Guest: Jenni Sills, Life Simply Balanced

Episode Introduction

We all carry stories about who we are. Some we inherited, some we created, and some we’re ready to release.

In this episode of The Hook, I talk with Jenni Sills, certified nutrition coach and founder of Life Simply Balanced, about the mindset shifts that change everything. From overcoming perfectionism to navigating career pivots, infertility, and identity, Jenni shares how she helps women let go of all-or-nothing thinking and find freedom in balance.

This conversation is raw, real, and full of heart — an invitation to start rewriting your own story, one small, honest step at a time.

---

Sarah: Hey friends, welcome to “The Hook with Sarah Larsen.” I’m your host, Sarah Larsen, and I have an extra special guest today: my friend Jenni Sills with Life Simply Balanced. She is a certified nutrition coach and specializes in some other things, which we’re going to find out a little bit more about. Jenni, would you like to give us a brief introduction of what it is that you do?

Jenni: Yes, absolutely. First of all, thank you for having me on your podcast. I’m so honored that I get to chat with you today because I actually met Sarah through a mutual friend, and it’s so fun because I feel like I know her, but we’ve never met in person. It’s one of those friendships where I can’t wait to meet you in person and give you a big squeeze, so I look forward to that day.

I am a certified nutrition coach. I take a mixture of my background in education—I was a teacher for 12 years and have three degrees, so I am a teacher by degree—and I take what I’ve learned in terms of teaching, education, and coaching, and now I get to help people make healthier choices and live a balanced lifestyle. That’s where my business comes from. I’ve spent many years of my life trying to do an all-or-nothing approach, trying to have it all perfect, which there was no such thing. Once I let go of that, I learned that there are so many other women out there who are not starting to make healthier choices or are refusing to give something a try because it has to be perfect, it has to be just right. I was one of those. I’m almost like a recovering all-or-nothing addict and a recovering perfectionist.

I get to help women who have experienced similar life stories. Even if their stories look very different, we have the same mindset or the same stories running on repeat. I get to help them feel like a human, feel normal, and then also make change through whatever it is they’re going through because life never stops. There’s never a perfect time. Whatever someone’s walking through, I help you pivot. That’s my goal.Sarah: I love what you say about everybody having similar stories. We all have life experience. The recovering perfectionist is often something that business owners go through or feel. You can’t have a business and be perfect every day. We do the best we can and move on.

Body Image Stories We Learn Early

Sarah: Let’s rewind a little bit and find out about Jenni’s early life. Where did you grow up? Do you have siblings or parents? Tell us that story.

Jenni: I grew up in Salem, Oregon. Not the witches in Salem, Massachusetts, but the Oregon Trail people. My parents divorced when I was five. Both parents got remarried, and it was back and forth every two weeks. It was constant change and disruption in my life.

My parents had similar rules and expectations, but the vibes in the houses were very different. It was a complete shift in my life every two weeks. I think I handled it very well in some ways. I was a straight-A student; I loved school, and that’s probably why I went into teaching. I loved helping, coaching, and learning. Things really came fairly easy for me, partly because I knew there wasn’t a bad expectation, there wasn’t pressure to do well. I was a natural learner, very curious, and I had the environment at home to help me want to succeed. There wasn’t a “you have to do this,” but it just came naturally to me.

It wasn’t until college when I started seeing myself not getting the things that I set out to go for and then learning how to deal with that. I loved my childhood. I think about my childhood friends and all those experiences, but as an adult, when I look back, I see so much of the interruptions and the things that I probably just ignored and thought were normal. Now, as a nutrition coach, I also see how much food shame, how much guilt, and how much pressure that perfectionistic tendency—where that stemmed from. It wasn’t necessarily my family, but it was everywhere in the media, everything that I saw. I kind of see, looking back, the tapestry that was created of my life, and not all of it was picture-perfect, as I thought it was.

