"New Year, Still You" - Balanced Holistic Wellness with Jill Kay
Did you catch our IG Live chat with Jill Kay of Down to Earth Wellness? Jill had some awesome insights into preventing or managing burnout, what a healthy "cleanse" actually looks like, and how to take a balanced approach to trying to achieve total wellness.
Nadea: I just want to give you a bit of an introduction about why I think Jill is great before she joins us. I started working with Jill a few years ago now. It feels like just yesterday, but it was a long time ago, I think.
For those of you who know me, you’ll already know this, but if you don’t, I was not in a very healthy place a few years ago, and I was struggling a lot with disordered eating and a lot of just not feeling good — feeling burned out — and I decided that it was time to make some changes in my life so that I started feeling better and that I needed to repair my relationship with food, and I managed to find Jill. Jill was amazing at helping me to learn how to love food again in a really happy, nourishing, chill way, where it was really about finding joy and feeling good. She’s extremely insightful about helping you learn what you need to do to take care of yourself to feel good.
So I’m looking forward to Jill joining us to talk about how we can deal with burnout, a little bit about detoxification, and some overall tips for having a balanced start to our new year. Basically I love Jill, and everybody should also love Jill. If you’re not following her, she’s a joy to follow on Instagram.
How are you doing, Jill? Did I miss anything in my introduction? It was a little biased because it was about my personal experience. [laughs]
Jill: No, I just work a lot with women who are feeling burned out and who want to have more energy to get back to the adventures that feed their soul and light them up. I do a lot of that — functional nutrition. I think you mentioned nice things — thank you for that. I work in a functional nutrition and holistic nutrition capacity, looking at diet, lifestyle, supplementation, and getting nerdy with science and stuff like that. I definitely take the holistic approach.
Nadea: I love the way that you approach wellness. I think it’s brilliant. So I’m excited to ask you some questions.
Jill: Let’s dive in!
Nadea: So I was really looking forward to getting your thoughts on burnout because that’s something that you really specialize in. It’s kind of your niche, and you really do that well. So as a holistic wellness coach, would you say that you’ve been noticing an increase in burnout since the pandemic?
Jill: Yeah, definitely. I think that stress is of course higher. Work situations have changed for people. Life situations have changed. Collective stress is high. Stress takes a toll on energy, our adrenals, our emotional health — and of course burnout. So I’m definitely seeing more fatigue. And then we throw on winter as well and all the darkness — so there’s definitely some added burnout, I think, that is taking a toll on people for sure.
Nadea: Okay, good to know that it’s not just me.
Jill: No, it’s definitely happening, I think. It’s multifactorial, right? So there are a lot of factors, but the pandemic is a huge stressor for people in different ways for sure.
Nadea: Yeah, I think that’s going to comfort a few people for sure. So tying in with that, I’ve been seeing a lot of this whole “new year, new you” concept, which is part of why we wanted to chat with different people about it — because it’s being marketed to a lot to people at this time of year, and I am noticing that, in general, we have this obsession in our culture where people will set a bunch of very intense goals — in my field, it ends up being a lot of fitness goals — and they’ll decide at the outset of their year that they need to “go hard or go home”, they need to push themselves — they’re like, “This is going to be the year that I absolutely crush it!” The other thing I hear a lot is “no pain, no gain!”
So I would love to get your thoughts on that approach. Do you think that pays off, and what happens to a body when you approach life that way?
Jill: Yeah, I definitely am aware of that approach as well, and I find that it’s kind of — you know, “beat your body up! Just grind on! Push through! Grind, grind, grind! Pain is weakness!” — that kind of stuff. It really moves away from that intuitive connection to your body and listening to your body. It’s also sometimes a quick fix or kind of a diet-y mentality — like we’re “on the wagon” and then we’re “off the wagon”.
