Through education, coaching, advocacy, and support, FemDialed is dedicated to helping female athletes dial in their fueling, training, mindset, and recovery in the pursuit of peak athletic performance and optimal health. We also desire to play a role in shifting sport culture towards one that doesn’t sacrifice health and wellbeing for athletic success.

FemDialed Core Values

​-Educating ourselves and learning to listen to our bodies
-Respecting ourselves (body and mind) and respecting others
-Embracing nuance and individuality
-Realism and consistency over perfectionism
-Acting in alignment with your intentions and values (not out of fear and comparison to others)
-Knowing our why
-Optimizing performance and health together (not performance at the expense of health)
-Building confidence along the journey
-Fostering an uplifting and positive environment
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About the Founder — Jenna Gigliotti, MPAS, PA-C, DipABLM

          Jenna is a board certified physician assistant specializing in lifestyle medicine with 5 years of clinical experience. She also has several years of experience coaching high school xc & track, health coaching & educating, and was head chef and co-owner of a plant-based café with her partner. Her professional experience is diverse, yet all rooted in her passion for, and commitment to, helping people improve their vitality and quality of life through health, wellness, exercise, and nutrition. She also loves dogs, growing veggies, cooking and sharing meals, thrifting, and 80s music. 
         Jenna is a lifelong athlete, first with soccer and dance as a young child, then as a runner for the majority of her life. She excels the most at running and has been a competitive runner since age 12 – she was successful in middle school and high school, competed in D1 college cross country and track, and now continues to compete at a regionally elite level and set PRs in her 30s. See ‘My Story’ for more about Jenna’s personal experiences.
         After her most recent bone stress injury (BSI) in December 2023 and experiencing the lack of root cause evaluation and support for female athletes, her interest in female athlete health was ignited. Jenna began working on FemDialed and officially launched it in January 2025. She is passionate about sharing her experiences, skills, and knowledge to educate, inspire, and prevent others from experiencing the dangers of underfueling, REDs, and negative mindset. Her goal is to empower athletes to achieve not just optimal performance, but also lifelong health in body, mind, and spirit. Jenna has walked the walk herself and she is dedicated to sharing the information, support, and practical tools she wishes she had when she was younger to prevent others from experiencing the same negative things.
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My Story

          In high school, despite being one of the top distance runners in the state (800m 2:21, 1600m 5:12, 3200m 11:00, 5k 18:12), I struggled with hypothalamic amenorrhea, poor body image, perfectionism, lack of self-confidence, and an eating disorder. After being hospitalized for 2 months, I was eventually cleared to walk and then run again. I tried to return to competitive running, but suffered three different bone stress injuries within 1.5 years at the end of high school into early college and was diagnosed with osteoporosis at age 19. I never gave up on my love of and dreams for running though. Through the support of professionals, coaches, family, and friends, I did the challenging, yet important, inner work to heal my relationship with food and body image, restore my period, and release (most of) my perfectionistic tendencies.
          I was fortunate to run xc & track for a D1 university but despite the early potential I showed, I struggled to improve from my high school times due to all the setbacks I went through. I was also unknowingly training with iron deficiency anemia that was further holding back my performance. Finally, 2 years after my last bone stress injury and starting an iron supplement, I had a breakthrough race my junior year track season. However, the stress of an intense school workload led to inconsistent performances my last year of college. I also began to realize that the training prescribed to me and my teammates did not work well for me like it worked for most everyone else. I graduated college in 2015 with a few new PRs (5k 17:42, 10k 35:58) and two team conference championship titles, but ultimately disappointed that I hadn’t run faster. 
          I kept running and racing with varying levels of training intensity through graduate school and my first few years working in medicine. I coached myself and experimented with different styles of training. The years of uninterrupted training and new workout style added up and in 2019 I finally broke 17 minutes in the 5k (16:58). Exactly 10 years after I graduated high school and while I was coaching high school track in 2021, I broke my high school PRs in the 800m and mile (2:18 and 4:54). That fall, I switched gears and ran my first road marathon in 2:52:11. I continued to have success setting PRs in the 10k (34:30), 10 mile (58:13), 1/2 marathon (1:16:09) and marathon (2:44:09, winning the 2023 Hartford Marathon) through December 2023 until I developed another bone stress injury (BSI), in a high risk location (navicular bone), 11.5 years after my last one. 
          Frustrated to have my old issues come back to haunt me but determined to not give up competitive running, I for the first time ever looked at underlying issues and possible contributing factors to my injury. With all my previous BSIs, no one asked me about my menstrual cycle, how much I was eating, how much I was sleeping, how my stress levels were, or told me about the female athlete triad/REDs. Even though I had a bone density scan at age 19 that showed osteoporosis, I was never given any recommendations about what to do about it or how to try to prevent future bone stress injuries.
          But this time I refused to accept that BSIs “just happen to runners” as the sports medicine doctor told me. I read as many research papers as I could about navicular bone stress injuries and BSIs in general. I knew my relationship with food was solid, but I took an honest look at how much I was eating, sleeping, and stressing. In hindsight, I realized I had been so busy running the café and also running miles, that I was unintentionally neglecting my nutrition needs, letting them slip to the back burner despite higher than ever energy expenditure. I underestimated the caloric demands of standing on my feet for +12hr work days and high stress levels, in addition to running. I was often rushing to fit running in around work responsibilities that I would forgo post-exercise nutrition to take care of business needs first. I knew about REDs during this time, yet I let my priorities get out of order (health will now always be number one before work or running or anything else) and believe I suffered the BSI as a consequence. I was trying to do too many things at once and didn’t have enough time to fuel everything, yet I stubbornly didn’t want to give up or reduce any of my activities. With my history of osteoporosis, I now know I need to stay on top of fueling more than others and make some changes to my training if I want to continue pursuing running PR dreams and lifelong health. 
          After taking the prescribed time off to heal my BSI, I was able to create a careful return to running program for myself in the spring of 2024. With help from a good friend, I started lifting weights for the first time since college. As a way to have fun, try something new, and be able to train and race without comparing my post-injury times to my PRs, I tried uphill racing in the summer of 2024. It was a perfect fit for me as uphill running has less impact, I enjoyed it, and discovered that I am pretty good at it. I then wanted to return to the marathon in the fall to prove to myself and others that I could train for it in a safe and sustainable way. I focused on marathon training in a way that was safer for my bones, including running less miles, more cross training, less consecutive running days, and more focus on pre-, during, and post-run nutrition. The plan I created worked – I had fun, trained and finished the race without injury, and ran the marathon in 2:45:17, only a little over one minute slower than my PR. 
          My journey, along with witnessing other female runners suffer from BSIs, REDs, and negative mindset, ignited my passion for female athlete health. I created FemDialed to share the knowledge, information, inspiration, and practical tools I wish I had to prevent anyone else from experiencing this. I have big goals in 2025 for FemDialed and for my personal running, but I will be sure to prioritize my health and well being first.