Sarah: Isn’t it interesting how we can see? Hindsight, as they say, is 20/20, and we are much wiser now than we were at that age, so looking back, it’s easy to say, “Ah, now I see.” I know exactly what you’re talking about as far as the shaming around food. I know one thing in particular in my household was, “You eat what’s on your plate,” and that is certainly something that has been an ongoing thing. It always surprised me when I saw my friends as parents allowing their kids to eat just a couple of bites or just, you know. I would think, “They need to eat everything. What are you doing?” Then many years later, of course, I recognized, “Oh, they’re not making their kid feel bad about food. Maybe that’s a better way to handle it.”

Jenni: Absolutely. For me, when I look back, I wasn’t really knowing how I fit in because I developed early. I hit puberty in fifth grade; I had breasts before I knew what to do with them. I was so uncomfortable in my body. I was what I thought was chubby for my age, and everyone else was still a stick because they hadn’t hit puberty. This happened for a few years. Now I know insulin resistance runs in my family, and I know how to eat for my body type. But no one was even talking about eating for your body type in the eighties and nineties.

I ate the food I was given. It was very nourishing food for the most part, but there were Pop-Tarts and all those things, too. I was looking at the friends I had and the people I saw on TV and thinking, “I don’t look like that.” I started to tell myself stories. I also had some very negative influences who verbally told me things that were negative about myself, and we latched onto those more than we latched onto the great things said to me about the way I looked. I could only hear the negative ones, and those were the stories that repeated.

As I moved into college and things weren’t happening as easily for me, I turned to food for comfort or attention from boys for comfort—things like that, which weren’t necessarily healthy habits, but they were what I had, what I could cling to. I even found a passion for cooking, but it wasn’t necessarily the healthiest food. I was eating a lot more of it than I should have. I’ve never been overweight, and everyone has their own journey, but I was uncomfortable, and I knew I wasn’t making healthy choices for myself. I tell anybody that you can be very thin and be unhealthy, just like you can be very overweight and unhealthy. I’ve seen being a little bit overweight, being too thin, and being unhealthy. For me, it goes to how we think about ourselves and how we treat ourselves with the things we think, the food we put into our body, and how we talk to ourselves. It’s been very interesting to see all of that come together for sure.

Sarah: The stories that we tell ourselves… listening to you talk about how you started puberty early, I remember friends that had that. I was on the other end of the spectrum. I didn’t get my period until I was in seventh or eighth grade. I was a very flat-chested young girl and felt the same stories happening. I remember seeing my friend who developed in fifth grade and was the first one to have breasts and all of those kinds of things and how she was perceived by other kids. I was also looking at other girls that were developing and going, “Well, I don’t look like that either.”

Looking back, I kind of want to shake young me because I was a super thin kid up through into my early twenties, and even in my late teens, I was eating Big Macs practically every day and was just fine. But somewhere in my twenties, those stories went the opposite direction, and I started really fighting to keep that more desirable weight, what you saw on TV. I have really struggled with that ever since. It is truly about the stories that we tell ourselves, and I have been spending several years now working through these things. There is still not perfection. Again, the recovering perfectionist. I’ve done some very unhealthy things to get thinner and have that perceived perfection. We just keep learning.

Jenni: Isn’t it interesting how we have exact opposite experiences but the same stories? We were both like, “I wish I could be like fill in the blank.” One of the trends I see with my clients is this perception of how they think people view them or how they view themselves, like prior to kids or prior to an injury or a season of life. Disruption and change. It’s, “Well, if I could just go back to that, then all would be good.” But that’s in the past, and that’s not what we’re dealing with right now.

That’s what I try to help people do. Where are we at right now? What are the obstacles we have right now? What are we facing right now? Because how things were in the past is the past. It’s never going to be just like that again. Most likely, if we’re evolving and growing as we should as humans, it should never be like it was at that one time. We should always be getting better, and I like the word “better.” There’s no perfect, no good, no bad; it’s just “better.”

I think it’s so intriguing how the more conversations I have with women, the more I see that we may have opposite experiences, but often we’re dealing with the same pain, the same doubts and fears, and we wouldn’t know that unless we took a chance to be vulnerable or finally be open to change.

Leaps of Faith and Lessons in Alignment

Sarah: You have mentioned disruption a couple of times, and that’s one of my favorite words and favorite subjects. I’m very curious about how our lives get disrupted and how we handle those things, what happens to our identities, and our resiliency after a perceived disruption. You mentioned that your parents divorced when you were young, but it sounds like even though that was a challenge, you managed through that pretty well. What other disruptions do you feel like you have faced since then?

