One Body to Love with Dr. Meredith MacKenzie

You eat well. You move your body. You are, by most external measures, one of the healthier people in your circle. And yet your energy is gone, your sleep is broken, your performance is sliding backwards, and somewhere along the way your period quietly stopped showing up. Maybe someone told you that was normal for active women. Maybe nobody said anything at all.
This week I'm joined by Dr. Katrina Allison, a naturopathic doctor in North Vancouver who specialises in hormonal health for active women and female athletes. Katrina is also a long-distance runner who lost her own period for three to four years while performing at a university level, and spent that entire time being seen by knowledgeable professionals who never quite told her how serious it was.
That experience shapes how she practises now, and it shows up in this conversation in a way I found genuinely moving.
We get into the biology of what happens when energy in doesn't match energy out, why losing your period is a late warning sign rather than an early one, and what relative energy deficiency in sport actually is. But the part of this conversation I keep coming back to is the gap Katrina names between the prescription and the doing. A clinician can tell you to increase your intake in about eleven seconds. Going home and actually doing it, against everything your mind has to say about it, is another matter entirely. Katrina understands that from the inside, and she talks about it with real precision.
We also talk about the rigidity that endurance sport rewards, why the personality traits that make someone excellent at running can make them deeply resistant to changing anything, and what shifted for Katrina when she became a mother and raced postpartum with no plan and no expectations.
If you're not an athlete, please don't skip this one. The hormonal picture Katrina describes is, in her words, agnostic of how active you are. Years of restriction do the same thing to a body whether or not that body is training for something.

Find Katrina here: 
Website: www.drkatrinaallisonnd.com 
Instagram: @drkatrinaallison_nd 
The Period Recovery Project: linked at www.drkatrinaallisonnd.com

One Body to Love 10-Week Intuitive Eating Program
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You know you're not hungry. You eats anyway. And the shame that follows feels heavier every time.
In this episode, Dr. Meredith MacKenzie offers the most compassionate reframe in the series: emotional eating is not weakness, and it's not a bad habit. It's a coping mechanism that developed for real reasons — and understanding what it's actually doing is the only way to build a genuinely different relationship with it. This episode names the specific emotions that most commonly drive emotional eating, challenges the "just find other coping strategies" advice that never quite lands, and introduces a practical tool for beginning to create space between the urge and the response.

Key takeaways:
Why emotional eating is a coping mechanism, not a character flaw
What emotional eating is actually doing neurologically and emotionally
The specific emotions most commonly underneath the pattern: boredom, loneliness, stress, anxiety, overwhelm
Why "go for a walk instead" misses the point — and what real alternative coping looks like
The shame loop: how shame about emotional eating drives more emotional eating
The 10-15 minute pause: what it is, what it isn't, and how it creates space without restriction

This week's reflection prompt:
The next time you notice the urge to eat when you're not physically hungry — what if you got curious? What emotion is present? What need is underneath it?

Final reminder: Code SUMMER10 at meredithmackenzie.ca/summer — $10 off Food Freedom in a Weekend. Last week of the series next week.

One Body to Love 10-Week Intuitive Eating Program
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Website - www.meredithmackenzie.ca
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You start every week with resolve. And end most of them in the same place you started.
In this episode, Dr. Meredith MacKenzie names the "I was so good all week" spiral — one of the most common, most demoralising patterns in her clinical work — and explains exactly why it keeps happening. This isn't a discipline problem. It's a structural one. The controlled week and the chaotic weekend are two sides of the same coin, and understanding why the control creates the blowout is the shift that makes a different approach possible.

Key takeaways:
Why the "good week / bad weekend" rhythm is a cycle, not a failure pattern
How describing eating as "good" creates the conditions for the Diet Rebel
What the meal prep week that slides is actually telling you — and why it's not a food problem
The all-or-nothing thinking pattern: how one "off" choice becomes a lost week
What flexible structure actually looks like: planning easy meals and fun meals with equal legitimacy

This week's reflection prompt:
What does the beginning of your week look like with food? What does the end look like? And what does the gap between them tell you — not about your discipline, but about the approach itself?

One Body to Love 10-Week Intuitive Eating Program
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Website - www.meredithmackenzie.ca
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You've tried everything. You keep trying. And the cycle is still running.
In this episode, Dr. Meredith MacKenzie goes into the biology and psychology of why — and why "trying harder" was never going to be the answer. Drawing on the foundational work of Tribole and Resch, this episode explains what restriction actually does to the body at a hormonal and neurological level, names the three phases of the restrict-binge cycle in specific, recognisable terms, and addresses the woman who says "I don't diet" — because mental restriction is enough to keep the cycle going.

Key takeaways:
The three phases of the restrict-binge cycle: restriction, binge, aftermath — named and normalised
The biology of restriction: what your body is doing and why it's not a character flaw
The breathing analogy: why the binge is a predictable outcome, not a personal failure
Mental restriction: the quiet, internal version of dieting that keeps the cycle running without a formal plan
Why both biology and emotion drive the cycle — and why both need to be addressed
This week's reflection prompt:
Where in the cycle do you tend to find yourself most often? What does your version of restriction look like — formal or informal?

Use code SUMMER10 at meredithmackenzie.ca/summer for $10 off Food Freedom in a Weekend.

One Body to Love 10-Week Intuitive Eating Program
💻 Book a Connection Call

Website - www.meredithmackenzie.ca
Instagram - @Dr.MeredithMackenzie
Facebook - Meredith MacKenzie Coaching
Pinterest - pinterest.com/drmeredithmackenzie
Youtube - @Dr.MeredithMackenzie

You understand the cycle. You've done the reading. You might even agree, in theory, with intuitive eating. And you're still stuck.
In this episode, Dr. Meredith MacKenzie names the three internal voices that keep the restrict-binge cycle running — even in women who know better. The Food Police, the Nutrition Informant, and the Diet Rebel aren't random thoughts. They're patterns, installed over years of living inside diet culture. And naming them as distinct from your own voice is one of the most disarming things you can do.
Key takeaways:
Why the "knowing-doing gap" isn't a willpower problem — something is operating underneath
The Food Police: what it is, where it came from, and why it gets louder with every diet
The Nutrition Informant: the sneakier voice that sounds like wellness but functions like restriction
The Diet Rebel: why she exists, why she's not the problem, and what she's responding to
The Intuitive Eater: the voice that was there before all of it — and how to start hearing her again

One Body to Love 10-Week Intuitive Eating Program
💻 Book a Connection Call

Website - www.meredithmackenzie.ca
Instagram - @Dr.MeredithMackenzie
Facebook - Meredith MacKenzie Coaching
Pinterest - pinterest.com/drmeredithmackenzie
Youtube - @Dr.MeredithMackenzie