About Coach Julie Lodge
“For a long time, I believed being able to handle everything meant I was okay.
I was exercising, eating pretty well, raising my children, working, training, and getting through each day. From the outside, I looked healthy.
What I didn't understand yet was that functioning and feeling well aren't the same thing.
My body had been giving me information for a long time. I had simply gotten very good at living around it.
This is the story of what finally made me listen.”
My Health Journey
I Believe Our Symptoms Are Trying to Tell Us Something
I believe our symptoms are rarely random. They're clues.
And for a long time, I didn't understand what mine were trying to tell me.
From the outside, I looked healthy. I was active, disciplined, and incredibly driven. I was raising four young children as a single working mom, juggling multiple jobs, and training as a competitive athlete. I ate pretty well, exercised consistently, and believed in balance and moderation.
I was the person who handled things.
And for a long time, I believed being able to handle everything meant I was okay.
Underneath, my body was telling a very different story.
I'd wake up and deal with diarrhea, then once it subsided, I'd put it in the rearview mirror and get on with my day. I was convinced I would eventually figure out which food was causing it.
I'd barely sleep and tell myself I'd go to bed earlier the next night.
I'd feel exhausted and foggy and remind myself that I had too many people depending on me to stop.
Tomorrow would be better.
That became my pattern.
I Thought I Was Doing the Right Things
It wasn't that I didn't care about my health. I honestly believed I was doing a lot of the right things.
I exercised. I ate pretty well. I was disciplined. At the time, that was largely what “being healthy” meant to me.
What I didn't understand was how much sleep, chronic stress, recovery, and the state of my nervous system mattered—or how all of those things were connected to what was happening in my body.
And honestly, I didn't have much capacity left to figure it out.
My children were my priority. Work had to get done. Bills had to be paid. Life didn't stop because I wasn't feeling well.
And then there was the athlete in me.
I'd spent years teaching myself that I could do hard things. Mind over matter. Keep moving. Focus on the goal.
In the gym, I felt pressure to perform and maintain the identity I'd worked so hard to build. At home, I wanted my children to feel safe and cared for. I thought being strong meant continuing to carry it all.
The qualities that had helped me accomplish so much—discipline, determination, resilience, optimism—also made me very good at pushing through.
And for a while, I could.
Until I couldn't.
When Pushing Through Stopped Working
Eventually, the things I could once put in the rearview mirror became impossible to ignore.
The exhaustion became harder to push past. The brain fog got worse. Sleep wasn't restoring me. My digestive issues continued. My hormones fluctuated dramatically. My body simply wouldn't relax.
I kept trying to manage each day well enough to get to the next one.
But eventually, my body was asking for more than another workaround.
I couldn't keep asking:
“How do I get through this?”
I needed to ask a different question:
“Why do I feel this way in the first place?”
And eventually:
“What is my body trying to tell me?”
That question changed the direction of my life.
I Stopped Fighting My Body and Started Getting Curious
For so long, I had approached my body as something I could manage from the outside in.
Work harder. Eat cleaner. Be more disciplined. Push through.
But doing more of what I already knew how to do wasn't giving me the information I needed.
I needed to understand what was happening underneath the symptoms.
That curiosity eventually led me back to school and into functional health. I began learning how digestion, hormones, blood sugar, sleep, stress, the nervous system, nutrition, movement, recovery, and lifestyle can influence one another.
Functional testing became an important part of my own journey as well. For someone who had become very good at explaining things away, objective data was difficult to argue with. It gave me information I couldn't simply push into the rearview mirror.
But testing wasn't the whole story.
My labs had to be understood alongside my story—my symptoms, history, nutrition, sleep, stress, relationships, training, recovery, environment, and the life I was actually living.
For the first time, I wasn't simply asking how to make a symptom disappear.
I was learning to ask why it was there.
Learning to Work With My Body Changed Everything
As I began applying what I was learning, my relationship with my body changed.
Instead of constantly asking it to keep up with the life I had decided it should be able to handle, I started listening.
I learned that more isn't always better.
I learned that rest isn't failure.
I learned that what someone else's body can tolerate has absolutely nothing to do with what mine needs on a given day.
I learned that taking care of myself doesn't make me less driven, less capable, or less committed to the people I love.
And I learned that listening to my body isn't weakness.
It's information.
Over time, my health changed too. My energy improved. My sleep improved. My digestive issues resolved. I learned which foods my body tolerated and which ones contributed to inflammation and digestive distress. I lost weight and kept it off. My focus returned.
Most importantly, I stopped feeling like I was constantly fighting against my own body.
That Experience Changed the Way I Work With People
Today, when someone comes to me exhausted, struggling with digestion, unable to sleep, dealing with brain fog, frustrated with their weight, or simply saying, “I don't feel like myself anymore,” I don't immediately assume I know the answer.
I get curious.
When did this start?
What was happening in your life at the time?
What changed?
What have you already tried?
What makes it better? What makes it worse?
And what else might your body have been trying to tell you that you've gotten very good at living around?
We look at nutrition and digestion. Sleep and recovery. Stress and nervous-system load. Movement and exercise. Relationships, environment, habits, history, and the demands of the life you're actually living.
And when functional testing makes sense, we can use objective data—such as blood chemistry or testing related to hormones, gut health, or minerals—to give us another piece of information.
Not the whole story.
Your story and your labs belong in the same conversation.
You Don't Have to Abandon Your Life to Take Your Health Seriously
This part matters to me.
I understand what it's like to have people depending on you.
I'm not here to tell you to stop being ambitious, stop pursuing your goals, or stop caring deeply for the people you love.
And I'm not going to pretend your responsibilities disappear because you've decided to prioritize your health.
Getting healthy doesn't require abandoning the rest of your life.
But it may require becoming willing to listen when your body asks for something different than what you had planned.
Sometimes that means changing what you eat.
Sometimes it means addressing what's happening in your gut.
Sometimes it means investigating hormones or other physiological patterns.
Sometimes it means sleeping more, training less, setting a boundary, taking a walk, asking for help, or allowing your body to recover without deciding you've failed.
The answer isn't always more.
The goal is understanding what your body needs and learning how to respond.
If This Sounds Familiar
If you're the person everyone counts on—the capable one, the one who keeps showing up, the one who can usually figure things out—I understand why your own health can keep getting pushed to tomorrow.
I also understand how frightening it can feel to finally acknowledge:
Something isn't right.
You don't need to have the answer before you're allowed to take that seriously.
You don't have to prove how bad it is.
And you don't have to figure it out alone.
My job is to give you a place where you can put down the polished version, tell me what's actually been happening, and know that I'm listening.
Then we start asking better questions together.
Why do I feel this way?
What has my body been trying to tell me?
And what does it actually need from me now?