I more believe in creating a sustainable lifestyle change. Consistency is key — small, incremental changes over time that stack onto our habits and that are healthy and that become a lifestyle so that it’s not like we’re on this plan, then we’re off this plan or this cleanse or this detox, and it’s more about “let’s tune into our body — how is it feeling? What is it telling us?”
"It’s more about 'let’s tune into our body — how is it feeling? What is it telling us?'”
Of course, set goals… We can set goals, but we have to set realistic goals and attainable goals — not that “me against my body mentality”, like “I’m going to make you push on, go on, and grind on even if you don’t want to!” I don’t really believe in that because it’s a fast track to burnout if you’re like, “I’ll just push it at the gym even though I don’t feel like it!” I much more believe in “let’s listen to the body”.
It’s cyclical as well — women have a cycle. We have a cycle of energy that changes every month at different times of the month, so we can really modify our exercise and our diet — even our schedules. So I’m much more about the intuitive approach. I definitely believe in setting goals; I just find that sometimes in the new year, it’s very much shaming ourselves — like “I have to do this! I have to go, go, go!” We have these unattainable plans and then we fall off and then we feel bad — that kind of thing.
Nadea: I think people are craving change and people do want to see big, dramatic changes. But what I like about your approach is that you can still have those meaningful change, but your perspective is just a little bit more stretched out and maybe a little bit more reasonable instead of thinking you need to hit it hard and fast and then suddenly it’s not going to work.
Jill: Ten days! [laughs]
Nadea: Yeah, exactly. [laughs]
Jill: Ten days and it’s over — more like, let’s make one small change a week. We have a goal — like, whatever that goal might be — but let’s be realistic and have it attainable so that there is no wagon to fall off of. It’s just small lifestyle changes for the long term. That’s what I have found has worked for me. I used to try things — years ago — short-term things — and I could never stick with it. Then I would feel bad.
I found that what worked was small, incremental changes. Then all of a sudden, you look back and you’re like, “Wow, it’s been three months and I’ve done so many small, little changes that seemed kind of simple and mundane or not exciting, and they changed everything. I’ve changed my whole lifestyle because of these small little changes.” So that’s kind of the approach I take.
Nadea: Yeah, that makes sense to me. I think that change is exciting. So even if it doesn’t look like it at the outset, the accumulation of it all is really nice.
Jill: It’s like, “Drink more water.” “Oh, yeah. More water.” “Go to bed!” “Oh, yeah.” It’s like, no — those things are huge when it comes to reaching our goals!
Nadea: Absolutely! And you’re a great cheerleader for that for sure.
Jill: Oh, thanks. I’m always blabbing about those key things.
Nadea: So on the subject of burnout — I’m thinking that a lot of people might be suspecting that they are burned out or they’re on the path to being burned out. So what are some signs that a person might be a little burned out?
"I’ve changed my whole lifestyle because of these small little changes."
Jill: There are some sneaky ones and some obvious ones. Obviously you’re feeling more tired. You are not able to get through a day. You’re exhausted. You need naps. You’re pressing snooze a lot. You could just sleep the whole day. That’s where burnout is kind of kicking in. Maybe you’re wired and tired at night. Maybe we’re seeing your stress hormones become more inverted. Stress hormones should, you know, wake us in the morning and then they go down at night, but maybe they’re more inverted so that you’re wired and tired at night, you’re waking up in the middle of the night, you can’t sleep or you can sleep forever.
Some people find that they’re craving stimulants — they need their coffee, they need their sugar, they need their caffeine more than ever. Their nervous system needs those stimulants.
Other things are — even weird things like you scare easily — like if someone walks by and you’re like “Ah!” — nervous. It’s a sign that your nervous system is getting a little frazzled, or it can be a sign. That ties back into your adrenal glands.
Other things — craving salty foods and again stimulants or sugar — even anxiety, depression, melancholy — you know, you just can’t keep up with the day-to-day stress of life — the tolerance for stress is going down. You don’t even want to watch scary movies. Like, the nervous system can’t handle that. Maybe you can relate?
