About Meredith

I know what it’s like to desperately try to lose weight and keep it off. My own journey has involved Weight Watchers, “clean eating”, holistic nutrition and whole foods, the Paleo diet, and on and on and on…

After all the craziness (and believe me, it drove me CRAZY), I finally managed to find peace with both my food and my body. It involved changing my mindset, and debunking some pretty huge myths about how my weight was affecting my health.

My attempts to lose weight led to food obsession, over-exercising, binge eating, and intense body shame. Now, I seek well-being through trusting my intuition, deeply tuning into my body, pleasure, and body respect. I have lost the immense burden of shame, guilt and fear I was carrying with me each day.

Adopting this philosophy has been such a profound experience that I decided to become a coach to help others do the same.

This website is a resource to introduce you to a life-changing philosophical shift towards your body and food. My work builds on core concepts from the fat liberation movement, Health At Every Size^®, and Body Trust^®. It involves recognizing that we live in a diet-obsessed, fatphobic culture that teaches us to strive for the beauty ideal at all costs. It also involves recognizing that weight loss isn’t necessarily the answer to a well-lived life.

 

My Struggles With Weight Loss

I approached losing weight earnestly and devotedly, as we all do at first. I managed to lose a significant amount of weight on Weight Watchers, but soon ended up in a crumpled heap dealing with deprivation, binge eating and symptoms of over-exercise.

I eventually realized that Weight Watchers wasn’t a good fit, and self-righteously declared that instead I would become a “clean eater”. I would focus on “whole foods” and nutrition instead of calories. Much spirulina-laced green smoothie gulping, flax seed grinding, raw food crunching, and superfood eating ensued.

I went through health coach after health coach, program after program. Despite it all, binge eating continued to be my norm: I would eat perfectly all day and then at night would secretly gorge on candy and baked goods.

I felt completely out of control. I was ashamed that even though I was intelligent, hard-working and arguably very successful in every other part of my life, I couldn’t control my weight.

I was positively desperate for the acceptance — both self-acceptance and societal acceptance — I thought I would find when I became thin. I chased the acceptance with a fervor. As long as I was trying hard, I thought, no one could fault me. And one day, I figured I would finally figure it all out and become the thin woman I fantasized about.

I never dreamed that I would finally find peace and it wouldn’t involve rules or willpower — and instead would involve my intuition and accepting my body as it is. But it happened, and I can’t wait to teach you how to do it too.

What I Believe Now

• I believe that people of all sizes are worthy of respect and dignity, and that we need to fight discrimination against fat people in our society. (Throughout this site, I use “fat” only as a neutral descriptor of size, never as a pejorative.)
• I believe that intentional weight loss is not sustainable for all but a sliver of those who try to lose weight. And I believe that many who do sustain weight loss have disordered eating (or full-blown eating disorders).
• I believe that dieting and intentional weight loss efforts are incredibly harmful, both for our physical and our emotional health.
• I believe that intentional weight loss is not a path to health. People in larger bodies aren’t necessarily less healthy than those in smaller bodies, and health-promoting behaviors are actually the key to healthy bodies and minds.
• I believe that our bodies intuitively know what foods and types of movement they desire, and that tapping into this intuition is the key to sustainable health-promoting habits.
• I believe that our bodies have set-point weights (actually this is a range of about 20 pounds) and that through intuitive eating and intuitive movement we will naturally fall at whatever weight is right for our unique bodies.
• I believe that it is only through allowance — zero food and exercise rules — that we can truly find a sustainable lifestyle that helps us achieve our own unique version of optimal health.
• I believe that shame and guilt are positively toxic and that self-compassion is paramount in a journey to reconnecting with one’s body and learning to appreciate and trust it.

Intrigued? Read some of my writing on Health At Every Size (also known as HAES), intuitive eating and allowance and body image to learn more.

My Professional Background

Certified Body Trust^® Provider

This 8-month long training taught me how to use the Body Trust^® paradigm to help individuals heal their relationships with food and body.

Body Trust^® promotes rejecting diet culture, tuning into one’s body, practicing weight-neutral self-care and self-compassion, moving one’s body in pleasurable ways, and building resiliency in a fat-phobic world.

This certification is from Be Nourished, a collaboration between therapist Hilary Kinavey and dietitian Dana Sturtevant.

Professional Mental Health Counselor-in-Training

I am in my second year of attending Lewis & Clark College in Portland, OR to become a counselor. I chose my program because Lewis & Clark puts great emphasis on social justice issues in counseling. When I graduate I will start to pursue licensure as Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) in Oregon.

Courageous Living Coaching Certification

I am a certified through this 10-month long life coaching program, which focuses on holistic coaching methods. We see clients as whole people, and go deep to help you work with your emotions and solve life problems at their roots instead of just on the surface.

Graduate of Anamsong Mind-Body Coach University

This 9-month long training taught me somatic coaching techniques. I’m not a woo-woo person, but I have deep respect for the mind-body connection and the power of our emotions. I am not afraid of the hard stuff, and if we work together, I will encourage you to learn how to work with your emotions.

I can weave these techniques into one-on-one sessions to the extent you are interested in them; there’s no pressure!

Other Training & My Previous Career

I have also completed an internship with Christy Harrison, a prominent intuitive eating coach and non-diet dietitian.

I originally trained as a computer engineer and have a B.A.Sc. in Engineering Science from the University of Toronto. My engineering roots mean I’m very practical and pragmatic; I don’t do anything without a purpose and I try to make sure you have a clear path forward at the end of each coaching session.

I spent 12 years working as a user experience designer and researcher. My job was to help companies deeply understand the people using their websites, and help design user-friendly online experiences. Empathy and insights about people were the tools of my trade, and I now bring those skills to my work with coaching clients.

Where I’m Based

I am Canadian and spent many years living in Toronto, Ontario. I currently live in Portland, Oregon, but I work with clients all over the world via phone and videoconference.