Jenni: There are many; I’ll try and limit it to a few. I always knew when I was younger that I wanted to be a teacher. My stepmom, my uncle, my cousin, and my stepsister were all teachers, so it ran in the family on both sides. It just came naturally to me with my nurturing personality.

I taught for 12 years, but about year seven, I moved back from teaching overseas, and that was a really rough experience for me. It was nothing like they said it would be at all. I came back really bitter in the profession, but that was all I knew. I had two degrees at that point, and I went and got a third certification, like nationally board certified, because this is what all the other teachers in my district were doing. I thought, “Cool, it’s a bonus. I guess I should do this.”

The more I went further and further into that world of education, the more bitter and kind of resentful I became because it wasn’t aligning with what I wanted anymore. That was really hard for me to come to grips with because I had spent money and years of education. I was like, “Well, what else can you do? I have these degrees. I don’t have a business degree.”

I had been working out a lot at this studio, and I’m not athletically inclined, like naturally; I trip over my own feet, but I started to realize I really loved the class, and I am a teacher, so I could teach that. While I was in the last two years of my teaching, I actually became an instructor for this fitness studio, and I loved getting up at 4:00 AM three times a week to go teach for one hour before I would go teach middle schoolers, which was a whole other nightmare. I lived five minutes from my work, and I couldn’t get myself to work on time doing something that I had all these certifications to do.

That was finally when I decided, “Okay, I need to figure out something else.” I really thought I had researched everything. Again, hindsight. I knew nothing about business. I should have done a little bit more research about how to start one. What I will say is that I took a leap of faith because I realized I was done waiting for Mr. Right to come along to save me from a profession I didn’t like. I knew I didn’t want any kids to go through my classroom seeing a teacher who didn’t want to be there because I’ve had professors and teachers who didn’t want to be there, and that’s not an experience I wanted to give.

Even though my parents were not thrilled because I was taking this leap of faith, I moved states because I had a friend there. Seattle was so expensive I couldn’t afford to live there. I moved to San Antonio, Texas, and I started out as a personal trainer. I got certified and thought, “Okay, I can do this.” This was after four or five plans that I thought were going to happen didn’t happen.

I ended up in a head coach position a couple of years later at a different fitness studio and thought, “This is awesome. I’ve made it. I’m the head coach, I’ve got a team of coaches working with me.” And it was a nightmare. It was what I thought I wanted, but again, it was in the wrong circumstances, working for the wrong person, and I really became someone I didn’t like. I hope not everyone can relate to that, but when I look back, it’s no regret; it’s just learning.

It took a lot of humbleness to finally learn that I was working myself into the ground. I had to step down, and then 2020 happened. I was almost given this space to navigate through the rough waters. I wasn’t coaching anymore. I still work for this network marketing company, but not as my full-time job. People were feeding me, “Just do this full-time,” but it never aligned with what I wanted. I liked the products; I still do. I like the company, but I didn’t want to do it full-time.

Eventually, I decided I have had my own nutrition journey and I’m passionate about helping people, so I should be a nutrition coach. I told my now-husband that when we first started dating, because he’s a nutrition coach, and I was like, “I want to do what you’re doing, but someday. I can’t do it right now.” It was because I didn’t trust myself enough.

Through all of those disruptions of things not landing right, learning that I wasn’t being the best version of myself, and having to own it and make changes and even apologize to some people, I had to work through some of those not-so-great moments in life. But it’s made me a stronger leader. It’s made me understand business better and really listen to my gut, to what I know that I want. Every time I look back and I listened to someone else’s advice, and it was out of desperation that I went with it, it was a nightmare train wreck. Every time I listened to my gut and I did the scary thing, even though I still really didn’t know how to start my own nutrition business a year ago, I didn’t have all these leads to bring in an income. But I had the security that my husband had a job that took care of us, and I was still working doing some other things. I was like, “Enough is enough, and I want to do what I know I am meant to do,” which is combine my passion for education and teaching and all that I’ve learned through nutrition, including getting certified, getting the actual degree, if you will, so I could help people.