Nadea: [laughing] Yeah, I’m laughing not because it’s funny but because it’s terrible and also so many of us experience this. You’re describing a lot of us humans.
Jill: It’s these weird little things — of course it’s energy and some people even feel more wired in the day. They just go, go, go because their stress hormones are so high, but they’re tired and they’re living off of coffee and they’re just flying at it and they have energy crashes. They’re dealing with cravings. Even weird things like your eyes are getting twitchy, your muscles are getting twitchy and crampy, and/or your PMS is getting worse. Those are not necessarily signs of burnout, but stress is taking a toll. It’s taking a toll on your energy. It’s taking a toll on your hormones.
I had a couple of other thoughts — dizziness — you feel faint when you go from lying down to standing up. Again, signs that adrenals and the nervous system need some love. There are a lot of little sneaky signs as well.
The other one too is that your resiliency for stress is going down -- like, you just can’t keep up with life like you used to. That’s when I noticed I was burning out. When I was in school and doing all the things, I could come home after work and go exercise and cook dinner and then study until 8:30/9:00 at night, and I would do that. But gradually — and you don’t even notice — you just can’t do that anymore. I couldn’t do those three things. I could do one of them or two of them, and I just couldn’t keep up. Some people can’t handle stress — the stress is becoming too much — the tolerance for stress and exercise — exercise is maybe burning you out like it didn’t before. So it’s definitely multi-layered — it’s not just “I’m tired”; it’s all these other things as well that can show up.
Nadea: And that’s worth taking seriously and not just shoving on the back burner, because it might end up being an issue later.
Obviously you have so many different ways that a person can recover from burnout, and I think you’re really good at helping people figure out their individual approach. That’s something that I think is worth investing in — for people to do that with you. But I was thinking that you may have one or two sort of general ideas for if a person is burned out — some steps that they could take that might be beneficial.
Jill: Yeah, for sure. There’s getting ahead of it. There’s mitigating it. There’s reducing it. Then there’s trying to recover from it. There are different phases of burnout, of course. So we always want to get ahead of it. But if we’re in it, there are some things we can do.
Sometimes those protocols and approaches will be different depending on where the person is at — like, if they’ve been burned out for a really long time or if they’re just getting burned out. But some key things are — oddly enough, it’s not just energy but it’s looking at where all your factors of stress are coming from, because stress impacts the nervous system and the adrenal glands — our fight -or-flight glands. So looking at our body as a barrel, we want to empty our barrel every day of stress — and we want to always be emptying it. If we’re not emptying it, that barrel is going to start overflowing and it’s going to tell us in different ways — through fatigue, burnout, even mood changes, skin issues — all sorts of stuff — so we need to empty that barrel and look at what’s filling that barrel.
So looking at kind of the whole-body burden — physical stress — are you overexercising or under-exercising? Because if you’re exercising and you feel exhausted afterwards — just tanked and wiped out — that’s something to be mindful of. You should feel energized and good and not just like, “I have to vomit and take a nap.” So be mindful of the level of exercise that you’re doing. Exercise is a stress on the body, right? It’s a good stress. We need stress in our life, but we don’t want it to be so much that it’s chronic and taking a toll.
That’s what I was going to say about the pandemic and burnout — we can handle acute stress. Not “cute” stress, but “acute” stress. We can take that — we’re built for “cute” stress — stress that comes and goes. But chronic stress — the pandemic has been very chronic stress. It is just never-ending — almost over a year now.
So if we have a lot of chronic stress, that’s going to take a toll on our body. So be mindful of your physical stress that you have on your body; be mindful of your emotional stress, of course — like, who do you surround yourself with? What’s going on in your life, work, your thoughts? Are you detoxing your mind? We have to detox our body.
There are many different detox pathways but one of them is the mind — so getting your stress out — talking, journalling — any way to get the stress out of your mind. The other one is diet. Diet can be a stress as well on the body if we’re not eating enough or we’re not eating nourishing diet or we’re eating a lot of processed foods and high sugar and not enough veggies — that’s actually going to be a stress on our body as well.
