Today we’d like to introduce you to Jessica (“Stormy”) Weather.
Hi Jessica (“Stormy”), we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I moved from Florida to North Carolina in 2006, ostensibly for a masters in linguistics at UNC-CH… that I ended up not completing. My little ‘quarter-life crisis’ (we all have one!) led me to change both my future career AND my shade of blue — I ultimately graduated from the Duke Physician Assistant Program in 2012. The first two years of my career were spent in pediatric urology at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and while the job was not a great fit, the city itself very much WAS; I started CrossFit and weightlifting as a way to make friends in a new place, and not only am I still doing it nearly 14 years later, but those Philadelphia friendships remain some of my strongest to this day.
I then spent eight more years back in North Carolina, working a combination of primary/urgent care until early 2022. However, my side ‘pandemic project’ in 2020 (because we all had one of THOSE, too!) was spending a year becoming an M2 Performance Nutrition-Certified Nutrition Coach, learning more about hormones, metabolism, and the gut microbiome. This was a selfish decision at first — I had hit perimenopause on the earlier side, at age 35, and since none of my peers were experiencing those changes yet, I turned to nutrition as a potential way to learn more about the pathophysiology and ways to ease symptoms. What happened instead was that, after seeing my ‘project’ on Instagram, a LOT of people unexpectedly showed interest in the new venture… and asked to be coached! Seven clients became 15, 15 became 20, I dropped to part-time hours in clinic… and then, right as the strain of being a frontline healthcare worker was genuinely becoming too much for me, I had enough clients to leave clinic altogether. I hadn’t planned it that way, but the timing was ideal.
It didn’t take long, though, for my Spidey Sense to start going off. Not every day, not with every client — but not infrequently, I’d work with someone on nutrition for a while… and something would start to feel ‘funny’. I’d ask questions like, “So — ‘not medical advice’, but… have you had your thyroid checked lately?” or “Has anybody ever mentioned PCOS as a possibility for you?” The response was usually, “well, I don’t have a PCP.” To which my gut reaction was, “…ugh, wouldn’t it be nice if I could, you know, just DO that thing that I went to school to do?!?”
Long story short, I started a direct-access telehealth primary care practice to balance the nutrition coaching. My medical license covers North Carolina only (whereas I can coach nutrition anywhere in the world), so not every client is eligible to become a patient; however, the practice has proven to be a great asset, because it allows me to supplement someone’s nutrition coaching if/as appropriate (labs, GLP-1s, etc.), as well as remain a part of their care team once they’ve ‘graduated’ from nutrition work if they so choose. I have a wonderful collaborating physician (who worked with me in my last clinic job), and I can do essentially anything that can be responsibly addressed in a telehealth medical visit — minor illnesses/injuries, skin rashes, medication refills, lab orders, UTIs, ADHD med checks, and so on.
I’ve had somewhat of a meandering journey to get here, but each step has lifted me toward the next. The ‘triple threat’ of being a clinician, a nutrition coach, AND a high-performing masters athlete allows me to meet lots of different types of people where they are — connecting the science of the body to the heart of each person’s individual life logistics, goals, and priorities.
My coach and I used to talk a lot about the importance of ‘showing your work’ — how much EFFORT goes into the endpoints that we see on a social media highlight reel, and how it’s tough for people to want to share their struggles or the parts of their journey that they see as ‘boring’ or vulnerable. Show Your Work Nutrition & Healthcare is so named because I want people to understand that the PROCESS is the true victory, not least because that’s the part that requires the most courage to share.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
The business moves themselves have been EERILY smooth — like I said, I wasn’t even originally setting out to coach other people; it just kind of HAPPENED, and each new step of growth led to the next. The personal growth side, though — THAT has been tougher. Leaving the pediatric urology job meant acknowledging that just because we CAN do something (work in a prestigious high-pressure academic environment) doesn’t necessarily mean that thing is the best FIT for us. Being a business owner has taught me that, try as you might, not every single person is going to have a 10/10 testimonial experience, and it’s crucial to be equally clear-eyed about your own shortcomings while ALSO recognizing that it often isn’t about you at all. And although I’ve never been a terribly ‘competitive’ person in general, being a masters athlete with Long Covid and hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos has reinforced the need to keep my eyes on my own paper and prioritize the specific movement and performance goals that *I* want to achieve, rather than worrying about ‘keeping up’ with my peers.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Show Your Work Nutrition & Healthcare?
I think I answered this question in the first box, because I didn’t know this one was coming! But, in brief: Show Your Work provides nutrition coaching and/or direct-access telemedicine, and the thing I’m most proud of is our degree of individualization, education, and personal contact. My panel is very small so that I truly get to know each person as an individual (because they’re with me for months if not years!), and with the nutrition coaching side, the first 12 weeks (at minimum) are 3x/week text contact with 24/7 access to send messages (which is much more than what most coaches do). With nutrition, my goal is for you ultimately NOT to need me — to have received so much nutritional education that you feel confident in your ability to move YOURSELF toward your goals, however they may change in the future — and with medicine, it must be said that direct-access care (=a flat monthly membership fee that doesn’t change no matter how much care you need) is the only form of healthcare that incentivizes the provider to KEEP YOU HEALTHY, rather than hoping you get sick.
What makes you happy?
Strength training and Olympic weightlifting, for so many reasons — I’m reminded of my own strength and resilience every time I train, it keeps my hypermobile body healthy, an important part of my community exists in that space, AND there are fun international travel opportunities for some meets (I placed 7th in the world for my age/weight class at the Masters World Championships in Finland in 2024, and am hoping to qualify again for Athens, Greece in 2026!).
Gymnastics work — a lot of the above applies here, but also, gymnastics is VERY challenging for someone with hEDS because of the stability, precision, and proprioception required. I have to work much harder and longer than most people to achieve any given gymnastics skill, and that’s WHY I like it — it’s something at which I am very much NOT naturally talented, yet I’m proving I can do it anyway.
And, of course, a lot of small things — paper planners, colorful pens, a new season of Wednesday, swimming outside, reading fiction, my perfect little 400sf condo, international travel, learning piano as an adult, goat cheese guacamole, the smell of a bookstore, biking among skyscrapers, journaling, chocolate peanut butter cups…
Pricing:
- Nutrition coaching: $379/month for the first 3 months, with options to then drop to less frequent touchpoints for lower prices
- Medical practice: $95/mo per individual, $180/mo per couple, +$80/mo per child (one household adult must also be a member)
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.showyourwork.net
- Instagram: @showyourworknutrition