My mother-in-law was asking me what I love most about what I do, and I said it’s helping people. It’s talking to my clients and helping them see and make changes. The business side of things is still not my favorite aspect of what I do. I’ll be honest, someday I will hire someone to do most of it so I can do what I love to do. All of those disruptions have led me to this sweet spot.

Redefining Success and Self-Worth

Jenni: I will say one more thing I’ve been working through recently is that I work from home, and I’m 40 and we do not have kids. It’s something we’ve been trying for the last 16 months, and there has been a story in my head that I’ve had to work through that says, “I am not allowed to work from home because I’m not a mom. I don’t have kids to take care of, so who am I to just work from home and have the leisure to go for a two-hour walk with a friend if I want to?”

That has been a story that has popped up that brings me to tears because it’s like, “Who am I?” I’m a coach. I’m an awesome, phenomenal coach, and it takes time to grow a business. All of those disruptions led me to even feel that and recognize that untruth that was going on deep inside of me, that I felt like I’m not worthy of running my own business because I’m staying home and I don’t have any kids to take care of. It got heavy, real fast.

Sarah: Oh man, that hit me in the feels, girl. I get that. What I was thinking as you were telling the story of how you got to where you are and how you started and got your certification in coaching, my question was going to be, “How did that affect your identity?” Because that’s a disruption of a different sort; it’s the kind that puts you into alignment.

But you sort of told the story of how even a good disruption can cause an identity crisis. When you think the story that you’re telling yourself is that you’re not worthy of working from home and having a business that allows you the flexibility that somebody who has kids should have.

We would love for all of our parents out there to have the ability to have the flexibility in their lives to take care of their kids and work and earn an income at the same time. It’s certainly possible, especially given the online economy that is booming right now, and we’re part of that.

I know that you’ve been trying to have children. I don’t have children either, but I have always kind of worked from home on and off over the years, and so that’s always been part of my identity. I’m kind of in sales, or there was a period when my husband and I had a business that we did together where we worked in an office space, but it’s okay to work from home. I felt that flexibility.

Jenni: Absolutely. Part of that story that I’ve been telling myself needed to come out and come to the surface. My clients resist certain changes all the time. There’s something like, “No, I’m not ready to go there.” I have a client right now who knows she just needs to get better sleep, and the ripple effect would really start to show up in a positive way for her overall health. She’s like, “My whole family is a family of poor sleepers and not prioritizing their health and their sleep.” She’s dealing with setting boundaries for herself and recognizing that she knows what she needs to do, but it’s painful because it’s hard to be the first one, hard to take that step, to be that role model.

It’s hard to walk through the things that we don’t want to admit that maybe we think about ourselves. I had a client say, “I didn’t want to lose weight for the longest time because if I did and then I started dating again and they didn’t want me, now I can’t say it’s because I’m overweight.” So many women carry these deep stories of pain that we’re not willing to go through yet, and so we just kind of push it down because of that disruption of working through it, of just acknowledging, “Ooh, that’s a heavy statement. I can’t believe I was thinking that.” When you say it out loud, sometimes you’re like, “Well, that’s dumb. Why would you think that?”

When I see the change and success stories in my clients, in their words, not just along the way, it’s worth every single bit of it. But when I’m at home and I’m like, “Okay, I’ve done my work for the day, now what?” That’s when I have to fight through those stories.

When the Body Speaks

Jenni: I was in Jamaica recently and went running, trying to be healthy. We went running one morning, and the pavement took me out. It was very uneven, and I fell. My hand broke the fall, and I went into immediate shock because my whole body weight went down on it. It was so weird because we are in the midst of our fertility journey, and it’s been hard to say the least. All day, I was just weepy at the pool. I was like, “Thank God I have my dark sunglasses on,” because there was party music blaring in the background, and I was wiping back the tears. It shook me up. I had a pretty big anxiety attack that night. It was 16 months worth of repressed feelings that I thought I had been dealing with, and they finally came out. The next day, I felt so good, so much better, and more clear.