So if we have a lot of chronic stress, that’s going to take a toll on our body. So be mindful of your physical stress that you have on your body; be mindful of your emotional stress, of course — like, who do you surround yourself with? What’s going on in your life, work, your thoughts? Are you detoxing your mind? We have to detox our body.
So really being mindful of all these areas — and then sleep. Sleep is so important if we want to start recovering from burnout. So seven to nine hours is really important. If we can get to bed by 10:00/10:30, that’s the magic time where our body does a lot of rest and restoration repair work. So really zeroing in on your sleep, sleep routine.
Looking at what products even you’re putting on your body, in your home, and on your skin — because, again, that can be a stress on the body. The body has to detox it through your skin, through your liver. So looking at, “Can we clean up the products gradually?”
It’s all very gradual, but overall, you’re going to be lowering the stress/body burden, which will help with energy. Oddly enough, it all helps with energy. Other things are stress management — what makes you happy? Getting outside and exercising, being in nature — really lowering that stress every day. The mental stress and everything like that.
Nadea: I feel like if everyone were just to listen to you and apply all these points, our lives would be so much better.
Jill: It might even sound overwhelming — like, “Okay, I’ve got a million things.” But just do one thing, do it gradually — like eating balanced meals every day. Three balanced meals with adequate protein, fat, and fibre is going to balance your blood sugar, which will reduce your cravings and actually balance out your insulin and your cortisol levels — your stress hormones — which helps with energy. That’s huge.
Also, making sure that you’re detox pathways are open — we were talking a little bit about detoxification. Those detox pathways are making sure you’re going to the bathroom every day, eating enough fibre and veggies, you’re feeling good, the bathroom — going number two, emptying your bladder — your lungs — so getting outside in fresh air — your mind — and your skin is a huge detoxification organ. Another thing you can do to support burnout recovery — there’s the big guns and the small guns — the little things we can do — but focus on really nice, nourishing food — bone broth or sea salt — pink Himalayan sea salt — you can put it into your water, add it to foods — it’s really, really nourishing with all those minerals for your adrenal glands.
Then of course there’s targeted supplements we could do, depending on the person, for your adrenal glands — supporting them, getting the nourishing foods in. Really, the key is looking at your food, looking at your lifestyle, your sleep, your movement, and watching what kind of stress is coming into your body and making sure that we’re emptying that barrel. That’s really going to help with burnout.
Nadea: That sounds amazing.
Jill: There are so many things we can explore. Maybe I forgot other things, but these are top of mind, you know?
Nadea: Yeah, I think that covers a lot of really valuable stuff. I like that you already started talking about detoxing, because that was another subject where I was like, “Man, I really want to talk to Jill about this” — because I see so many advertisements and also just stuff on Instagram from influencers and stuff talking about detoxing your body. Some of their ideas are a little bit sketchy — like, “Guess what, guys? We’re going to go on a 21-day celery juice cleanse and it’s going to make you lose all of the weight and it’s going to cleanse everything and it’s going to fix your life.” And you just look at that, and you’re like, “I don’t know if that really is the most effective form of detox that there could be…”
So from your perspective — you’ve already talked about it a little bit, but would you say that is a reasonable perspective on detox, and what do you wish people knew about detox?
Jill: Umm, yeah, I think it’s totally cool — no, I’m just joking. Just go for it! [laughs] Yeah, I think that it’s kind of a diet mentality. We don’t realize that we can get into a diet mentality even when it’s “healthy food”. “I’m eating really healthy though!” but it’s still that relationship with food — we don’t want to impact our relationship with food. We want to have a healthy relationship with food. So I find that short-term cleanses or really, really strict fasting cleanses can be stressful for people sometimes. You’re done the cleanse and you still don’t fully understand how to build a healthy diet or what your body needs. It was just a short cleanse and we still have to create a lifestyle. So I’d rather create the lifestyle for the long term.
