I was taking care of myself.
I was paying attention.
I was trying.
Yet still, something felt off.
Not enough to explain easily, and certainly nothing I could identify during a quick 10 minute appointment at the doctor,
but enough that I couldn’t ignore it.
So I did what most of us do.
I Googled, and I booked the appointments.
My naturopath, my family doctor, my osteopath.
I asked questions, lots and lots of questions.
I was told this was aging.
I was told I was doing well.
I was told this was "normal".
I was frustrated… but I followed the advice.
I should be able to figure this out.
I should feel better.
I should be healthier. Happier.
I shoulded all over my situation.
But I kept finding myself in the same place.
I would try something new and wait to see if it worked.
I gave it time. Was patient. Trusted the process.
And then... it didn’t work, again.
I remember focusing so much on doing what I thought I was supposed to be doing. I was trying to support my body in the way I thought I was supposed to.
So. much. protein.
I found myself wondering: what I was missing?
My weight would shift in ways that didn’t feel predictable, and my hormones felt out of sync with how I expected my body to work. My body, which had worked a certain way for my entire life, suddenly wasn't working.
And the hardest part wasn’t that I didn’t have answers.
It was that I had pieces of answers and those pieces didn’t seem to fit together.
The answers didn’t even seem to answer the questions.
Conventional medicine had one way of looking at things.
Natural medicine had another.
Both Natural medicine and Conventional medicine had value.
Both made sense in their own way. But they didn’t seem to speak to each other. I found myself somewhere in the middle.
No one was really helping me connect the dots and
I don’t think there was one single moment where everything changed.
It was quieter than that.
I started paying closer attention to what I was feeling,
what was working and what wasn’t, the questions that didn’t quite have answers yet.
I started asking differently.
Listening differently.
Advocating for myself in a way I hadn’t before.
Health doesn’t exist in isolation.
You can’t separate the body from the life it’s living.
For years, I worked as a nurse going into people’s homes, and that shifted something in me, too. When I was in their homes, I wasn’t just seeing symptoms. I was seeing people’s lives.
What they ate, how they moved through their day,
what they were carrying emotionally, I saw how they connected to the people around them. I saw the small things, the products they used and the routines they followed, I began to notice how much those things mattered.
Their symptoms, their healing, their lives. It all added up.
I realized something I couldn’t unsee.
When I found the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, something in me clicked. My training as a health coach introduced me to a more holistic way of understanding health.
It didn’t feel like I was being handed a completely new way of thinking.
It felt like I was finally being given language for what I had already been noticing.
No two people respond the same way. We are all individual and our health is shaped by more than just one factor.
Not by replacing one approach with another, but by learning how they could work together. And that’s the space I’m living in now, and the space I care deeply about.
The space between advice and understanding.
Because so many women are doing everything they’ve been told to do.
They’re showing up to appointments. They’re trying to take care of themselves.
They’re making changes, paying attention, doing their best. And still… something doesn’t feel quite right.
When people come to me, they’re not usually looking for another plan. They’re looking for clarity and a place to talk things through. To be heard. To look at the full picture, not just symptoms or lab results, but everything that’s been going on. We start here. And from here, things begin to make more sense.
I don’t believe the answer is choosing one approach over another.
I believe it’s learning how to see the whole picture.
And helping women feel more at home in their bodies again, clearer, more grounded, and no longer guessing. Through Living Better with Jen, I work with women who are often doing everything “right” and still not feeling like themselves, even when everything looks “normal”,
you’re not alone.
Even though it can feel lonely,
you don’t have to make sense of it on your own.