Sometimes we think disruption is all negative, but sometimes we do have to walk through the hard things so that we can finally move past it and become healed, to feel whole. I can talk about fertility stuff without being weepy. Even on the plane ride there, there was a baby crying, and I was just weepy. On the way back, I was like, “Glad that’s not me.” It was a really needed process. Sometimes it’s painful to go through the disruption.

Thinking of people who maybe lost a job and then they’re like, “Now what?” It’s like, “You have an opportunity.” It’s always about how we choose to look at something, how you reframe a situation. Sometimes I don’t want to be positive about a crappy situation. It’s also okay to feel the feels, be angry, think it’s unfair. Like, “Man, my body bounced back after kid number one, why can’t it bounce back after kid number two? This sucks.” Or even like how you and I as young teens looked at our bodies in the same way with complete opposite outcomes. Feel it, experience it, but move on. You’ve got to move on.

Sarah: Exactly. Throw that pity party, and then you have to put on your big girl pants and move on. Love it. Such good insight, Jenni. I loved the idea of reframing, and that is really what we have to do: move past that negative.

It’s so interesting how your fall shook you up like that. I know there’s a physiological thing that dogs do; they shake to release anxiety. Maybe that was your body. Maybe the fall shook you and allowed you to release that anxiety that you’ve been feeling about your infertility. What an amazing breakthrough, especially knowing that you felt better about it the next day. I was like, “Okay, we helped you.”

Jenni: I could even see some physiological changes in my body in terms of inflammation that my body was holding onto. People don’t realize that we store stress and hormones like cortisol in our body, which tells your body it’s not safe. Many women come to me because they can’t lose weight, and they think we’re going to deal with nutrition.

In reality, we deal with lifestyle stress, letting go of control, sleep habits, and mindset. Once they’re willing to work through that, that’s when the weight starts to fall off because their body no longer feels like it’s protecting them. A lot of our hormones protect us. Think about back in the Ice Age, when you had to have that quick adrenaline rush if there was danger; our bodies still will do that for us. It will still protect us.

Jenni: Talking about disruption, all I’ve learned about my hormones from my own fertility journey. I’ve done so much research, and now I get to help other women. I’ve created courses on it; I’ve done live workshops, and I’m now drawing in women who are struggling with hormone imbalances.

I am 40 and going through perimenopause, which is early, and I have been for a few years. People are hearing my story and going, “I can relate to her because she knows what I’m going through. She knows what a hot flash feels like. She knows what it’s like to try everything and still feel like your body is just holding on to fat.” She’s lived it, she’s experienced it, and she’s gotten positive changes.

I’ve been able to even niche down and help women who are struggling with hormones because not only have I experienced it, but I have my own coaches that I’m working with, and I’m getting my own education on it, and I’m continuing to expand. As much as it’s been hard to walk through it, it’s a really positive disruption because I can help others who are going through the same thing.

Just Do It

Sarah: Love it. Our experiences are what inform how we can teach and what we can share. I appreciate that you are using your own journey to then turn around and help other women. That’s the goal. Is there anything else that you would like to share today?

Jenni: I think the one thing that keeps coming back to me is that there’s never a right time to start. If people are hesitant to start, even just a discovery call, to figure out—I always tell people I’m not going to be a good fit with everyone as a coach or a business coach—it’s an interview process. You don’t know until you get a little bit of disruption in your life, until you ask the questions, until you push the boundaries.

I say if it’s scary because you’re like, “This doesn’t seem reasonable,” like they’re promising me to lose 10 pounds in three weeks, trust your gut with that. That’s not how I run my business. But if it’s scary because you know you might have to address some deeper level pain points or some things that you haven’t been wanting to address, that’s when you know it’s time to make a change.

That’s how I knew that my nutrition business is the forever thing. This is what I’m doing because I knew I had the knowledge, I knew that I had to learn, and that there are a lot of people who knew a lot more than me. So what does that cause me to do? Go out there and learn more. Keep learning.

If it feels scary because you’ve never done it before, it might be time to make that change, whether it’s a business, a healthy health and wellness journey, or leaving a relationship or a friendship. There are a lot of things, but there’s never a right time. If you feel that, “Ugh, this is going to be hard,” then you should do it.