I find that short-term cleanses or really, really strict fasting cleanses can be stressful for people sometimes. You’re done the cleanse and you still don’t fully understand how to build a healthy diet or what your body needs. It was just a short cleanse and we still have to create a lifestyle. So I’d rather create the lifestyle for the long term.
But your body is detoxifying every day, so it’s kind of misleading to be like, “Hey, we need to do a detox” as if your body is not doing that. It’s doing it all the time. That might be a heavier detox, but I don’t think it’s necessary all the time — maybe in certain situations, like certain protocols — sometimes there’s a candida protocol and certain things.
But I think overall your body is detoxing every single day, like a bucket. My teacher taught me this too — I love that analogy — you’re draining the bucket of toxins as well. Stress and toxins — going to the bathroom — number one and number two — detoxing your skin, breathing good clean air, drinking lots of water — so we actually have to detox every day and focus on that. Then sometimes seasonally there could be different kinds of detoxes. We would call them “detoxes”, but we could use food and lots of nutrients to help detox — like to support your liver because that is the biggest detoxification organ in your body. So I would look at stuff like that — liver-supporting foods, high-fiber to detox the colon — but really focusing on a healthy diet and then opening those detox pathways and steering clear of the diet mentality.
Nadea: So it’s really more about what’s going to actually nourish you and make you feel good. That makes sense to me. I remember that at one point last year, you were kind of sharing a little bit about a really intense restrictive — I don’t think it was a cleanse, but something similar that you were on — and I remember you saying that you were kind of starting to get grumpy and you didn’t have as much energy. I feel like that’s kind of interesting in the context of somebody who is maybe saying “Okay, I’m going to go hardcore into workouts and stuff like that, but I’m also going to kickstart my workout with a cleanse”, because that might not blend so well, right? You might feel really tired and not nourished. Maybe those two things don’t fit super well together.
Jill: Yeah, I think that’s where it comes back to being connected to your body — what your body needs and how you feel. I think some cleansing diets have their place — like, maybe you’re eating really cleansing foods for a certain amount of time. But there are some really weird detoxes out there, right? Like, “just eat a cookie every day”. I’ve heard of some really weird ones — the cayenne pepper and stuff like that — we want to have a healthy lifestyle and have foods that can nourish you. But depending on the person, detoxing might not be good for them, especially if you’re going to start working out.
Nadea: I think that makes perfect sense.
Jill: It depends on the cleanse and it depends on how well the person was eating before and how balanced they were eating before. Maybe they’re just doing a light cleanse and adding more vegetables into their diet. It really depends on what kind of cleanse we’re talking about. Is it totally fasting?
I did intermittent fasting — I was trying to do a five-day thing. I myself was working with a nutritionist and I was open to just seeing where it would go. After three days, I was like, “I’m good.” But I wouldn’t have done that if I was feeling burned out or if my hormones were way out of whack. So it really depends on the person. If a woman is really burned out and exhausted and her hormones and her blood sugars are all over the map, then fasting for long periods of time or cleansing — heavy duty cleanses and working out might not be the best thing. It really depends on the person. I take more of a middle-of-the-road approach.
Again, I actually more TRE or time-restricted eating. Just finishing up dinner at 7:00 and not eating until the next morning, not snacking late at night, giving your body that 12 hours, maybe 14 hours.
Again, it depends on the person. If a woman has a lot of adrenal burnout, we don’t want to fast people too long because the blood sugar can get imbalanced and that can impact your adrenals and stress hormones. So I personally like to fast at night and not snack late at night because it impacts my sleep and then eat breakfast later in the morning.
So that kind of stuff — there are ways to cleanse and detox in lighter ways, just through time-restricted eating. But everybody is different, so it’s hard to make any strict recommendation.
