Meet Jill Whalen | Women’s Hormone Health & Fitness Coach

We had the good fortune of connecting with Jill Whalen and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Jill, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
It’s somewhat of a surreal experience for me that I actually own my own business! I know there are people who have always dreamed of it, but that wasn’t the case for me. I had a job that I loved…I loved what I was doing (training clients and teaching classes), my boss, my clients, and my class members were all amazing. Starting my own business wasn’t never really on my mind. In fact, if you had told me 4 years ago that I would have a virtual personal training business I would never have believed it, nor would I have believed that I’d be coaching women on hormone health. But a confluence of factors happened that led me down the path.

It was the June 2020 when I first started thinking about starting my business. For the previous three months I had transitioned my clients to virtual personal training through my position at the local facility. I had gotten several referrals and added new clients who wanted to train virtually as well. My boss contacted me about returning to teach my classes in-person again, but my schedule had changed since transitioning online. In-person wasn’t an option for my family at the time, but I still needed to make money. If I couldn’t return to my job, how would we make it work? It was in trying to figure out how to make it work that the idea of starting my own business popped up and we ran with it!

Although I had never been one to dream of owning my own business, it wasn’t a foreign concept to me: my father had owned his own business my whole life, my brother also owned his own business, and my husband was self-employed since before I even knew him.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
My fitness career officially started in 2004 when I started working at a local gym as a floor worker. Prior to that I had gone through my own health and fitness journey; an unfulfilling job and unhappy work environment in corporate America had me feeling pretty miserable. It was through exercise and taking care of myself that I was able to improve my mental health, lose some weight and get fitter.

Soon after my own transformation in 2002, friends, family and co-workers approached me for help and advice on what they could do to get healthy. Helping them get fitter and healthier sparked an interest in me that I never knew existed. I decided to attend a class at the community college to figure out if pursuing career in health and fitness was for me. Taking that first class confirmed for me that it was! From that point on, I was hooked!

After joining the local gym, I took a group fitness class. While taking the class, I was in awe of the instructor and how she engaged and inspired the group of 30+ people. I thought to myself, “I want to be her when I grow up” 🙂 Soon after I saw a flyer for a training to become certified as a group fitness instructor. I signed up immediately. That was the first of MANY certification I would pursue. After completing my training, I was offered a position at the gym instructor and floor worker.

That was in 2004 and I haven’t stopped working in health and fitness since! My approach and what I do, however, has changed.

After being in the industry for 18+ years, about 4 years ago I started to notice that my same routine of exercise and watching what/how I ate, was no longer maintaining the level of health and fitness that I was accustomed to: I was gaining weight, losing strength, having difficulty remembering things and focusing, waking up for hours at night. In short, I felt like a mess and a fraud. I was doing “all the right things”, all the things that I was trained to do (like eat less, exercise more, high intensity workouts, lots of cardio) but those things were no longer working for me.

I battled these symptoms for awhile until one day about 2 years ago I learned a term I had never heard: perimenopause. It’s the transition from reproductive years to menopause. Now the thing that threw me for a loop about perimenopause was this: All the “right” things that I was doing, the things I was taught through all my education, through my 18+ years of experience, the things backed by research and science, can actually be counter productive for women in perimenopause!

I learned that all those “right” things that are backed by science didn’t include women in their 40’s in their studies, instead young, college-aged men were the subjects. Because a woman in her 40’s has different needs, she should NOT be following those recommendations. I had never heard this, never been taught this. It had never even been mentioned! Not once in ANY of my courses (and there were plenty of them). It blew my mind! And I thought if I don’t know this (and I spent most of my career studying health and fitness), how can any other woman know this?

I realized that she wouldn’t know it, and I decided right then to make it my mission to tell every woman about perimenopause and how it changes everything!

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Living in central New Jersey gives me access to the coast, the city, and the mountains. A week long visit would include visits to: – the Jersey shore has beautiful beaches
– New York city for its many museums, attractions and amazing restaurants
– historic local sites, NJ has a rich history related to the revolutionary war with plenty of monuments and historical sites
-some of the local small towns that have fun downtowns with live music, events, restaurants and more are New Brunswick (home of Rutgers, the state university), Somerville, Morristown, Westfield, and Flemington

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
My husband deserves some recognition for encouraging and supporting me to pursue self-employment. He has owned his own business for 30+years and has seen a ton in that time! While our industries are completely different, his experience as a business owner is helpful when I’m feeling overwhelmed.

My women’s empowerment group – BIG (Believe, Inspire, Grow) – also deserves special recognition. This group of women has been an incredible resource for me! I joined in October 2020 and until just 2 months ago I had never met any of these women in person! Yet they have been a continual source of advice, motivation, support, encouragement, and more to me. Whether I am questioning my next move, in need of advice or looking to learn more about any number of topics, these women are there. I have been given the opportunity to speak, gotten new clients, created referral networks and business partnerships and developed friendships with the amazing women in this group. The phrase “women supporting women” defines BIG and I would not be where I am in my business without it!

Website: longevityfw.com

Instagram: @longevityfitwell

Linkedin: Jill Moretti Whalen

Facebook: @longevityfitwell

Image Credits
Mariya Kovalyov