Sarah: I love that advice. I feel like that is something that applies to all of life. One of the things that I like to preach in my coaching business is that action is what brings clarity. You have to take the action, and it can be the uncomfortable action.

Speaking to your point, if you’re scared of it, it’s probably something that you should do. If it’s the thing that just makes you so nervous—not the thing that makes you want to crawl back in bed—if it’s exciting-scary, that’s the thing that you’re supposed to be doing. I’m excited for your new aligned journey because I know that this is a good fit for you.

One of the things I wanted to ask that you mentioned earlier was that you had been teaching overseas. Just really quick, what took you there? Where were you, and why was that experience so bad?

Jenni: I moved to Hong Kong. I had been looking for a year to teach overseas because I loved travel. I taught for five years and was getting a little bored. Last minute, like three weeks before the school year started, I got a job offer in Hong Kong. I knew nothing about Hong Kong. I was like, “Is it in China?” I literally had no clue.

I said no at first, but I was single. I didn’t have a car payment; I didn’t have a mortgage. All the ducks were lining up. I had some teacher friends who were married at the time, and they were like, “You’re 27, this is ridiculous. Get over there.” I called back and asked, “Can I have that job back?”

They said it was one thing, and the school was completely opposite of what they claimed it to be. I didn’t feel qualified to work with the students. It was more an alternative school, so kids had more severe behavioral disorders, and I’m not trained for that. It was a “learn as you go” kind of situation, and the school was also in denial of what they were.

There were a lot of aspects… I traveled, I think, like 20 countries in the two years that I lived over there. A lot of life learning experiences, and I work on not having regrets, just either lessons or memories. But yeah, it was a hoot for two years. It was definitely a different life experience.

Sarah: Sounds like living in the fire for sure. If that doesn’t teach you how to handle things, I don’t know what will. Where can we find you online?

Jenni: I have a weekly blog, so if you want to just get some weekly advice on nutrition, mindset, lifestyle, sleep, recipes, all those things, go to you can just sign up to get my newsletter [linked below], and it comes out once a week. It’s called “Food for Thought.” I give advice and have guest bloggers. I would love to have you write for my blog. Lots of things in terms of having a simply balanced lifestyle. Depending on whenever you’re listening to this, I may have new programs up and running, but I’m always taking coaching applications. If you want to work with me one-on-one, you can contact me there.

Sarah: Jenni has lots of wisdom to share, so definitely check that out, and I will put all those things in the show notes. Thank you so much for this conversation today, Jenni. I have really enjoyed it. I always love that even when I know somebody, I’m always learning new things, and so that’s the joy of having these conversations as well.

Jenni: Absolutely. I hope I get to get up your neck of the woods and give you a squeeze in person.

Sarah: I would absolutely love that. One of these days, we are going to make that happen.

Jenni: That’s right, friend. All right, well, thank you so much.

Sarah: Thank you. I appreciate you so much.

Key Takeaways

• Healing starts with awareness. The first step to change is noticing the story you’ve been telling yourself and realizing you can write a new one.
  
• Disruption can be divine. Life’s interruptions are often redirections toward deeper alignment.
  
• Perfection is the enemy of presence. True balance comes from curiosity, not control.
  
• Vulnerability is a bridge. The more we share our honest experiences, the more others feel safe to begin their own healing journey.

About Jenni

Jenni Sills is a certified nutrition coach and founder of Life Simply Balanced, where she helps women move past perfectionism and create sustainable wellness through mindset, nutrition, and self-compassion.

A former teacher turned coach, Jenni blends her love of education with her passion for holistic health to guide clients in rewriting the stories they tell themselves — about food, body, and worth. Her programs, workshops, and weekly Food for Thought blog provide simple, supportive tools for living a balanced life without extremes.

Connect with Jenni: Newsletter

Energetic Reflection

Jenni’s story carries the energy of transformation through tenderness and proof that healing doesn’t always roar; sometimes it whispers, You can let go now.

Every time we challenge an old belief, we create space for new truth to take root. The path toward balance isn’t about perfection. It’s about permission: to rest, to evolve, and to live the story you were meant to tell.

If this conversation resonated with you, I invite you to join my Reiki-infused newsletter, where I share stories of healing, creativity, and the energetics of transformation.