Nadea: That makes sense to me, and I just wanted to add too that I think that there is a lot of value to working with a professional like you to be able to say what kind of approach is actually going to work for my body as opposed to just seeing a diet or detox put out there and being like, “That’s probably going to work for me and I’m going to try it.” So I really do encourage people to get professional guidance when they can.
Jill: Yeah, that’s the holistic side, hey? Looking at each person as a unique individual.
Nadea: Absolutely — it’s not one-size-fits all. I think you did mention one already — but what is the craziest or weirdest detox, diet or piece of wellness advice you’ve ever seen? You did say the cookie one.
Jill: I thought there was something about that, yeah — like, you eat cookies or something. There was some kind of diet where you just eat cookies. I mean, the one where it’s all just powdered drinks. I’m not a huge fan of just drinking powdered food and packaged stuff where they mail it to you or whatever. I don’t even know — I’ve heard of so many different ones.
Nadea: I feel like if you were going to outer space, that might be appropriate, but…
Jill: And I get it — people want to just kickstart their healthy habits. And it might be a nice kickstart and segue into healthy eating. I just want something on the back end — like, what do we do after that? Because if we just go back to the same old eating habits, that isn’t setting you or me up for success. We need to know what makes your body thrive. Do you have balanced meals? How are your energy levels? Are you having cravings? There’s so much more to it. Are you having energy crashes?
The other one is probably that old one — the lemon, cayenne, maple syrup — I think I even did that when I was a teenager.
Nadea: I did that a few times. It messed me up quite a lot. I can confirm that is not a healthy way to go. Please do not do that, people. Please talk to someone who knows what they’re doing. They’re not going to tell you to just drink lemon water for three weeks straight. Don’t do that.
Jill: I lasted, like, a day.
Nadea: Yeah. It’s insane.
Jill: When you restrict as well it can kind of create this — I remember when I was younger, it would create this binge cycle because I would restrict — I’m doing this cleanse, and then I’m just so hungry that I want all the things, and then you binge, and then you feel bad, and then it creates this unhealthy relationship with food. I had it too. Now, over time, I’ve gotten better at just focussing on what’s healthy, what makes me feel good, eating to feel good, not beating myself up. I know that if I restrict, I can’t beat myself up — I’m going to want to eat all of the things if I’m going to restrict. So I’m more about the middle-of-the-road approach — let’s eat balanced.
Yes, maybe there’s some targeted detoxing that we could do, but I’d more use specific foods, herbs, and stuff like that.
Now, over time, I’ve gotten better at just focussing on what’s healthy, what makes me feel good, eating to feel good, not beating myself up.
Nadea: You’re so wise.
Jill: Oh, thank you!
Nadea: The last thing I wanted to ask you about is if people wanted to work with you, what would that look like these days?
Jill: Right now, I have my one-on-one deep dive — the Wild Energy deep dive. That’s usually how I work with people. It’s a three-month setting, we have a full health assessment where I learn all about you — where you’re at, where you want to go, what your goals are, what you’re struggling with — I make a personalized wellness plan for you, I look at your food journals and symptoms. And then we have follow-up sessions so there’s accountability and guidance.
You know, you wouldn’t go to the gym and lift weights once and expect a transformation. It’s the same thing with nutrition. Like, one session is not going to create this massive transformation.
Nadea: Yeah.
Jill: So I like to work in a three-month setting. I bring in some science — some nerdy science stuff — you get lots of tasty recipes, a personalized plan, the follow-up sessions. So yeah, it’s very comprehensive, holistic, and personalized to each client. That’s how I usually work with people.
I also have the Wild Energy Reboot, which is a group program — a little bit lighter. It’s eight weeks long. I might be launching that in the spring again.
Nadea: That would be cool!
Jill: Yeah, keep an eye out for that! I will mention too — you sent me one question as well from one of your followers. Coming off the birth control pill and dealing with acne, right?
Nadea: Yeah.
