Ep. 99: The Journey to Health & Finding the Right Practitioner with Samantha Lander

Full shownotes: www.jessiefritz.com/blog/samantha-lander

Today’s podcast is with the wonderful Samantha Lander! Samantha is a Functional Diagnostics practitioner, certified personal trainer, and holistic lifestyle coach who got into the field to take control of her own health. After years of struggling with how she was feeling, a few misdiagnosis and slipping into the world of drugs, Samantha’s story is so interesting to hear - not only on how she’s changed her own life and health, but how she’s helping others.

I hope you enjoy this episode with Samantha!

In today’s episode we chat about:

• Samantha’s story growing up with chronic symptoms and misdiagnosis of IBS

• Finding out she was dealing with anxiety and hypothyroidism in college

• Junior year of college and entering into the music world as a DJ, she started partying and using drugs like meth to self medicate for how she was feeling

• She got into selling drugs after college and her life started falling apart where she ended up in prison for a few years

• Changing her life and becoming a personal trainer after prison, but she was feeling like crap all the time

• Finding out she had parasites, mold, candida and heavy metals (along with hypothyroidism)

• She got into the FDN world to help herself and also to help her clients

• Finding the right practitioners who will help you on your journey

• Both Jessie and Samantha understanding and working through body dysmorphia and eating disorders

• Struggling with strict, extreme elimination diets and how those can affect our healing

• The REAL difference in working with someone in functional medicine vs. western medicine

Links and things:

• Samantha’s Website

• Sick & Tired of Feeling Sick & Tired?

• Samantha’s Instagram

• Samantha’s LinkedIn

• Jessie's Instagram

• Chronically Healing Facebook Group

More about Samantha Lander:

Samantha Lander found her way into the health industry through years of working on her own health. She first set personal goals for herself as a young athlete who participated in team sports such as synchronized swimming, water polo and field hockey. In college, she continued with athletics since her experience working in the fitness field was so positive that she decided to major in sports management. In 2003 Samantha graduated with a degree in kinesiology from the University of Michigan with a major in sports management.

Following graduation she moved to Los Angeles where she found success working in the music industry as a club dj and producer where her life took a turn with drugs and even prison. After several years she became disenchanted with her work and began to realize that she missed having athletics in her life. Always one to tackle a dilemma head on, she decided to take a spinning class and immediately wanted to get back into the fitness industry. She began recording fitness cds and marketing them to a record labels.

In 2006 Samantha moved back to St. Louis to pursue her personal training certification. Her certifications include NASM, Functional Diagnostics Nutrition, NESTA and CHEK Level 2 Holistic Lifestyle Coach. Samantha’s desire to do functional Diagnostics came from her own health problems she discovered when she learned she suffered from Adrenal Fatigue, Food sensitivities, Pathogens, Leaky gut and lots of hidden stressors. She spent a good portion of her life struggling with weight despite working out and eating a perfect diet and knew it had to be something more. With the right coaching she slowly began to rebuild her health and realize that she didn’t have to settle for feeling horrible the rest of her life. The long hard road to get better has given her the drive to help others who are suffering with the same.

Through her passionate love of health and wellness and natural ability to partner with her clients to tailor their individual workout plans and Holistic protocols, Samantha has found her professional calling as Functional Diagnostics practitioner. In this role she has a genuine desire to help her clients achieve their goals they believed were never attainable. Currently she works with a diverse range of clients in terms of age, gender and ability.