How to counter counter jungling?

Let me start by saying I am super glad 4.20 is over, because I've never been more frustrated playing jungle. I admit I am someone who likes to play more fringe junglers, but I was not able to have any success with champions outside of Warwick and Yi. The problem I see is that I am much too vulernable in my own jungle. Even if I have wards or the wolf smite bonus, I find most duels simply come down to 'who has more health', and In my own jungle when I'm trying to jungle, I am always going to be at lower health. In solo queue I can't count on my allies to help me out. And often times if I get forced out of one half of my jungle there is literally nothing for me to do; lanes are pushed, the other half is comepletly farmed, and i don't even have 400 gold to buy a basic item. Keep in mind I will get forced out regardless as to whether I have warded and know he is coming to invade or not; I will always be lower health and I will always have to leave or loose a duel and probably die.

I think the gold buffs in 4.21 will help a little in building more sustainy as a jungler and maybe giving us a few more pots, but its still incredibly frustrating to be too low to gank and too low to farm safely, even with krugg/gromp buff. Overall I find that the jungle is a horrible place to be behind in. As a slightly underleveled amumu, I will loose 90% of my health to gromp with . This is unacceptable.

Being low health in the jungle with no recourse to gain heath and no ability to influence the game is extremely frustrating and unfun.

I am open to any and all suggestions on improving in the current environment. But I think that there is a fundamental problem with how the jungle is designed, even after the multiple reworks. Let's compare it to laning. In lane, you have your own minions to separate you from the enemy minions and champions. Theoretically you have the option to play extremely conservatively and take minimal damage. Or you have the option to play aggressively and take more risks and recieve more damage, but maybe gain something from it. In the jungle, you will always recieve the same damage, regardless of playstyle, leaving you always at low health, unless you pick super sustainy champs like panth, warwick, yi, udyr, xin, etc. Being at low health limits your playstyle, and having to choose a champ that can have decent health is limiting as well. The balance of champions has simply switched from best gankers to best sustainers/counter junglers (which are usually one in the same because sustain counters counterjungling a bit).

What the jungle needs is a way to mitigate damage in a way that doesn't make ganking champions OP or lesser used ones like amumu unviable. So what if smiting a jungle creep spawns a personal pet that tanks the damage of creeps for you? It doesn't need to do damage, but mirrors the situation you have in lane where you don't have to take damage if you aren't playing aggressively. Clear times would be the same but you would be healthier and the jungle would still stay reasonably hard, and punishing for laners to take. I doubt this is a perfect idea, but at least its something.

TL;DR: Having no health after farming the jungle is no fun and reduces the viable choices that a player can take after being so low on health.