Jill: So I did think about that before we hopped on. I wanted to say that they’re not the only ones. That definitely can happen. Women on the birth control pill — you kind of have to detox it. You have to come off of it for three to six months. There are sometimes symptoms while your body is getting its cycle back and regulating and normalizing. There is a great book, if that person is interested, called Beyond the Pill by Dr. Jolene Brighten — a really good book all about coming off the pill. So acne can totally happen when you go off the pill. Sometimes the pill masks hormonal issues that are already going on. So sometimes people go on the pill because they have terrible periods or acne, and then it goes away when they’re on the pill, right, because you’re not ovulating and your hormones aren’t rising and changing too much. They’re just usually at a certain level. So when you go off the pill, the issues can come back.
So what I would suggest is to work on hormone balancing. How do we do that? We do that by getting a good picture of how your hormones are looking, symptomology, and giving your body time to regulate — three to six months — and then making sure that we’re looking at all the pathways and important things that support your hormones. Like, how is your liver health? If your liver is not detoxing well, you’re not going to be excreting excess estrogens or methylating very well — detoxing your hormones.
How are you going to the bathroom? If you’re constipated and your gut is not working, you can see hormonal issues because we detox excess hormones out of our colon. So we have to look at liver health, digestion, we have to look at blood sugar balance — what are you eating? Are you getting a lot of veggies — cruciferous veggies, like brussels sprouts, carrots, cauliflower — stuff like that? Really, really good for hormones.
We have to start by giving the body some time and then looking at balancing those hormones through different ways — like I mentioned, the liver and the digestion. Of course, stress management — coffee intake, alcohol intake, not sleeping and having so much stress is going to impact your hormones as well.
There is a lot more we can do but those are some really key starter tips. Then I would also consider if you have lots of acne — are you eating a lot of dairy and gluten? Those are common culprits when it comes to angry, unhappy skin — so maybe reducing those and see if that supports it as well. But I am here to help too and I can dive into that more.
Nadea: That’s awesome. And yeah, I can attest to a lot of that because I’ve dealt with a lot of the same stuff and you’ve helped me with that too. I can say that those tips are actually quite helpful. They are legit.
Jill: Yeah, it’s weird how everything is connected. I never knew that years ago. I used to have all sorts of random symptoms — lots of headaches, which, oddly enough, can be connected to your hormones, which is, oddly enough, connected to your digestion.
"Everything is connected"
Nadea: I have loved that part about working with you, where, when you’re able to ask the right questions, all of a sudden you start seeing all these connections and you’re like, “That makes sense.” Then it’s like, “Why didn’t I know this a long time ago?”
Jill: It’s all connected. The other thing too even with acne — I could go further down the rabbit hole — is where is the acne showing up? What products are you using on your skin? Are they maybe full of chemicals — phthalates, stuff like that — could you get a greener, cleaner product on your skin? Where is the acne showing up? If it’s the jawline, that tells us different things — that tells us it’s hormonal, which could sometimes be a testosterone or androgen imbalance with the estrogens. I usually do a test with my clients where we can see how things are looking and then make some targeted changes with food and supplementation to help that so that we’re sorting out that ratio with the hormones a little bit with food and everything. There is so much that we can do with lifestyle.
Nadea: It’s super cool. If somebody is able to do that with you, I highly recommend it. So check Jill out — please do. I really love following you on Instagram. You’re so solid about continuing to be so authentic and you put out such lovely content. You’re very generous with what you know, which is amazing. So thank you for existing!
Jill: Thanks!
Nadea: I feel like you’ve covered pretty much everything a person could hope for.
Jill: If anyone has any questions, I can message people or I can address them on my IG stories and tag you too.
Nadea: For sure! Sounds good!
Jill: Thank you so much for inviting me!
Nadea: Thanks for chatting!
To connect more with Jill, you can check out her website: https://getdowntoearthwellness.com/
Follow Jill on Instagram @down2earthwellness or Facebook @downtoearthwellness
You can re-watch this interview on our IG Live.