Meet Empower Functional Health

The Nutrition with Judy practice is now officially Empower Functional Health. I wanted to share how we got here, and a heartfelt thank you for being a part of our practice. Thank you for trusting us with your health journey. We never ever take it for granted.

 

Here’s what is changing:

• Nutrition with Judy will be mostly the public-facing arm of our practice. Our podcast, social media platforms, free guides, and articles will remain with Nutrition with Judy.
• If you continue to work with our practice, you will be working with Empower Functional Health.
• All of our notes, sessions, test results, and medical letters will be under Empower Functional Health.
• We partner with Rx prescribers and now service most medications. No, we aren’t advocating taking a lot of meds, but we sometimes need a stronger bridge to help us get closer to root-cause healing. The goal is no meds long-term.
• All our products and services are now on our new practice website, Empower Functional Health.
• We also partner with different doctors, practitioners, and medical directors to keep up with the latest evidence-based research. We’re just searching for answers.

 

Real Talk on Empower Functional Health

 

 

Our practice in how we deliver value and care is built on the Barbell Theory. On one end of the barbell, we offer free resources that are intentionally created to empower and educate. This includes expert interviews with tactical takeaways, downloadable guides, evidence-based articles that are never behind a paywall, and clinical pearls we share openly through educational graphics and content. We also regularly host giveaways and share the latest updates through our newsletter to keep our community informed and supported, with no strings attached.

 

On the other end, we provide  deeply personalized care that reflects the highest standards in functional medicine. These services may sometimes be higher than the average clinic, and that’s intentional. We aren’t trying to be average. We invest heavily in ongoing education, clinical depth, and a team-based approach that allows us to work with some of the most complex chronic cases. That level of care takes time, training, thought, and most importantly, heart.

 

We don’t always operate in the middle, because trying to serve everyone often means compromising the quality we promise to those we do serve. As a full-fledged functional medicine practice, our pricing reflects a thoughtful balance between accessibility and excellence, so we can give you the best care possible, without compromise, while still committing to the belief that wellness should be for all.

 

Whether at NwJ or EFH, our very first core value is Trust and Integrity. I lead our team, practice, and community by our core values. Ask anyone on our team, these values are pretty stringently followed.

 

We spend a lot of time doing work for our patients. One Symptom Burden Assessment (SBA), now called Personalized Health Plan (PHP), takes us an average of 3-5 hours. I’ve timed myself doing several, and the fastest I can do one is about 2.5 hours. It takes most of us 3-5 hours.

 

Yes, this is personalized care.

 

Our session notes take about 1 hour after each practitioner call.

 

We demand this level of excellence, so you can imagine our unfortunate time constraints.

 

But after 2500 patients, we know what excellence requires. (And it’s also why standard care can’t afford this model.)

 

One piece of feedback we repeatedly receive is that we provide some of the most thorough and comprehensive care our patients have received in all the care they’ve had with any other functional medicine or alternative care practice or online coach/influencer practitioner.

 

Truth be told, early on, I had a practitioner leave (our only person who has quit the company) because she was overwhelmed with our chronically ill patients. She was losing sleep over our patients, and it was too much for her. (Some of us still go through this, but we work on it.)

 

She hit overwhelm.

 

So the way I’ve learned to protect my team and support our patient community is by having a finite number of patients we see. If we price ourselves in a certain way, it balances the load for our practitioners to give excellent care without practitioner exhaustion or burnout.

 

It’s why you see so many doctor-influencers completely stop their one-on-one private practice. It’s easier to be an influencer. But I know the real healing (and answers) are in going deeper.

 

Our mission statement includes making wellness accessible to all, so we support that with all our free content. Most people work with a publisher on their first book and then self-publish afterward because they have enough of an audience to sell their own books.

 

My first book, Carnivore Cure, was self-published, and I could have easily made my 2nd the same way. But I chose to make my second book through a publisher (The Complete Carnivore Diet for Beginners), because these big publishers have the ability to make the price a lot cheaper than our small company. I got paid very little for the book, and I was okay with that.

 

We often make guides, infographics, handouts, and podcasts for free. Most experts with a following have moved to Substack for a monthly fee, and we have chosen not to charge for any of our very comprehensive articles.

 

If you are proactive, you can heal by troubleshooting with our content.

 

That is my commitment to wellness for all.

 

The Nutrition with Judy Backstory

 

 

I started Nutrition with Judy in 2017 as an Instagram account to have a creative outlet as I was healing from a severe mental breakdown and living life on disability from deep depression. For two years, I didn’t make a penny sharing all my online graphics. But my heart was happy. Will I ever make money doing this? I hate selling…

 

Still, somehow, I kept going.

 

In 2018, I returned to school to become a functional nutritional therapy practitioner so that I could learn to feed my kids well. I had no plans to change careers—the plan was always to go back to management consulting. 

 

The golden handcuffs were too good.

 

I opened up a small practice, doing nutritional therapy online and in a rented office space in Austin.

 

My very first client made me cry. She told me she knew deep down I was a fraud and a snake oil supplement pusher. I remember crying to Kevin and telling him I’m not cut out to help people.

 

Somehow, I kept going.

 

 

In 2019, we opened up our NwJ store. I always knew how to work hard, but never really understood the importance of scaling. Enter Kevin.

 

When I released Carnivore Cure in 2020, the marketing tour made my practice completely full. I was trying to serve as many people as possible, seeing over seven clients a day, even through the weekend. I burned out.

 

But somehow, I kept going.

 

I started sharing more controversial things than Carnivore, such as vitamin A toxicity with too much liver consumption and the risks of the COVID-19 shot, especially with children. I landed in Instagram jail and had a lot of hate sent my way.

 

I learned then that people who love you can easily throw rocks at you. I kept reading Dr. Seuss’ quote in my boys’ room: “Those Who Mind Don’t Matter, and Those Who Matter Don’t Mind.”

 

Still, I cried a lot. I genuinely considered closing down NwJ. (I’ve never shared this out loud.) 

 

But looking back, this was a pivotal time for me, as I learned to lean on my faith, and I learned what it really means to lead in a servanthood mentality. I stopped (mostly) caring what people thought of me.

 

In 2021, Kevin forced my hand to hire. I was scared to hire because what if they didn’t do things the same way as me?

 

Caitlin and Mimi were our first hires. And then our team grew and grew. And now we are still understaffed, but we are a strong team of 10+.

 

In 2021, I fell into Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome (CIRS). Not because I wanted to, but because there were too many clients of ours who weren’t healing enough with Carnivore, gut healing, mineral balancing, and supplement protocols. I had to find an answer (albeit probably the most challenging for many…)

 

As we have grown, our practice is no longer solely about nutrition, and it’s definitely not about me. Our practice has grown into a full-fledged functional medicine practice serving the chronically ill. We’ve built an incredible team of lifelong learners; most importantly, these beautiful souls want to do better in this world.

 

Our Successes

 

 

Here are a few stats of what we’ve achieved thus far:

 

• We have served over 2,500 in-depth meat-based clients and patients.
• I have worked over 10,000 hours in clinical practice. If I include team calls discussing cases and group calls, it’s a lot more. Our practitioner team is inching beyond these numbers.
• Some of our team has gone through:
  • Board Certification in Holistic Nutrition
  • Shoemaker’s CIRS Certification
  • DNRS training
  • HeartMath Certifications
  • Lyme Certification and Training (including ILADS)
  • Dr. Georgia Ede’s Metabolic Training
• We have established ourselves in:
  • Carnivore as an Elimination Diet
  • Autoimmune and Gut Health
  • Environmental Toxins and Infectious Disease
  • Mind-Body and the Nervous System

 

And we will continue to do things needed to serve our community. Have you heard of the Starfish story? I open Carnivore Cure V2 with it, but I know the content we share doesn’t always fit for everyone. However, we share because if we can help make a difference for one person (or starfish), that’s what matters.

 

Maybe we were always meant to be a little different or nuanced. Our team fully embraces the idea that we don’t follow the status quo or make nice with everyone. When we lead to serve the people, we will ruffle some feathers.

 

Sorry, I am just wired that way.

 

Our Hope for Change

 

 

At a certain point, I told Kevin that we had grown enough and that I didn’t want to grow anymore. But the truth is that if I had one wish, I would leave this world a little better for my boys. And I haven’t really made a dent in wanting to serve others.

 

Kevin shared that if I wanted to make big waves and change the world, I needed money to do so. Of course, then he brought up my favorite person, Bill Gates, as an example (this is sarcasm). 

 

I finally understood…

 

In the last couple of years, I’ve dived deep into leadership and building our team and practice. I’ve finally accepted the role of leader, and it’s why we took on projects like the Carnivore Summit.

 

If you want to get something done, do it yourself.

 

Seeing that RFK might just make dietary changes nationwide is promising. I want to advocate until every last kid knows that eating meat is not only good for them but that it’s needed to grow big and strong.

 

We are working on many things behind the scenes, and I know we will see tremendous growth in the next few years.

 

The goal is to evoke change.

 

 

The goal is to help every single starfish as best as possible. We are grateful you are a part of our story. Here’s to many more years of trying to make the world a little bit better, and in hopes that my boys know I did the best I could as their mother.

 

In health,

Judy Cho and the Empower Functional Health Team